Hydrogen Buses & Schedule

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On the left you see simulation of one day schedule during the Olympic Games.

The first bus departs at 5 AM both from Calalzo di Cadore and Cortina d'Ampezzo

The last bus departs from each station at 22 PM.

Estimated time of travel for each bus is one hour.

The time needed for the bus driving from Calalzo to Cortina can be increased because of the elevation on the route. Total elevation difference between two points is about 500 meters with a length of a route of 34 kilometers.

The road can be considered as one with an average difficulty for driving long vehicle. Therefore, we suggest to use the second generation of Citaro FuelCell Hybrid bus provided by Daimler. Citaro series is a standard type of a bus operated in a big amount of transport systems across the world. It has following characteristics for a model equipped with hydrogen fuel cell system.

Some technical characteristics of the bus are below:

• 18 metres long
• 146 passengers
• 3 or 4 for doors
• 250-300 km without refueling
• 8 kg of hydrogen per 100 km

The radius of the turn for this bus has been analysed in the study. We expect this bus to be able to turn in every curve on the route. However, it is not possible for two buses to turn on the one curve at the same time. This fact can affect the total travel time.

According to our calculations, 54 buses will be needed to satisfy the demand also considering peak days and hours. This number also includes buses on the line Cortina - Dobbiaco. However, more than half of the fleet is expected to operate on the line Calalzo-Cortina. According to our forecast, 56% of visitors will approach Cortina d'Ampezzo from the South via Calalzo di Cadore

54 buses in total

The Visitors

Cortina d'Ampezzo and the whole region of Alpi Dolomiti is a well know resort and ski area. Every year it is visited by a huge number of people all around the world. We tried to understand where people are coming from during the Winter season.

We tried to avoid current pandemic situation and focused on the case during normal demand time. This way we expect it to be in 2026, the year of Olympic Games. We split visitors several groups taking those who come from Italy itself, neighboring countries such like Austria or Germany and guests from far away including non-EU countries and other continents. Working on the estimations of visitors during Olympic Games, we found out that the split stays mostly the same.

In a non-pandemic situation, there is a big number of visitors coming from non-neighboring countries. It means that this people are forced to use several options to travel to Cortina. This options at the moment include rental cars and public transport services. Assuming that these visitors are arriving to Italy by plane, we tried to consider all possible routes. Here you can read more about main transportation hubs which connect the region of the Games with other countries.

Below is a rough representation of a path between Malpensa - the airport of Milan and the main air hub of Northern Italy - and Cortina d'Ampezzo. There are couple of ways to reach the destination. However, travel time at the moment is expected to be 5 hours minimum. Using public transport you will probably decide to go by path Milan-Venice-Belluno-Calalzo-Cortina. Anyway, there are several possible paths and they vary in terms of time and cost.

If you are using a car to get to Cortina, you can check the route using our service.

Demand During the Games

There are several competitions that are expected to take place in Cortina d'Ampezzo during Olympic Games. You can check in details here.

Part of our job was trying to estimate the number of visitors for each day of the Games. Our predictions are based on the official schedule for competitions. We expect most of the visitors to come at least one day before the competition he want to attend. Therefore, the we split the movement of people to their arrivals and depatures from Cortina d'Ampezzo. You can see how it looks like plotted below.

The part of arrivals looks very similar to the expected number of spectators for each event but shifted due to our estimations of people staying at least a day in the town

Departure is also affected by our estimation of people willing to stay longer, technical staff and VIP guests.

We expect that the high demand period in Cortina will come to an end several days after the Closing Ceremony of the Games. After that, the people will move to the closest transportation hubs to leave the Olympic Region.

Financial Evaluation

A sensitivity analysis has been performed to assess how the service requirements would change, changing some boundary conditions of the project. There are several cost allocation scenarios considered. The four scenarios aim to assess the performance of the transportation service to the fluctuations of two main drivers: the spectator distributions and the parking spots available. The last scenario accounts for the latest information available as of the time of writing this report. All scenarios satisfy the transportation demand.

Our work completed in this study can be extended and improved. We still gather some data about upcoming events.

Feel free to reach us and read more about our project here.

Warm regards

Cordiali Saluti

Herzliche Grüße

The Team