Public Transport
By holidaying in Lucca and Florence and the surrounding environs, you have the benefit of perhaps the best set of car-free transport options in Tuscany. Thanks to the combination of public and private agencies operating here, it’s truly possible to go just about anywhere you’d go with a car, given some understandably different assumptions about time and planning.
Your options include the state railway system, the municipal bus agencies and their corresponding extra-urban networks, and a large and efficient private coach company. Taxis are also a common (if expensive) option. As always, you should keep your eyes and ears peeled for indications that a train or bus strike (even on a commercial line) might be imminent, because they can be maddeningly frequent and unpredictable.
As in most cities, you can either buy your municipal or commercial bus tickets at the central office, or you can go into any tobacconist (tabacchi) displaying the trademark Italian “T” sign. News-stands and card shops often sell tickets as well. You can buy municipal tickets on-board, but at a substantially higher price. Commercial bus tickets must be bought before boarding. With a handful of exceptions municipal buses are painted orange and commercial buses are painted light blue.
For both trains and buses, the standard procedure applies: Make sure you validate your ticket by time-stamping it in the generally yellow box on board the bus or on the train station platform. If you board the train with an unvalidated ticket, hail a conductor immediately and have your ticket hand-marked.
Never be tempted to travel without a ticket. If you are caught the fine is between 50 and 100 times the cost of the ticket. For example, If you ride between Lucca and Florence without a ticket the fine would be €420! (£270).
STATE RAILWAY (www.trenitalia.it)
The Ferrovie Statale (FS) still does indeed run on time, and one can tell when riding the Italian trains that they are still assumed to be the backbone of the nation’s passenger transportation system. One is reminded of this when riding the local train between Lucca and Florence, as a journey that would take 45-60 minutes by car stretches to an hour-and-a-half or so while the train stops in each and every hamlet between the two cities.
But no matter how fast or slow the journey, the one important thing to remember about the trains is that they run later in the night than any bus system, so if you find yourself wanting to stay in Florence for dinner, you at least have the security of knowing there’s a 10pm or 11pm train that will get you back to the Lucca main station. Just remember, wherever you are, that the time between 11pm and midnight is indeed the witching hour, and if you miss the last train from wherever you happen to be, the next one may not be scheduled to arrive until the truly wee hours of the morning.
Trenitalia has an excellent website, with an option to view it entirely in English, at www.trenitalia.com. You can buy certain tickets online, but for short journeys it’s generally not necessary to plan very far in advance. However, if you find yourself flying into a city such as Milan or Rome (which has an airport station) and want to take the train to Tuscany, understand that reserved seats are always preferable (especially when traveling with baggage), and they’re harder to get beginning about a few hours before departure. Trenitalia also has automatic ticket machines (biglietterie automatiche) at every station with an English-language option, and they (sometimes) accept credit cards.
If
you’re flying into Pisa Airport, it has its own train station (Pisa
Aeroporto), which makes getting to Lucca, where the station is just outside
the city walls, rather smooth. The same isn’t the case for Florence,
where you should expect to hire a taxi or catch the municipal bus into
the city center.
Italy's Eurostar high-speed rail system is growing by the day, allowing
you to cover substantial distances in a very short time. For example Florence-Rome
is only 1.5 hours by Eurostar, the same journey by car would take at least
2.5 hours.
CLAP, LAZZI AND ATAF
The CLAP and LAZZI municipal bus systems are excellent, and its extra-urban (extraurbana) branch does a commendable job of negotiating the mountain roads around Tuscany to get you to just about any of the local sights you’d want to see. Where the CLAP doesn’t go, there are often commercial bus routes available (see LAZZI below). Both the CLAP and LAZZI bus systems have as their hub Piazzale Verdi, Lucca and Piazza Adua, Florence. Pay close attention to the timetables, which are generally posted at every stop, as the last CLAP bus for any extraurban destination generally leaves around 8pm on a weekday.
Likewise, the same can be said for the ATAF municipal buses in Florence. In particular, the No. 12 and 13 buses run complementary clockwise / counterclockwise routes through central Florence that hit the majority of the popular sights. The main ATAF hub is just outside the central train station, called Santa Maria Novella, near the church of the same name. ATAF offers a slightly more economical four-trip ticket called a biglietto multiplo, which is a single ticket that must be validated each of the four times you use it.
Note that weekday schedules are called “feriale” and weekend schedules are called “festivo”, and they are generally very different.
LAZZI (www.lazzi.it)
Lazzi is an excellent commercial bus system that serves Florence, Lucca, Viareggio and a handful of destinations up and down the Versilia coastline north of Viareggio. Its ticket prices are competitive with both the trains and the municipal buses, and in the case of getting between Florence and Lucca, it can be a real time-saver. (The express bus is called “direttissima” and is faster than the train.) In the rural areas around Lucca, Lazzi sometimes serves routes that the CLAP municipal extraurban buses don’t. While you must have your ticket before boarding, you’ll notice that there are Lazzi stops every few kilometers along the rural routes.
As with the municipal buses, pay close attention to the timetables, because it’s not uncommon for the last Lazzi bus for your destination to depart as early as 6pm or so.
TAXIS
The
Italian word for taxi (tassí) is so close to the English that you
don’t even need to learn it in order to hire one. Taxis in Italy
can only be hired from taxi stands in predictable places such as the main
train station or a main piazza such as Piazzale Verdi in Lucca. If a taxi
isn’t available, there is a sign at the taxi stand with numbers you
can use to call one. Taxi drivers can be roused at any hour to take you
just about anywhere, so if you find yourself stranded a half-hour from
your villa after the last train of the night has departed, this is a welcome
(if expensive) back-pocket option. Tips aren’t expected in Italy,
so if you feel the need to tip, even an extra euro is appreciated.