public transportation in Rome and Venice

You absolutely need a vaporetto pass in Venice. Single rides are very expensive: Euro 7.50 each last time I was there in August. The passes are for 24, 48, 72 hours, etc. Not cheap but paid for easily with a couple of rides a day. You can buy one at the Hello Venezia booth outside of the train station when you arrive. Fines are huge so don't dare ride without a pass!

In Rome, you can buy daily passes as well as 48 hour, 72 hour and weekly versions. Some of the tabaccherie sell the multiple day passes, but not all, so your best bet is to buy one at Termini Station. That said, they don't always pay off. They are convenient, but unless you take about 4 rides each day, it is often better to buy tickets for individual trips. Each ticket is good for 100 minutes and costs Euro 1.50. The one thing about individual tickets is that you cannot transfer between metro and bus, whereas with a daily or multi-day pass you can do so. Be sure you buy tickets in advance. They are not, as a rule, available on the buses. (They are on a few, but don't count on it.)

BTW, this is all covered in the Rick Steves' Italy guidebook.

Thank you very much for such a detailed information!
I love Rick Steves' books but who has a time for it ?? :)

On this:
I love Rick Steves' books but who has a time for it ?? :)

Uh. The folks that answer your questions! ;-)

That's wonderful!!! One day, I will definitely be among "those folks" :)
Thanks a lot, appreciated it!!!

There is an index in the back of the RS books to make it easier to look up info. If you are traveling to those two Italian cities you would do well to get a copy of the Rick Steves ITALY book (best if you get the current copy as they are upgraded annually). There is lots of information for these two cities in the Italy book.

I second the suggestion for the Italy guidebook.

If you truly have not referenced one yet, they do have very specific information to assist with all manner of trip details. I like paper, as opposed to electronic...so far. I take only the parts I need for my trip, dividing the sections according to the day's activity. As the days pass, unless there are pages I want to keep, I toss the book as I move along. I've taken to photographing information I want to keep to reduce weight.

I love Rick Steves' books but who has a time for it ?? :)

If you are spending thousands of dollars on a trip to Italy, wouldn't a few hours reading a guidebook be good protection for your investment and helpful to your planning? You can ask questions here, but you may not know what you don't know and when you get on-the-ground in Italy, you'll need to know these things to make the most out of your time there.

I'd trade a few online hours for a few quality evenings with the guidebook ASAP.

I must say for Venice, the joy is in walking. I took one trip on the vaporetto in both directions on the canal but otherwise walked everything. It's pretty small, and worth getting lost in.

This is the page about passes on Rome's ATAC website:

http://www.atac.roma.it/page.asp?p=229

Click on each of them for specific information. And I'll agree that time spent with a guidebook is really mandatory for learning about your destination before you go. Otherwise, how will you know what things to see, where they are, an idea of about when they're open/closed, best way to get tickets, etc?

Transportation in Venice.

http://europeforvisitors.com/venice/articles/venice_transportation.htm

You're gonna havta read these at some point.

Thank you ALL for your good advises, thoughts and suggestions, very much appreciated it.
That's not my first trip to Italy, I was fortunate enough to live in this beautiful country many years ago, and now coming back with the family of my own, so I am pretty much familiar with it, except the public transportation :))))
Best Regards.

If you are experienced with Rome you will know that it is very walkable and transit pass may not pay for itself since your principle way of getting around will be slow buses. The pass works in Venice but marginally (IMO) value for Rome.

We are reading this posting as we are currently in Rome leaving tomorrow am and would like to just add a small note to it. Try to avoid taking the metros or even the busses anytime around rush hours to and from Termini station. They are WAY over crowded and people just try cramming in more. The scene is similar to what you see on tv in regards to Japan's subway stations with officials pushing people in to close the doors. Just Rome doesn't have the official pushers. It was so crowded it was making a bit difficult to breath. Forget traveling with small children or suitcases at these times. We watched one bus so crowded it was tilting as it went down the road. It's awful. The other times of the day, and other locations, the metros and buses are fine.

And remember with the vaporetto pass in Venice that you have to tap it on the validation pad EVERY SINGLE TIME YOU BOARD. No exceptions. Doesn't matter how many times you've already used it. Every. Single. Time. Or a whopping fine on the spot if you get caught.

The one thing about individual tickets is that you cannot transfer between metro and bus

Is this something new? I've always used a single 100 minutes ticket transferring between metro and bus without problems. You can enter the metro system only once, but that's different.
I think that the "100 minutes" ticket is called BIT.

I was in Rome last October and thought the 72 hour pass was a good deal. Not sure if I saved money, but the cost was reasonable and it saved me from having to hunt for a tobacco store for individual tickets. Likewise the Vaporetto pass, sure a lot is walkable but it really opens up the opportunity to treat as your own personal hop on hop off tour. (The Venice transit pass is crazy expensive though--welcome to Venice...) Kind of like the Paris Museum pass frees you up to visit smaller museums for just a short time, that you might not have otherwise ponied up for. Definitely buy the guide book and read it on the plane though, it will help you pass the time on the flight.

I've always used a single 100 minutes ticket transferring between metro and bus without problems. You can enter the metro system only once, but that's different. I think that the "100 minutes" ticket is called BIT.

Hey Dario (and everyone) - yes, you are indeed correct: you can only use the metro system once when using a BIT type ticket but that's the only limitation it has. Other than that, you can transfer between bus/trams/city trains all you want in the 100 minutes since you first stamp it. Nothing has changed :)

Rome transit passes rarely make financial sense for most tourists BUT they do have their advantages, namely they save you the hassle of fussing with the 100 minute tickets. Unlike in Venice, the Roman passes don't need to be validated over and over for bus or tram rides after you've validated it the first time. You do have to feed them into the metro turnstile to get it to open. This also saves you from drawing attention to yourself as a tourist, if you care. And as often gets noted here, the buses in Rome can be jam packed during rush hour, making it impossible to reach the validation machines.

One lesson learned the hard way - Rome transit passes are printed on non-washable paper. (^_^)

I looked at passes the first time we went and was very happy I decided not to purchase them: we ended up walking everywhere (by choice) so they would have been a waste. Rome is a GREAT city to see on foot if at all possible.

The last trip we needed the urban train once and the metro once or twice for longer distances (in shorter time) during the course of a week so a few BIT tickets worked just fine. I bought 4-6 of them or so on arrival day and just tucked them away.

You can enter the metro system only once

That's correct but to further clarify, you can switch from Metro line A to B, or the reverse, at Termini on a single ticket as long as you don't go outside of the turnstiles. You just switch platforms within the station. This is necessarily if, say, you're taking the metro from up near the Vatican (line A) down to the Colosseum, which is on line B.

BIT, CIS and 24 hr - 72. hr passes tickets and passes cannot be used for transport to/from Fiumicino.

BITs are also also available in a carnet (packet) of 10 for 1 euro less (€ 14,00) than 10 would cost if purchased individually. 2 people sharing a carnet would have 5 tickets apiece.