written for a proposed Admissions Blog for prospective students published on the John Felice Rome Center website
The public transportation in Rome gets a bad rap, you’ll even find some locals complaining about it. Agenzia del Trasporto Autoferrotranviario del Comune di Roma, or ATAC for short, is the company that manages the public transport system in Rome, which includes many types of transport services: metro, metro trains, buses and trams. ATAC can seem daunting to many students the first time they come to call Rome their home. If you’re not used to Italian, the unfamiliar stop names that might not even show up on the screen and the nuanced ticketing systems are definitely confusing at first- but not impossible to master!
First thing’s first, if you want to get on any of the mezzi pubblici (public transports), you need a biglietto, or ticket. An ATAC ticket costs 1,50 euro and is valid on any bus, metro, tram, or regional train (as long as you stay within city limits!) for 100 minutes. You can validate it once on a bus and use the same ticket on a metro, but you cannot scan into the metro twice on the same ticket. Buying an ATAC ticket in Rome is fairly easy and it is definitely NOT logical, but thanks to An American in Rome, expat Natalie Kennedy helps explain it. Helpful hint: as a JFRC student, you can also buy single-use bus tickets at the portineria with one of the guards, while their daily supplies last!
For your first trip, plan ahead and allow yourself a gracious amount of wiggle room so you can get the hang of the route, but also because it seems like the system is wildly unpredictable, so you’ll never be 100% certain when the bus is ACTUALLY going to pass. There’s a joke I’ve heard that while there is a schedule, no one is really sure if the driver’s are aware of it. I remember in the days of my study abroad when none of us were required to have phones with functioning data plans so we relied on the wifi of our uni and cafes, I could either run to catch the impending 990 towards Piazza Cavour, or wait for 40+ minutes, in which I could have walked to Cavour by then, but I digress.
My memories aside, it has gotten better. There are some awesome apps that have been developed (Moovit, Citymapper, or MyCicero) that allow you to look up schedules and also be able to buy passes, apparently (this one’s definitely new to me!). Regardless of mobile or physical ticket, once you see it coming, have your biglietto ready. You’ll notice that all three doors of the bus should open. There is no “correct” door to go through, just let the passengers off first and then get on. At the front and back end of the buses, you’ll notice yellow machines, and this is where you will validate your ticket. It stamps the ticket with the day and time you validated, as well as the time the ticket will expire after its 100 minutes is up.
The bus validation runs on an honor system, so you technically are not required to validate to enter the bus, however: without warning, ATAC workers can board buses and while there is no rhyme or reason to the stop or when they come on, they will check for validated tickets. They are quite unsympathetic for anyone caught without one and the fines start at 50 euro, which you’ll have 5 days to pay off at the nearest post office before it doubles. It happens to almost every Roman at least once in their lifetime, but it’s a rite of passage that many would recommend avoiding if you can. Something you may want to consider as a semester or full-year student at the JFRC, especially if you have on-site classes, engaged learning or an internship which will require you to take ATAC to different parts of the city on a frequent if not daily basis, is to go about buying a month pass. It’ll cost 35 euro the first month (a 5 euro activation fee for the first month) and then you would fill it up month by month!
Ola Wysocki 