ATVO: the express bus between Marco Polo and Piazzale Roma

If you land at Marco Polo on a daytime flight and your accommodation is within walking distance of Piazzale Roma, ATVO’s express bus is the rational choice: around twenty minutes, no stops in between, suitcases in the hold. Our verdict is clear, with one reservation: an efficient service, with poor fare transparency. ATVO does not publish the price of the airport link in plain sight on its own website, and you should factor that gap in before you pay.

Who ATVO is

ATVO — Azienda Trasporti Veneto Orientale — is the bus company for eastern Veneto: intercity and urban services, school transport, demand-responsive services, coach hire, tourism and car park management. Its head office is in San Donà di Piave, at Piazza IV Novembre 8, with share capital of €8,974,600 fully paid up, VAT number 00764110276, and main depots in San Donà, Jesolo and Portogruaro.

It is a mixed public-private company. Its public shareholders include the Città metropolitana di Venezia, the metropolitan authority, and twenty-one municipalities in eastern Veneto; the private ones include Dolomitibus and ATAP of Pordenone. The figures the company states: 314 buses, 483 employees and more than 14 million kilometres covered each year. Passenger numbers are not published.

On the age of the business, the site claims “over 90 years of public transport” without naming a founding year. Encyclopedic accounts trace the origins to a coach operator in Fossalta di Piave and date the adoption of the ATVO name to the late seventies: a secondary source, not confirmed by the company.

The Venice Airport Bus Express, line 35

This is the service most travellers encounter the name through. It links Marco Polo to Venice Piazzale Roma and ATVO presents it as a “link in just 20 minutes”, every day, with “luggage included”.

At the airport it leaves from Exit D, second lane on the left: bay number 3 for Venice, bay number 4 for Mestre. The ATVO ticket office is in the arrivals hall, with another at the Piazzale Roma bus station and one in via Cappuccina in Mestre, plus ticket machines running 24 hours a day at Piazzale Roma. On board: air conditioning, free Wi-Fi, wheelchair access and digital tickets through the myATVO and daAaB apps.

The times published in the latest official timetable for the line: from Piazzale Roma the first departure is at 04:20 and the last at 23:20, with an extra service at 00:40; from the airport, from 06:00 to 23:50, plus two night services at 00:20 and 01:10. Frequency is roughly every half hour.

ATVO also runs the Marco Polo ⇄ Mestre railway station shuttle and the Treviso Airport Bus Express (line 351), which links Canova airport to Mestre and Piazzale Roma. Watch out for that last one: the company states 30 minutes to Mestre and 40 to Venice, while third-party sources report real times of 65–70 minutes including the stops in Mestre. If you have a flight departing from Treviso, work out your margin using the higher figure.

What it costs: the weak point

Here is the awkward part. ATVO does not publish its airport fares in readable form on its own website: the fare PDFs cannot be read as text. The price is, however, shown in the company’s official sales engine: €12 one way, €20 return, in both directions. The €10 figure circulating on third-party sites is out of date.

What can be quoted on top of that is the integrated fare published by ACTV for Treviso airport: €19.50 each way, €37.00 return, and €63.00 for a return combined with a three-day AVM/ACTV ticket. On our comparison tool the direct airport ↔ Piazzale Roma bus ticket appears at the same price, around €12 at the time of checking: the product’s boarding instructions name the bay and the ATVO ticket office, so it is indeed the line we are describing — with one caveat, in that the reseller states one bag included while ATVO imposes no limit on board.

The comparison that really matters is with ACTV’s Aerobus, line 5, which costs €10.00 each way and €18.00 return. A difference of a few euros, and a considerable difference in comfort: more on that below.

Strengths

• Speed and simplicity. Twenty minutes advertised and only two useful stops: it is the fastest road link between the airport and Venice.
• Luggage in the hold. ATVO states that luggage is included with no limit on pieces. That is the decisive advantage over a city bus, where suitcases end up in the aisle.
• Wide operating hours, with night services in both directions past midnight.
• A solid, publicly owned structure: institutional shareholders, published accounts and fleet figures, and staffed ticket offices at the airport and Piazzale Roma.

Weaknesses

• No fares published in plain sight. For a public transport service that is a serious gap, and it forces travellers to rely on third-party sources.
• A contradiction over luggage. The company states unlimited luggage; some third-party sources indicate a size limit per suitcase plus one piece of hand luggage. With oversized bags it is worth asking at the desk before boarding.
• It only reaches Piazzale Roma. From there, if your accommodation is beyond the bridges, you still need a vaporetto or a water taxi.
• Real journey times on the Treviso line are a long way from the advertised ones.

What travellers say

ATVO’s reputation is sharply split between the service and the staff. The aggregate Tripadvisor score could not be retrieved and there is no Trustpilot profile, so what follows is recurring themes rather than averages.

On luggage the verdict is unanimous and practical. In the Rick Steves forum thread about choosing between ATVO and ACTV, one user sums up why it is worth a few euros more: “the luggage goes underneath”. With two large suitcases and a flight just landed, that is exactly the point.

The most frequent complaint on Tripadvisor concerns staff attitude instead: drivers and ticket clerks described as brusque, and passengers reporting having to load their own bags. There are also complaints about value for money — one reviewer calls the ticket far too expensive for a journey of about ten kilometres — along with occasional lateness and fines for invalid tickets.

We found no litigation, penalties or proceedings against ATVO. Like all Italian local public transport, the service is affected by sector-wide general strikes.

When to choose it, and when not to

Choose the bus if you are travelling light or with normal luggage, if your accommodation is near Piazzale Roma, near the station or a few vaporetto stops away, and if you want to spend the least without giving up speed.

Do not choose it if you land in the middle of the night outside the available services, if you have oversized luggage, if you are travelling with small children and a lot of suitcases, or if your hotel faces onto a canal: in that case the real comparison is with a water taxi from the airport, which drops you at the door.

There are three alternatives worth putting on the table: the Alilaguna scheduled boat at €18, slower but taking you by water all the way to San Marco or Rialto; the ACTV Aerobus at €10, with your luggage standing up beside you; and the full comparison of every option in our water taxi, Alilaguna and vaporetto guide. If you are arriving from Treviso or getting around on the mainland, look at land taxis in Mestre as well. All our reviews are collected on the operators page.

In short: the ATVO express bus between Marco Polo airport and Piazzale Roma is the fastest and cheapest way into Venice by road, as long as you check the price at the point of purchase instead of taking it for granted.