Corporate Mobility Management: what works, what doesn't, and the proposals from 231 Mobility Managers in the AIIT–ASSTRA survey

A conversation by Paolo Barbato with Michela Bonera.

According to the data collected by the MIT (Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport) Technical Working Group on Area Mobility Management, in the municipalities observed in 2025 the local units of companies with a Mobility Manager amount to 41% of the total; the figure rises to 47% for public bodies and to 87% for universities. The comparison with 2023 reveals a picture that is still uneven and, above all, marked by structural resistance.

To understand what is holding back the concrete establishment of this role, I met with Michela Bonera, coordinator of the AIIT (Italian Association for Traffic and Transport Engineering) Working Group on Mobility Management. In 2024, between the two MIT surveys of 2023 and 2025, the AIIT Working Group on Mobility Management, in collaboration with ASSTRA (the Italian Transport Association), conducted a survey directed at corporate Mobility Managers, university and school Mobility Managers across the entire country, with the aim of building a real profile of the role, investigating areas for improvement and identifying possible lines of intervention. The survey collected 231 responses.

A role that struggles to take root

PB: The MIT surveys show that the appointment of corporate Mobility Managers is still partial, especially in companies. In 2025 the share even slightly dropped compared to 2023, from 43% to 41%. What does the AIIT survey tell us on this point?

MB: The comparison between the different types of organisation is itself instructive. Universities are at 87%, public administrations at 47%, companies at 41%. The appointment obligation, on its own, produces very different outcomes depending on the organisational context.

One element that emerges strongly from the survey concerns the year of appointment: over 75% of the Mobility Managers in our sample were appointed from 2020 onwards, after the Decreto Rilancio, which extended the obligation to local units with more than 100 employees in the territories covered by the legislation. This means that in many cases we are dealing with a role that is new not only for the appointed person, but for the entire organisation. There is no consolidated model to lean on. The structure around the role does not yet exist.

There are still many Mobility Managers to be appointed. And there can be various kinds of critical issues for which this role meets resistance in taking hold at the local and national level.

Who is the corporate Mobility Manager today

PB: Does the survey return a typical profile, or is this a role that varies greatly from company to company?

MB: There is a fairly clear trend on the educational front. 74% of the corporate Mobility Managers in the sample hold a degree (at least at bachelor level): it is a role with a medium-high level of education. More than 50% hold a degree in STEM disciplines. When organisations look for someone to assign to this role, they tend toward technical-scientific profiles.

In terms of corporate position, over 50% of Mobility Managers hold a position of responsibility: executive or head of office, service or department. It is a senior role, and it is easy to see why: the function requires interdisciplinary coordination skills and the ability to engage with management.

The most marked heterogeneity concerns the function of origin. 60% of corporate Mobility Managers come from the HSEQ area (Health, Safety, Environment, Quality), from Human Resources or from the Technical/R&D area. These are areas with a natural relationship to mobility issues. But this also means that in many organisations the function is absorbed by people who already do something else, without a dedicated mandate and without their own resources.

In any case, what emerges very clearly is that, although the legislation clearly identifies the tasks and competencies of the Mobility Manager, it is still very difficult to identify “the most suitable person” to whom to also attribute this role and, even more difficult, that companies — today — dedicate a person full time to this task.

They know what to do, but lack the resources to do it

PB: In the same period in which you were conducting the AIIT survey, we were also collecting data among about 100 Mobility Managers participating in a webinar on PSCL. 39% declared they had no budget dedicated to mobility in the company, 41% considered it insufficient. Only 20% deemed it sufficient. On the time front, 76% dedicated less than 20% of their working hours to Mobility Management activities. Do your numbers on satisfaction tell the same story?

MB: Satisfaction with the role is 2.7 out of 5. And when the dimensions are broken down, the picture becomes precise. The lowest scores concern the financial resources available (2.2), the time available for the role compared to the other tasks assigned (2.4), and the human resources in support (2.6). The highest scores, on the other hand, concern the preparation and training received for the role (3.3) and the tools and knowledge for drafting the corporate mobility plan (3.5).

The pattern is fairly clear: Mobility Managers know what they have to do, and they have received acceptable training to do it. They don’t have the time, the people and the financial resources to actually do it. To this is added a perceived limited decision-making freedom (2.6) and a level of involvement from executives that remains low (2.8).

Corporate Mobility Managers know what they have to do, but they have few resources (people, time, money) at their disposal, in addition to limited decision-making freedom.

What Mobility Managers are asking for: network, recognition, resources

PB: The open responses in the survey are the most interesting, because they describe the situation in the words of those who work with it every day. What are the themes that emerge most frequently?

MB: In order of frequency, seven needs recur: sharing and creating networks among Mobility Managers, support and coordination from the Mobility Manager di Area, greater centrality and recognition of the role, training and skills development, more resources in support, the possibility of going beyond compliance, and greater value recognised to the function within the company. After all, if the ultimate objective is to act on people’s mobility habits, the Mobility Manager alone cannot do it. It is a mission that is only possible if everyone works together, in the same direction.

The most recurrent request concerns the network. Mobility Managers want to meet, exchange experiences, build shared solutions for companies with adjacent sites. And they ask the Mobility Manager di Area to truly play a coordination role, not limiting themselves to receiving the annual plan without providing feedback. One of the responses collected says it explicitly:

“What I often see missing is the central role of the Mobility Manager di Area in systematising the needs of the various companies that draft the mobility plan in a coordinated way.”

On the issue of internal recognition, the respondents’ diagnosis is direct. As long as management is not sensitive to the topic, measures don’t get approved, especially those that require budget. And until concrete minimum requirements are introduced (dedicated hours, basic resources based on company size), the role risks remaining formal:

“As long as the Mobility Manager remains a ‘nice-to-have’, initiatives will only be introduced by the most virtuous companies.”

Proposing isn’t enough: you need to act at the right levels

PB: The survey doesn’t stop at the diagnosis. What concrete proposals emerge?

MB: The proposals are organised across four distinct levels of intervention.

At the central/ministerial level: revision of the ministerial Guidelines with specific directions for the different types of Mobility Manager, definition of updated minimum training standards, more resources for the Mobility Manager di Area and, on the regulatory front, a more structured role for the function: a minimum number of hours to dedicate to the activity, formal involvement in specific corporate initiatives.

At the area level: activate networks among corporate Mobility Managers in the same municipality or metropolitan city, structure dedicated offices in the administrations that have the capacity, and share information on the funding available for mobility activities.

At the level of the individual organisation: create sustainability steering committees that include the Mobility Manager alongside other figures such as the energy manager, include the time dedicated in the official duties, and build an internal culture on employee mobility that does not exhaust itself in the annual plan.

At the cross-cutting level: reward mechanisms for organisations that produce concrete results, tax breaks for those who invest in sustainable mobility measures, and better applicability of smart procurement for the purchase of advanced solutions.

There is a great opportunity to seize: the MASE (Ministry for the Environment and Energy Security) Integrated Programme of interventions on urban and metropolitan mobility, due for publication shortly, will allocate 500 million euros to Metropolitan Cities, capital municipalities of Metropolitan Cities and provincial capital municipalities with a population of over 50,000 inhabitants. Among the eligible areas of intervention is explicitly the strengthening of Mobility Management. It is a concrete opening to address some of the structural deficits that the survey has documented.

The AIIT survey brings into focus a clear-cut observation: the operational deficit of the corporate Mobility Manager is not a competence deficit, it is an architecture deficit. The people appointed know what to do. The structure around them is not yet built.

One of the observations collected by the working group frames it in three words: the Mobility Manager as “nice-to-have”. As long as it remains so, initiatives depend on the goodwill of the most virtuous companies, not on a system that makes them ordinary.

The good news is that the foundation exists: a generation of Mobility Managers who are trained, technically prepared, and explicitly asking to work as a network. The 500 million from the MASE Programme arrive at a moment when knowing what to invest in is the easy part. If those funds reach the Area Mobility Management structures and translate into hours, people and coordination infrastructures, the next MIT survey will be able to document a change of scale, not another two-year stalemate.