There’s a lot to like about Italy: spaghetti carbonara, Ferraris, tiramisu, Michelangelo, excessive velocity limits….
Wait.
About these velocity limits.
In Bologna, a city with huge character and distinctive delicacies, the town fathers solely final month imposed a velocity restrict within the city of 30 kilometers per hour — about 20 mph — to make it safer and “more livable.”
Critics of the measure aren’t contento.
In keeping with a current story in The New York Occasions, drivers there argue that Bologna is “slowing to a standstill since it became the first major Italian city” to affix a rising group of European municipalities that previously few years have adjusted velocity limits downward by half.
The brand new guidelines, in place in Paris, Brussels, Copenhagen and cities throughout Spain, mark an effort to chop air pollution, cut back vitality use, and disincentivize automotive use.
As reported by the Occasions, Bologna’s mayor, Matteo Lepore, included the brand new velocity restrict among the many marketing campaign guarantees that helped to get him elected in 2021. Referring to the decrease restrict, he stated, “Driving at 30 is part of a vision of a more democratic and more sustainable use of public space,” the place neighborhoods put kids and older folks first, and investments favor bike paths and public transportation to work towards carbon neutrality.
Including gasoline to the smolder, Bologna is the capital of a area that’s dwelling to Ferrari, Lamborghini and Pagani.
The motion in Italy has spurred protests, and petitions from some commuters that their each day travels to and from the town have grown considerably longer.
And not too long ago, the Occasions reported, a gathering attracted dozens of cranky residents and cabbies to the streets, the place they drove at a snail’s tempo in a makeshift parade, loudly honking horns and snarling site visitors. The brand new velocity restrict “is impossible” to drive at, stated Giorgio Gorza, who heads a citizen’s group. “It’s like standing still, and no one takes a car if you’re going to stay still, if it takes longer than walking. It’s illogical.”
In 2021, based on the story, Olbia, in Sardinia, grew to become the primary Italian metropolis to set a broad restrict of 30 klicks an hour. Many drivers have been irritated, however the mayor there, Settimo Nizzi, countered that it was “right for a mayor to think of the quality of life of his citizens.”
In central London, the place site visitors is commonly horrendous and a congestion cost is in place, the town had reported a 25 p.c discount within the variety of collisions and a 25 p.c fall in critical accidents and deaths because it minimize the velocity restrict to twenty mph from 30 mph in 2020.