Clean buses – on land and on water On the main street of Venice

260,000 inhabitants, of whom 60,000 live in the historical city center, 30 million visitors – and the main street is the Canal Grande. Managing Venice’s traffic is a challenge. This is also true for cleaning the numerous – and above all – many means of transport. For some years now, aservice provider from Germany has taken care of this.Everything began on an autumn morning in 1881. When the “Regina Margherita” traveled down the Canal Grande as the first water bus with a mechanical propeller, it only shared Venice’s main street with a few small boats and gondolas. 135 years later, 135 water buses, the vaporetti, travel the Canal Grande and the lagoon. The Venetian public transport company ACTV (Azienda Consorzio Trasporti Veneziano) keeps the city going with them. The water buses are the backbone of the transport system, not only for the 60,000 residents of Venice’s historic center, but also for the 30 million tourists a year. Last year at Easter, the city counted 300,000 visitors in three days. It was a tourist record as well as a huge challenge for the municipal government and transport authorities. Similar numbers of people are otherwise found only during Carnival – which lasts nearly three weeks, however. The mayor’s office. The windows look out over the Canal Grande. Outside, the flag with the winged lion is flying. Simone Venturini and Luca Scalabrin probably no longer notice the splendor of the room, with its painted wooden ceilings. As deputy mayor, Venturini is responsible for public welfare and economic development; Scalabrin is the president of the ACTV. “Although 30 million visitors is difficult,” says Venturini, “we manage it. There are never any problems with public safety.” Venice is complicated, unique, difficult to operate and govern. Its costs are 30 percent higher than those of other cities. Scalabrin adds: “The bureaucracy leads to slow decisions. Earlier, the Doge made the decisions; today, we have many key decision makers,” he says. The power of the altogether 120 Doge was nearly absolute. They ruled in the era of the independent Republic of Venice from the 11th century until its end in 1797, when Napoleon conquered Italy. “For 20 years, we have been dealing with the question of how to better organize the limited space on our ‘main street’, the Canal Grande,” says Venturini. He could imagine, for example, designated time slots for the transport of goods on the one hand, and people on the other, especially in the morning hours. But above all, he sees the solution in a continuous improvement of services. Scalabrin proposes this for the ACTV. In customer surveys, the satisfaction of the residents of Venice and Mestre is fundamental. Essential for this, for example, is improving the flow of people on the vaporetti. “They only have one entry and exit, which is often blocked by a lot of luggage. Here, for example, we are examining the possibility of storing luggage on the roof,” says Scalabrin. The last customer satisfaction survey showed: 83.6 percent of the respondents were satisfied with the ACTV’s service, six percent more than in 2013. 92 percent of the respondents were satisfied with the safety in the buses, and eight out of ten passengers rated their cleanliness as very good. “I am also satisfied with Dussmann Service. Cleanliness is important for our image and the city’s as well. It’s like a business card,” says Luca Scalabrin. Dussmann Service has been responsible for cleaning all public transportation methods since 2013, including water buses and their stops, ferries and land buses. After an invitation to tender, which specified better quality at a lower cost, Dussmann took over the personnel of the previous provider, who had held the contract for 20 years. “I like Dussmann Service’s work culture. It is a high-quality company that offers us cleanliness around the clock. Together we can create a better future,” according to the presidential praise. The difference for Scalabrin lies with the periodic cleaning of the water buses and land buses, which is now done with high-pressure cleaning machines. His staff now notices that everything is significantly cleaner than before, he says. Giovanni Seno, General Director of the AVM Group and the ACTV later confirmed this impression as well. “The professionality and experience of Dussmann Service make our cooperation very positive. Their service is efficient and effective, and we get a good value for the money. For us as a public company, this is very important.” 24/7 cleanlinessDeparture from Rialto at 10:13 a.m. Punctually, down to the second, Line 2 stops at the vaporetto stop with a slight rumble. Luca Scalabrin has not exaggerated: “The Venetians set their clocks according to our schedule!” The ride down the Canal Grande to Tronchetto, where the ACTV has its headquarters, takes half an hour. There are palaces to the left and right, of which it is rumored that half now belong to the Chinese. Vessels of any size and function transport everything the city needs: beverages, including supplies for the countless Spritz all’Aperol that is enjoyed here daily, hotel laundry, furniture for a move, patients of the Hospedale Civile, guests in elegant water taxis, vegetables from the lagoon island Sant’Erasmo, garbage – and many tourists in gondelas. Giovanni Seno, General Director of the AVM Group and the ACTV, is waiting at the Tronchetto, together with Nicola Cattozzo, Managing Director of the ACTV, and Giancarlo Baruffa and Tommaso Dal Maschio from Dussmann Service. On the transportation plan, Dal Maschio shows the size of the area and how extensive the tasks of the 160 Dussmann employees are. Venice is the capital of the region Veneto and consists of the historical city center – an island shaped like a fish – and the Mestre Marghera industrial complex on the mainland. The ACTV also operates the traffic in the lagoon with its 118 islands, and the bus network on the mainland. In figures: 2,800 employees, 120 million passengers per year on the 25 shipping lines, over 100 bus lines and two tram lines. Recently, the “people mover” began running between the Tronchetto with its large car garages, the cruise terminal and the Piazzale Roma, the access point to the vaporetti. Periodic deep cleaning takes place at nightEvery night, a Dussmann team carries out the periodic deep cleaning of two vessels at the Tronchetto. The boats are cleaned from top to bottom. The ceiling is cleaned of cobwebs, the windows are cleaned from the inside without leaving a streak, the seats are cleaned and disinfected and any chewing gum residue removed from the floors. Exterior window cleaning is carried out three days per month at a specially reserved pier. Another cleaning team travels by vaporetto to all stops in the ACTV network and cleans them as well. In both ACTV shipyards at Sant’Elena and Pellestrina, the third team removes dirt from the outer skin of the large car ferries. The company uses cleaning chemicals that are 99.9 percent biodegradable, together with high-pressure cleaning machines. For interior cleaning, only water is used. At four places in the city, ships stop ten minutes daily for cleaning by a fifth Dussmann team. The sixth team is exclusively responsible for cleaning the 620 ACTV buses. Quality through continuous staff trainingCurrently, there are very few women among the company’s 160 employees, according to Giancarlo Baruffa, who operates the Dussmann branch in Venice. “The high proportion of men is very unusual for the cleaning sector, but understandable. The activity is technical and usually done outdoors.” Baruffa sees his biggest challenge as managing the large, decentralized team. An imperative feature, however, is continual training on all professional levels so that “all employees work according to the Dussmann instruction manual”. The employees come from many cultures. The job is coveted, and job cuts in the industrial plants of Marghera also add to the problem. The vaporetto “A. Lucchese”, built in 1974 in Venice, is now docked at the cleaning pier. “We are the only public transport provider in Italy that develops its own means of transportation. Our design office in the Sant’Elena shipyard develops ships that can withstand the special conditions in the lagoon, which is influenced by the tides, the wind, the waves and the seabed – and the weight of the many visitors. The construction bids are advertised to other shipyards,” says Nicola Cattozzo. Such a solid, safe ship costs roughly one million euros. Three Dussmann employees – Federico Bordin, Andrea Zennaro and Simone Ferro – are just putting the final touches on the “A. Lucchese”, while Gianfranco Negri, chief engineer at ACTV, reports on the special features found in Venice. Certain zones cannot be served during floods – “aqua alta” – but the traffic has never completely broken down. “We are well organized when it comes to dealing with floods. We have lived with the sea since time immemorial.” On the Canal Grande, everything runs like usual, even during aqua alta. Michaela Mehls, Dussmann Service | markus.targiel@holzmann-medien.de

Clean buses – on land and on water On the main street of Venice

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