Sensors, traffic lights and online booking: strategies against overtourism

Anti-hiking traffic lights for photos of the landscape, access to roads and lidos only by online reservation, sensors that record the passage of hikers. From Trentino to the Cinque Terre, passing as far as Capri and Sardinia, these are some of the strategies devised by the administrations of seaside and mountain resorts to contain the impact of tourists in the overcrowded weeks of Ferragosto. Initiatives with the support of technology and the internet.

In some locations in Trentino such as the Fassa Valley special sensors record the passages of hikers. On the Dolomite passes, the strategy is already mapped out, with traffic regulation and digitalisation of interchange parking areas. On the other hand, because of holidaymakers' selfies, there is an alternating one-way street on the Alta via del Sale, between the white road connecting Limone Piemonte (Cuneo) and the Ligurian hinterland, a winding route offering a view that attracts many tourists. The aim is to avoid traffic jams at the viewpoints: the traffic lights remain green for ten minutes and red for a maximum of fifty minutes in both directions alternating. The maximum travel time between the two traffic lights is twenty minutes, allowing visitors to stop and admire the landscape and take souvenir photos. In Braies in South Tyrol, the location of the much-visited lake of the same name, around which the successful television series 'One Step from Heaven' was filmed and which has attracted thousands of selfie tourists, a plan has begun to provide digital reservation for access to the road leading to the lake for motorised vehicles.

From the mountains to the beaches. Apps support the beaches of Apulia, where from online platforms one has the real pulse of what is going on, through the beach map to know which and how many locations are precisely. Closed number beaches - such as access limited to 1,500 bathers in the one in Stintino - and entrance fees are the measures to limit the pressure on ecosystems in Sardinia: from the north to the south of the region, advance bookings have been set up through municipal websites and apps.

In the Cinque Terre, the fascinating portion of Liguria overlooking the sea, this year due to new rules and also the increase in train fares there is no overcrowding of tourists. Here the reopening of the Via dell'Amore, the stretch of the world-famous Blue Trail connecting Riomaggiore and Manarola, has been regulated for sustainable enjoyment. Entrance has become by reservation and access restricted: 400 people per hour, 100 people every 15 minutes.

Doubled landing fees in Capri, alternating number plate traffic on the Amalfi coast, closed numbers and access by reservation at certain free beaches in Naples are the main measures implemented in Campania, not only at Ferragosto (mid-August) but for longer or shorter periods of the summer season. In the Marches, the measures taken include a controlled-access zone, on an experimental basis for 52 critical days, along the small road leading to Portonovo Bay in Ancona; closed-number access, from 1 August to 15 September, to the Due Sorelle beach in Sirolo.