Venice, whose public transportation is mostly on water, is catching up with its land-based cohorts in the search for clean transportation, with a new electric boat joining the fleet of Alilaguna, the company that connects the airport with a number of city destinations.
It's not totally electric; it runs on batteries in the city's canals, and then switches to diesel for the route across the lagoon to the airport That part of the trip also serves to charge the batteries. A second boat is on order. The first 40-seat boat cost about €700,000 to develop and build; others will cost less.
Venice's other waterbus operator, the public agency ACTV operates a number of other routes through the canals; although nothing was said whether ACTV is also looking to go electrict, Mayor Luigi Brugnaro praised the boat as "an example of a city which believes in technology and modernity.
The city's boat transit system carries about 70,000,000 passengers a year.
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