Transport and the shape of the city in Bologna

Tickets

A single TPER urban ticket is €2.30 and lasts seventy-five minutes, or €2.50 bought on board. A carnet of ten costs €19.00, which is €1.90 a ride, and a day ticket is €9.00. Tapping a contactless bank card is charged at the pre-purchase price and capped at €9 in a day and, since a weekly cap arrived with the fare revision of 1 March 2025, at €25 over seven days. For a short stay that beats buying passes.

Passes, and which one you are being sold

A monthly urban pass is €39, or €30 if you are under 27. The annual personal pass is €310, the impersonal one €340, the under-27 personal one €230 and the over-70 one €200; an annual pass runs twelve months and can be set to start any time within thirty days of purchase. Since 1 March 2025 residents of the comune pay the annual urban pass on an ISEE band — €230 below €20,000, €250 from €20,000 to €25,000, €280 from €25,000 to €35,000 — and the €310 headline price is what you pay above €35,000, with no ISEE declared, or if you live outside Bologna. The banded pass is bought online on TPER's site with SPID, a valid ISEE certificate and a self-declaration of residence, and you can travel on the receipt at once.

• Outside the city fares go by zone: a single runs from €2.30 for one zone and sixty minutes to €8.80 for ten zones and 210 minutes, and carnets of ten from €19.00 to €73.00.
• Extraurbano annual passes run €270 to €740 depending on the number of zones, with under-27 and over-70 reductions.

The student deal

If you are enrolled at the university the annual pass is €161, covering the urban network plus extraurbano zones up to zone 3, for undergraduate, master's and single-cycle students, for exchange students, and for doctoral, master's-course and specialisation students under 27; those aged 27 and over pay €187. The TPER card itself costs €5 and lasts five years, and the order confirmation carries a QR code that works immediately, so you travel while the card waits for collection at the TPER office in Via Marconi 4. The Alma Mater bando takes a further €100 off for students on laurea, laurea magistrale and ciclo unico courses with an ISEE up to €35,000, with 4,000 places and applications closing at 15:00 on 24 September 2026. If you are eligible, apply and wait for the outcome before buying an ordinary discounted pass, because nothing already paid is refunded.

Driving, the ZTL and Città 30

The ZTL covers everything inside the viali di circonvallazione and is active every day from 07:00 to 20:00, with cameras at every gate. Inside it, the Zona T of via Rizzoli and via Ugo Bassi is controlled around the clock and goes fully pedestrian on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, the stretch of via Indipendenza above via Ugo Bassi is a separate pedestrian area, and the Zona Università around via Zamboni is closed to cars, motorcycles and mopeds around the clock. Non-residents buy a digital ticket in advance, €6 for a day valid to midnight or €15 for four consecutive days, capped at three daily tickets or one four-day ticket per plate per calendar month, and the two cannot be combined in the same month. Bologna was the first large Italian city to adopt a 30 km/h default limit, and twenty-two ordinances reimposing 30 km/h on 258 kilometres of streets took effect on 20 April 2026, so read the signs on the street rather than assuming one number for the city.

• From 1 January 2026, hybrid cars belonging to non-residents and to companies not based in Bologna no longer get a ZTL permit. Permits issued by 31 December 2025 stay valid until they expire.
• Residents of the historic centre holding a contrassegno R park free in their own zone, one permit per household.
• Park and ride: Certosa on viale Gandhi has 325 free spaces, unattended. Parco Nord on via Stalingrado is not a free alternative — it is a paid car park of 750 spaces, open only on trade-fair days.
• Tanari, Prati di Caprara and Antistadio are the interchange car parks: parking is free for 24 hours from entry if you already hold a TPER pass, or if you buy the interchange ticket at the machine after parking.

The airport, the tram and the bikes

The airport link is the Marconi Express monorail, 5.1 kilometres from Bologna Centrale to Guglielmo Marconi in about seven and a half minutes with one stop at Lazzaretto, running from 05:40 to midnight roughly every seven minutes at peak and every fifteen off-peak. It is €12.80 single and €23.30 return, including seventy-five minutes of integration with TPER urban buses, which for a five-kilometre ride has been reported as the most expensive airport link in Europe. A discounted €9.80 fare called Flex solo Bus 949 covers the connected 949 bus instead, airport to piazza Malpighi without intermediate stops and without the urban bus integration, sold on marconiexpress.it, in the Roger app and at the machine at the airport terminus. The tram is not yet in service: the first vehicle arrived on 8 September 2026 and passenger service is expected in spring 2027, so until then the worksites at Pontelungo, via San Felice, via Saffi, via Emilia Ponente and via Lame make bus journey times through those streets unpredictable.

• The Centrale to Lazzaretto hop on the Marconi Express is €2.30. A family of two adults and up to three children aged 5 to 16 pays €25.60 single and €48.90 return, and groups of ten or more €10.50 each single and €19.80 return.
• Bike sharing is RideMovi, with around 3,000 e-bikes and 650 pedal bikes across the city.
• An e-bike ride ends at €1.99 if you park in a designated hub and €2.49 outside one; a pedal bike ends at €1.06, with a €0.30 hub discount. A €30 monthly pass covers thirty e-bike rides of fifteen minutes.