@antonia-buric
Another question - what kind of EV charging stations are you implementing?
To improve the services near mobility centres for all categories of users, SPINE envisages the installation of accessible charging stations for electric vehicles. Some of the planned features respond to special mobility needs: ramps, canopies, spaces and signage for people with reduced mobility, special sockets for recharging electric wheelchairs, lighting, interoperability with platforms, multilingual, usable with universal payment methods without any subscription.
Currently, it is not the Municipality of Bologna (COBO) that directly installs the electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. Instead, there is a direct collaboration with Charging Point Operators (CPO), formalized through a memorandum of understanding. COBO provides space free of charge, while the CPOs (such as Enel X Way and beCharge) handle the installation and management of the charging stations without additional costs for the public administration. This model has worked well so far, but there are some limitations:
flexibility in the choice of locations: strict constraints cannot be imposed on EV charging station positioning, as CPOs may consider certain areas too expensive or inconvenient. In practice, the selection of locations is a compromise between demand factors (represented by the needs of users and the Municipality) and supply factors (i.e., the economic interests of the operators). For example, CPOs tend to prefer areas near power distribution cabinets to reduce installation costs, such as excavation and cabling expenses;
charging station power: CPOs are often incentivized to install high-power infrastructure because it generates higher revenue and takes advantage of economies of scale, allowing more charges to be completed in the same time-frame compared to lower-power stations. However, COBO is not focused on this model, as it aims to promote intermodality, which means enabling the combination of vehicle charging with the use of other forms of transport, such as public transit. High-power charging stations, which recharge vehicles quickly and encourage rapid vehicle turnover, do not support this approach. For example, users might decide to recharge their vehicle in 20 minutes, wait on-site, and then continue their journey by car instead of using a bus.
Therefore, COBO's intention is to focus on lower-power charging stations, which allow for slower recharging (typically taking a few hours) and give users greater flexibility as regards their desired parking time. Indeed, the low-power charging station better aligns with long-term parking, which is typical of intermodal areas where users might leave their cars for several hours and use public transportation for further trips, thus promoting intermodality.