The effect of competition on prices in the passenger transport sector can be difficult to estimate because of many influencing factors such as state regulation, demand, seasonality, and reactions of indirect competitors. A case of great interest in the rail sector is Italy, where on-track competition in the high-speed segment has been in place for nearly ten years. The paper aims at answering the question whether—and how much—incumbent’s prices are affected when competition starts on a route previously in monopoly. The case is the start of operations on the Turin–Milan–Venice route, where Italo entered in May 2018. Adopting a difference-in-difference approach, we check if Trenitalia changed the price strategy on the route before and after the entry, with respect to two control groups. The addition of placebo tests allows us to understand the ranges of significance of the results and to estimate the noise level of the estimates. Our findings suggest that the start of competition led to lower prices in the short-medium period. In the specific case, the Milano–Venezia route saw Trenitalia’s prices reduced by 21–26% (±2–5%) in a time span of 84–140 days after Italo’s entry and for advanced bookings from 2 to 10 days. Last-day prices remain unchanged, while early bookings are reduced by just 9%. This price reduction does not remain stable in the longer term, when other effects add up and blur the effect of the entry. Nevertheless, we keep observing a smaller, ∼15%, but still negative prices change.

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Transportation has significant and long lasting economic, social and environmental impacts, making it one of the main challenges to be addressed by policy makers, public managers and scholars worldwide. For Universities, students and staff transportation represents one of the largest impacts on the environment and society, since in many cases it represent a noticeable share of urban traffic. A wide literature is available on the policies that support reducing car usage and improve the environmental and social sustainability of commuting to University. This paper presents the situation in the Politecnico di Milano, recorded through mobility surveys carried out in 2015 and 2017 to investigate the key issues and design possible solutions. The aim of this study is to share the set of actions and activities planned to improve the current mobility patterns of the Politecnico di Milano in favour of more sustainable means of transport. The main strategies will be the redesign of the campuses and the new infrastructure to be installed, together with the promotion of sustainable behaviours among the whole University population thanks to various activities in the framework of the ‘Città Studi Campus Sostenibile’ initiative. A special mention will be given to the ‘Vivi.Polimi’ project, which aims to improve the liveability of the Politecnico spaces, and which will give sustainable mobility a new impulse. Indeed, the planned measures include the reduction of the parking spaces inside the historical main campus while providing new infrastructure targeted at the promotion of alternative means of transport, like increasing the number of bike shelters to encourage active mobility or installing new charging stations for electric cars.