At a time when Uber and apps such as Mytaxi are all the rage, alternative services are emerging that combine economy with sustainable mobility. The shared taxi service bookable via app Mvmant has indeed launched in Mestre (Venice). Despite the name — an acronym halfway between "movement" and "ant" (an intelligent, organised creature), perhaps a little hard to remember — the project aims to create an intelligent, on-demand public transport system based on journey sharing.

"The citizen," reads a press note, "can book and pay for the ride directly via their smartphone, knowing from the outset both the route and the associated costs, which are kept low and are set on the basis of the actual kilometrage of the journey (€0.85 per kilometre)."

How Mvmant works

In practice, the app calculates — using GPS location — the route requested by the user and reworks it together with those of other users, efficiently organising a single shared ride. In this way, empty runs are reduced, traffic congestion decreases, and so does air pollution. Private cars are often used for short trips by lone passengers, in the absence of viable alternatives and a widespread public transport network.

"We had long felt the need for an initiative in our area that would promote a change in the way people get around, and from the very start we believed strongly in the scope of Mvmant," said Gabriele Stevanato, president of the cooperativa Radiotaxi Venezia Mestre. "Also to encourage new mobility policies, we decided to invest resources in the project, which we are convinced will have considerable positive environmental impacts for our city — ranked third in Italy by Legambiente for the number of days on which PM10 concentration limits in the air are exceeded."

The evolution of urban public transport

The service, which will be managed by the artisan cooperative Radiotaxi Venezia Mestre in partnership with Edisonweb and the Catania-based company that conceived and developed the application, will allow users to cover the most common routes: home-to-work and home-to-school. Before launching the service, the company itself had established through a survey that "more than 80 per cent of respondents" would be willing to "give up a family car if their city offered an efficient urban transport system."

For now the service has launched in a pilot phase with two lines and four taxi cars, and is active Monday to Friday, from 7.30am to 8pm. "Mvmant is the first case in the world to see the full integration of a shared mobility app and a traditional, licensed taxi service," declared Riccardo D'Angelo, founder and CEO of Edisonweb. "Mestre comes just ahead of the launch in Dubai, where the local transport authority RTA has selected our platform to cut traffic congestion by 20 per cent and reduce CO2 emissions by 30 per cent."

Having already been crowned the best city for sustainable mobility, Venice is now putting itself forward as a laboratory for smart mobility — shared, affordable, and designed with citizens in mind.