August 21, 2026. The Apulia Region of Italy is continuing and intensifying its investments in the renewal of its local public transport buses: over €40 million for the purchase of more than 100 new vehicles, intended to gradually replace the older buses still operating on its roads.
The Regional Council, at the proposal of Raffaele Piemontese, Councilor for Infrastructure and Mobility, has reallocated the entire €40,709,630 earmarked for Apulia in the second five-year period (2024-2028) of the National Strategic Plan for Sustainable Mobility, focusing the resources on the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years and initiating the procedures for the direct purchase of buses.
The Region will be able to utilize the CONSIP Framework Agreements, existing national contracts with suppliers that allow public administrations to acquire vehicles through faster procedures, under pre-established conditions and prices. “We are allocating more than €40 million to quickly transform the fleet with over 100 new buses for the roads of Apulia,” explains Piemontese. “The decision is to proceed directly with the purchases as a Region, simplifying and streamlining the procedures, and then allocate the vehicles to the municipalities and provinces and make them available to local public transport companies.”
The program allocates €33.5 million, equivalent to 82.33% of the resources, to the purchase of methane-powered intercity buses, while €7.2 million, or 17.67%, will be used to finance electric urban buses and their charging infrastructure. Based on current cost estimates, the funding will allow for the purchase of 98 methane-powered suburban buses and 8 electric city buses, for a total of 106 new vehicles.
The new buses will primarily replace older vehicles still in service, starting with Euro 4 vehicles, thus continuing the renewal of Apulia’s local public transport fleet.
