Roads with a speed limit reduced to 30 km/h to reduce the risk of accidents with serious consequences for vulnerable users such as cyclists and pedestrians. Widespread in Europe, they are also increasing in Italy. The plans of Milan, Rome, Bologna and Turin. The examples of Cesena and Olbia
There is no ideology behind it, but a precise choice: that of transforming our cities into safe places, returning the urban space to people and to society. The overcrowding of urban centres, even in cities of art, and traffic congestion have proportionally reduced livability: we are so used to it that we hardly notice it. A holiday can be enough to unlock a memory, and to make us dream of something different. For the mayor of Olbia it went exactly like this: it wasn’t a real vacation, let’s call it an educational trip, but from that trip to Amsterdam in April 2017 Settimo Nizzi came back changed. And he decided that his city would also change with him. It would become the first Italian “city 30”.
The example of Olbia
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Ideology has nothing to do with it: if you think that the idea of a “slow” city is something left-wing, know that the first municipal administration to make it into law in Italy was centre-right. Nizzi had already been mayor for two terms from 1997 to 2007 on the Forza Italia lists, and was re-elected in 2016: a personal friend of Silvio Berlusconi, a past as a judoka, orthopedic doctor, the mayor has always had the objective of Olbia a different city. Less traffic, less noise, fewer accidents, more space for bicycles and people. In October 2021, five months after his urban revolution went into effect, Nizzi was chosen as mayor for the fourth time. Olbia has joined CycleWalk, a project funded by the European Union, which leads administrations to visit realities where sustainable mobility works. Because when an idea works, just copy it. Olbia is the first Italian city to have introduced the Pediplan and the Biciplan, facilitated precisely by the 30 km/h limit, and designed to favor and encourage walking and cycling in everyday life, to go to work or school . The “school roads” were born in the Sardinian city: traffic closed during the hours students enter and leave school, and free parking for parents a few hundred meters away. The autonomy of Italian children is very limited: very few (only 7%) go to school alone, in England and Germany this percentage rises to 40%, almost one in two children.
The numbers
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The CycleWalk project is aimed at 6 countries: Holland, Austria, Romania, Slovenia, Lithuania and Italy. From travel and from the study of existing models, an idea of a city has emerged in which there can be sustainable mobility no longer left only to cars: developing cycling and walking has a return in terms of safety and health. Accidents are the number one cause of death for young people under 24. In 2022 there were 81,437 accidents, with an increase of 24.7% compared to 2021: 1,450 victims and 108,996 injured. Let’s expand to the European Union: every year around 22,700 people die and another 120,000 are seriously injured in road accidents. But the impressive figure is that the vast majority of accidents (73%) occur on urban roads, and almost half of the victims (44%) occur in cities (in the rest of Europe the figure drops to 32%). . Speed and exceeding the limits kill. The limit of 30 is not just a number: 30 km/h is the speed at which an impact between a motor vehicle and a pedestrian or cyclist saves lives, while at 50 km/h the impact is lethal in most of cases.
Vision Zero
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The European Union has set itself a date: 2050. Within that limit, there must be no more road deaths. But think about it: 27 years to go, and it is unbearable to think of how many will still have to lose their lives between now and then. Among the tools that the EU wants to strengthen to reach “vision zero” is the diffusion of the “city 30” model. If you think that Olbia is not an exportable prototype with its 60 thousand inhabitants, you must know that Brussels – over one million two hundred thousand inhabitants – has been “city 30” since January 2021, Paris with its 2 million inhabitants has been since August of the same year. Ditto Helsinki, Zurich, Lille, Valencia and Bilbao. In the Belgian capital, only after a year, road accidents were 20% less and deaths were half as much as the year before. Projects are very much under way in Berlin, Barcelona and Edinburgh. In London, it has been chosen for the time being to limit oneself to a few districts. The new model has brought results everywhere in terms of safety and reduction of pollution. A study done in the English capital on data from the last 20 years shows that reducing speed has led to a halving of victims, and in the case of children the improvement exceeds 50%. In 2021, a law was passed in the Netherlands and Spain providing for 30 km/h on all urban roads. Active examples and tests show that journey times do not lengthen: traffic decreases, consequently it is quicker to reach your destination despite the limit. Rethinking cities has less impact than we think: cars occupy 80% of the city space, including roadways and parking lots, but they are empty and stationary for most of the time, and are generally used for journeys of a few kilometers by the driver alone . Suffice it to say that the average journey in our cities is 4 km.
eMILIA rOMAGNA In the vanguard
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Mayor Lepore launched the plan in November 2022: in June 2023 Bologna with its 400,000 inhabitants will become the first capital of the Città 30 region. Some high-speed roads will remain at 50 km/h. Reversal is the key: now 50km/h is the norm and 30km/h regulated zones are the exception, after that it will be exactly the opposite. Specific residential areas will be established with a speed limit of 10 km/h and priority given to pedestrians, physical interventions will be introduced to calm traffic and speed (raised and colored crossings, speed bumps, supplementary horizontal signs); controls and communication, promotion and road safety education will be intensified, to raise awareness and involve everyone. It will be discussed extensively from 4 to 6 May 2023 during the MobilitARS training days, organized by the Michele Scarponi Foundation. Parma will follow the example of the capital by 2024: in February the provision will concern the historic center and the populous Oltretorrente, before the end of the year it will extend to all residential areas within the ring road. The example of Cesena dates back to 1998: already 25 years ago in the Romagna city the first roads with the 30 km/h limit were introduced and currently the provision concerns about 40% of urban roads.
The metropolises
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The city council of Milan approved the turning point in the session of 9 January 2023: the agenda, which has Marco Mazzei, councilor of the Sala List, as its first signatory, commits the mayor and the council to make the majority of the city streets 30 starting from January 2024, even if already now in the Lombard capital there are entire neighborhoods – especially in the areas inside the avenues – with the limit set at 30 km/h. Not without controversy, as is the case wherever attempts are made to change established habits. In Turin last November, the city council approved the agenda for making the Fiat city a “zone 30”, but precise times for implementation have not yet been set. The limit will affect all city roads “without right of way”. At the moment, the 30 km/h limit is in force only on side roads, while on other roads the limit is 50. On the roadways, on the other hand, it will go from the current 70 km/h to 50 km/h. In Rome, the last key meeting took place in mid-March: the will of the city administration, generically, would be to follow the most virtuous examples. But for the moment there are no dates or official commitments. The Councilor for Mobility of the municipality of Rome, Eugenio Patanè, spoke of the objective “to reduce deaths and serious injuries by 20% within 3 years and by 50% within 10 years”, and acknowledges that to do so “on the roads of secondary roads we should get to have speed limits of 30 kilometers per hour almost everywhere”. Rome is one of the cities with the highest motorization rate in the world, you can also drive past the Colosseum by car, and the phrase you hear most often when talking about modifications is that “it’s not a city like any other”. He phrase that fits perfectly with his eternal beauty, but it’s not exactly the most encouraging prerequisite for accelerating change. It was Patanè himself who recalled that Julius Caesar had already tried in 45 BC to change the mobility of Rome, forbidding the circulation of carts inside the city walls at night. After more than two thousand years the problem is far from solved.
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