In the Italian town of Norcia, the students worked on a vision of mobility for the future and ended up requesting the reopening of a railway line.
The ideas
Norcia is a small town, which presents few traffic and road safety problems – except during the summer with the arrival of great numbers of tourists!
As such, the students put their minds to considering other important aspects of transport. They identified the environmental impact as a key issue and concluded that there are two effective ways to reduce the pollution caused by traffic. First, the use of electric cars should be promoted, because petrol cars contaminate the air and are very noisy. They considered the ways in which to foster uptake of electric cars, such as making car parks cheaper for these vehicles.
They also concluded that the use of public transport should also be better promoted as more public transport means less pollution. Their research and debate led them to launch a campaign to restore the old railway station in Norcia, and restart the old Spoleto-Norcia, railway line, which had worked up until 1968.
The initiatives
These ideas inspired the students to start their main initiative: to imagine the future of mobility in their town. They created an exhibition that featured photos they had taken themselves in different parts of the town. Through the exhibition, they launched their appeal to renovate the railway station and restore the rail line to Spoleto.
The exhibition took pace in the entrance hall at the high school. It had a strong impact on the community, and the local newspaper dedicated a whole article to this initiative.
