About Ad Personam

What is Ad Personam?

Ad Personam is a Direct Marketing Programme for Public Transport. The project promotes Local Public Transport (LPT) in European medium-sized cities and is focused more closely on 7 pilot projects in 7 different European countries. Ad Personam is a European project co-financed by the European Commission under the Intelligent Energy - Europe programme.

Why Ad Personam?

40% of EU citizens live in urban areas of less than 200,000 inhabitants. The car is by far the predominating urban transport mode, accounting for about 75% of the kilometres travelled in EU urban areas.
Medium-sized cities have generally common problems related to citizens’ mobility behaviours:

 scarce use of Local Public Transport considering the real potentialities of the service;
 increasing phenomena of traffic congestion, mainly at peak-hours and for home-to-work travels;
 consequent air pollution phenomena - deterioration of air quality;
 citizens’ limited knowledge of LPT (routes, timetables, service rates);
 citizens’ lack of interest towards LPT systems, since in medium-sized cities the use of private car is perceived by citizens as still competitive and sustainable (short distances, availability of parking areas) and, as a consequence, it is very attractive compared to LPT;
 lean impact of traditional communication and promotion campaigns on LPT, based on conventional advertising tools;
 citizens’ suspiciousness with reference to LPT, deriving from real or supposed inefficiencies (delays, low frequency, slowness, areas scarcely covered) which discourage its use;
 LPT is mainly used by citizens who do not have the possibility of using motorised private transport means (students, elderly, etc.).

What are the Ad Personam objectives?

Ad Personam is developing an innovative Direct Marketing Programme aimed to change mobility behaviour of participating citizens by persuading them of the advantages of Local Public Transport for their home-to-work travels. To achieve its objective, the project is establishing personal communication and individual relationships with the involved citizens. Each of them will receive an individual tailor-made travel plan.

Ad Personam specific objectives:

 to enlarge the market share of LPT in medium-sized European cities, currently quite weak in comparison with the wide use of private car;
 to increase the number of citizens using LPT for their home-to-work travels in medium-sized European cities;
 to reduce the use of cars/mopeds for home-to-work travels;
 to assess the sustainability and effectiveness of the Direct Marketing Programme;
 to define a picture of potential user types of LPT;
 to increase citizens’ information/knowledge on LPT services;
 to disseminate the Direct Marketing Programme concept and best practices in Europe beyond the 7 pilot cities involved in the project;
 to promote the individual use of Travel Planners as an important information tool on LPT.