As of March 2026, the tender process for the Lazio Region’s road-based local public transport service covering eleven network units remains unfinished: five of the eleven planned lots are still awaiting award for a service that was due to commence on 1 January 2024. This is a case that warrants careful scrutiny, both from a procedural and an economic perspective.

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The procedural process: a lengthy timeline

The process leading up to the tender for the Lazio regional public transport service began in November 2021, when the Regional Executive approved, by Regional Executive Decision No. 801/2021, the mandate for ASTRAL S.p.A. to manage the tender procedure. The division into eleven lots — corresponding to the identified Network Units (UdR) — was subject to public consultation between 29 December 2021 and 28 February 2022.

The framework was finalised on 29 December 2022 with the approval of the Award Report (Regional Council Decision No. 1253/2022), followed by the publication of the tender notice on 13 January 2023. From that point onwards, the stages unfold with successive delays: the deadline for submitting bids, initially set for June 2023, is first pushed back to July and then to 16 October of the same year. The selection panel is formed in September, with proceedings postponed until early November.

As at 31 January 2025, the evaluation of tenders was still ongoing for several lots. The tender notice had originally specified 1 January 2024 as the start date for the new service; the updated forecast, barring further delays, indicated 1 January 2026. As of February 2026, six lots have been awarded, whilst five — Castelli Romani, Tuscia, Terra di Lavoro, Ciociaria and Sud Pontino — are still in the process of being awarded. The case of Lazio, whilst not unique on the national scene, highlights with particular clarity two structural weaknesses in the sector: the scarcity of competitive tenders and the excessive length of the selection processes. Such prolonged timelines risk rendering obsolete the economic, technical and operational assumptions on which the tender was originally based, with potentially distorting effects on the effectiveness of the contract.

The main features of the competition

The tender is divided into eleven lots of significantly varying sizes, with annual mileage ranging from 11.2 million km for Lot 7 (Rieti) to 36.1 million km for Lot 9 (Ciociaria). Overall, over a nine-year period, the annual mileage put out to tender amounts to approximately 270 million kilometres, with a total base auction value of €630,503,635.

A key feature of the tender’s structure concerns the provision of the fleet: the 764 buses required at full capacity are not to be supplied by the successful bidders, but are to be provided by the contracting authority — ASTRAL S.p.A. — under the terms of the contract. This decision has a significant impact on the structure of the financial bid and on the level of discounts that can be achieved, as shown by the analysis below.

The base auction rates per kilometre range from €1.96 (Lot 11 – Sud Pontino) to €2.61 (Lot 4 – Castelli Romani). This difference reflects the varying operational characteristics of the lots: service frequency, network density, the topography of the area and, to some extent, the composition of the required bus fleet.

Below is a summary table of the lots with the main tender indicators.

Source: Basco&T Consulting analysis of data from ASTRAL S.p.A. / Lazio Region. Lots not yet awarded are highlighted in yellow.

Economic analysis: price reductions, cost per kilometre and the impact of investment

The discounts applied by the successful bidders

In the six lots for which the outcome of the tender process is available, the discounts offered by the successful bidders range from -3.87% for Lot 3 (Valle del Sacco) to -14.83% for Lot 7 (Reatino). The average discount for the awarded lots stands at around -12.2%. The total contract value for the six lots is €281,769,367, compared to a starting price of €319,981,183: an absolute discount of approximately €38,211,816. The price per kilometre resulting from the award ranges from a minimum of €1.83 (Lot 10 – Southern Coast) to a maximum of €2.31 (Lot 3 – Valle del Sacco).

The impact of the contracting authority’s procurement of buses

Any assessment of the true cost-effectiveness of the contracts must take into account the value of the vehicle fleet. As mentioned, the tender requires ASTRAL to provide buses to operators, thereby creating a significant economic benefit. This benefit has been estimated at approximately €100 million across the entire scope of the tender, a figure calculated on the basis of the number of buses supplied by the Contracting Authority, including those already funded, multiplied by an average unit cost of approximately €200,000.

The cost per kilometre of this charge — which, under the tender structure, is not borne by the successful bidder — averages around €0.35/km, as shown in the ‘€/km bus (impact)’ column of the table below. This is a figure which, had it been borne by the operators, would have significantly altered the structure of the bids: the discounts observed would have been largely absorbed by the financial cost of the fleet, with the corresponding actual €/km figures being well above those awarded. For example, in Lot 10 (Southern Coast), the contract price awarded is €1.83/km; adding the estimated depreciation cost of the fleet (€0.37/km), the actual cost of the service to the public would be close to €2.20/km, a figure close to the original auction base price (€2.14/km). This order of magnitude is common to all lots and suggests that the apparent reductions do not represent an actual reduction in the public cost of the service, but rather an accounting transfer of the infrastructure burden.

Source: Basco&T Consulting analysis based on data from ASTRAL S.p.A. / Lazio Region. Lots not yet awarded are highlighted in yellow. €/km bus (impact): estimated depreciation cost of the fleet supplied by ASTRAL.

Conclusion

The Lazio tender raises points for consideration in at least three areas.

From a procedural standpoint, the time taken to award the contract – over two years from the publication of the tender notice, with five lots still pending at the start of 2026 – raises questions about the contracting authorities’ ability to manage procedures of this complexity within timeframes compatible with operators’ operational planning and service scheduling.

From an economic perspective, an analysis of the bid discounts confirms that the supply of the fleet by ASTRAL represents the most significant component of the value transferred to the successful bidders. Without this intervention, significant discounts would have been unlikely: the cost of acquiring and managing hundreds of buses constitutes a significant barrier to entry, and its removal has broadened the pool of competitors.

From a transport policy perspective, the model adopted — with public infrastructure resources and private service management — is consistent with the objective of separating the ownership of networks and vehicles from their operational management. However, for this model to deliver the expected benefits in terms of efficiency and service quality, it is essential that tendering times are shortened and that contracts are launched on schedule, avoiding the risk of tacit extensions or de facto continuity with outgoing operators.