The city at 30 kilometers per hour is a question of democracy of public space

There are those who defined it as a "vexatious limit", those who spoke of a "demagogic proposal", those who instead presented it as "a new idea of ​​civilization".In recent days the debate has heated up on cities30, where the speed limit for all vehicles is set at 30 kilometers per hour:it is a new model that has already taken hold in many cities around the world, and which is now also appearing in Italy.To become the first major Italian city at 30 kilometers per hour was Bologna, which in 2022 approved the address lines for the implementation of the plan:the checks began on Tuesday 16 January, and with them the controversies.“I remember well that the first objections to the city30 were that 'the limits will not be enforced anyway', but if the controls are announced the Punic wars will break out”, said the city councilor Simona Larghetti, who had already worked on the first campaign since 2014 on zones 30.“Only in a country with very little culture of respect for others is the day a new rule comes into force 'the day of fines'”.

Also speaking out against the new speed limit was Transport Minister Matteo Salvini, who is studying a directive against 30 kilometers per hour in the city.“I think that the right to the singing of birds and the audibility of their singing must be balanced with the right to work of hundreds of thousands of people, because fining those who go 36 kilometers then does not mean protecting the environment”, he has declared.The mayor of Bologna, Matteo Lepore, responded to him, among others:on the topic “there are many fake news which unfortunately, as I have seen, were also relaunched by Minister Salvini.This makes me sad because our task in the institutions is to make courageous choices”, said the mayor he recalled as the guidelines published on the website of the Ministry for Infrastructure (approved by the Draghi government) already invite cities and municipalities to introduce 30 zones to achieve the objective, set by the World Health Organization and the United Nations, of halving road deaths .

Le città30, a new model of public space

But let's take a step back:what are cities30?It is not just a speed limit, but a model that aims to revolutionize the concept we have of the city and urban spaces.The objectives are multiple:increase road safety, promote sustainable mobility, reduce pollution and emissions, encourage the local economy and neighborhood shops, but also make public space more beautiful and democratic.This is why, to become a city30, it is not enough just to lower the speed limit:it is a broader and more complex intervention, infrastructural but also cultural, to redevelop the urban environment with the aim of returning public space to pedestrians and cyclists.

Cities and cycle paths:We don't lack space, but imagination

Suffice it to say that the road represents 80% of the public space in our cities.Yet, living in that space is still dangerous:in 2022 Istat has registered more than 220 thousand injured (+9% compared to 2021) and 3,159 victims of road accidents, 284 more than the year before.The data published by the European Commission show that in 2022 Italy saw an increase in victims of road accidents by 9% compared to 2021, when mobility was still partly reduced due to the pandemic, against an average European growth of 3%.The Cyclists Observatory of Asaps (Association of supporters and friends of the traffic police) recorded 197 cyclists died in 2023 in Italy.In the first three weeks of January 2024 they have already been 16 cyclists died on Italian roads, the highest figure in the last six years:almost one a day.More than half of the deaths in the city are due to just three causes:speeding, distracted driving and failure to give way to pedestrians at crossings.

“In Italy we still consider the road as the kingdom of the car”, has explained the urban planner Matteo Dondè, specialized in cycling mobility planning, traffic calming and redevelopment of public spaces.“It is primarily a cultural problem:we are the only country where the pedestrian thanks the motorist for stopping at the pedestrian crossing.The bike is still considered 'left-wing', the car 'right-wing', and if you respect the speed limit you are seen as a loser.For years we have been discussing the need to change the language of our streets.We need to move from the language of the car to the language of people:focus on urban greenery, make room for wider pavements, encourage sociality with tables and benches.It is a question of democracy of public space, which must be distributed equally to all road users."

Imagine a city without cars

Measuring the benefits of the city30

In Bologna the first 30 zones were born between the 1980s and 1990s.Since 2019, when the Urban sustainable mobility plan, we began to think about an entire city30:in 2022 the council approved the address lines for the implementation of the "Bologna città30" plan, with an investment of over 18 million euros for cycling, pedestrianization, the removal of architectural barriers and road safety.Since July, when the Bologna plan entered the operational phase, 500 new road signs have been installed and 300 signs have been applied on the roads, the large speed limit symbols painted on the asphalt.

However, Bologna is not the first city30 in Italy:first there was Cesena, which adopted this model in 1998, followed in 2021 by Olbia.Even in the rest of the world there are already several cities that go at 30 kilometers per hour, including Berlin, Barcelona, ​​Edinburgh, Brussels, Paris and Toronto, each in different forms depending on needs.In Spain, a change to the highway code was approved in 2021 which imposes a limit of 30 in all urban centers of the country.

Given that the model has already been implemented in very different contexts, the question then is:does the city30 work?Several studies show that the results are very positive:in Brussels, in the first six months of experimentation, accidents dropped by 22%, victims were half as high, and noise pollution was halved.The kilometers traveled by inhabitants in a day increased by five million.The share of cars decreased by 15%, while trips on foot or by bike grew by 5 and 7% respectively.In Edinburgh, the number of accidents dropped by 40%, the number of injuries by 33% and victims by 23%.To Barcelona for the first time the impact of this model on health was also studied, thanks to the reduction of air pollution from nitrogen dioxide:it is estimated that 667 premature deaths are prevented per year, life expectancy increases by almost 200 days on average per person and annual savings of 1.7 billion euros are generated.But the most comprehensive research has been conducted in London for twenty years, from 1986 to 2006.The result is unequivocal:the 30 km/h limit has led to a halving of deaths and serious accidents.

Given the benefits of the city30, the United Nations launched the campaign in 2021 #love30, to ask politicians to lower the speed limit to 30 kilometers per hour in all cities around the world.At the same time the European Parliament issued a resolution to request the introduction of the limit in all cities where there are residential areas and a high number of cyclists and pedestrians:the resolution falls within the “Vision Zero” strategy of the European Union, which aims to eliminate deaths and serious injuries by 2050.

Towards a national law

Yet the city30 is still the target of much criticism:the blue cars in Bologna on Tuesday 16 January they marched in procession on the avenues and last Saturday in hundreds they protested under the Town Hall against the new speed limit.Many wore masks with the face of Javier Milei, the newly elected president of ultra-liberal Argentina, who has become for some the symbol of the fight against the measure.In the meantime, a committee supported by the centre-right aims to collect 200 thousand signatures to ask a referendum on the limit at 30 kilometers per hour.

At the basis of the protests there is an assumption:the city30 causes traffic jams and delays that make people's lives worse.But does going slowly really mean arriving later in the city?The Municipality of Bologna carried out a quantitative cost-benefit analysis and the average delay was calculated at 12 seconds for each journey of each motorist.“Twelve seconds is not worth the absurd number of accidents we record on our roads,” he said Alfredo Drufuca, expert consultant in traffic and transport planning for the municipality of Bologna.“What's the point of comparing 12 seconds to a person's life?”.

Others dispute the fact that Bologna "is not yet ready" to become a city30, because the public transport and cycling network is not developed enough.Yet i Openpolis data, developed from an analysis by Legambiente, show that Bologna is the Italian city that has invested the most in cycle paths:between now and 2030 another 721 kilometers will be built, which will be added to the 248 kilometers already present, bringing the city to the top of the Italian ranking.At the same time, public transport has been strengthened:from this year a night bus service, with six lines and runs every half hour.

In addition to Bologna, there are many other cities in Italy which are starting the journey to become cities30.A cultural and public debate journey, even before an administrative one.Parma will become a city30 as early as this year, in Turin the discussion is underway to decide where to apply the 30 per hour, and also Milan will increase areas with slow speed.This transition was accelerated by the death of the former cycling champion Davide Ribellin, who was struck on 30 November 2022 while cycling on the street in the Vicenza area.Thus was born the Città30 platform, which brings together various organizations dealing with the topic and which has published a handbook of common intentions:in the following months, mobilisations, flash mobs, cycle paths and human pedestrian crossings were organised.

Then last May 6th, was launched the first national law proposal on cities30, promoted by Legambiente, FIAB, Salvaiciclisti, Kyoto Club, Amodo, Clean Cities, Asvis and Fondazione Michele Scarponi, the cyclist who won the Giro d'Italia in 2011 and was killed when he was hit by a lorry while training in 2017.The idea is to overturn the principle that regulates mobility in our cities, where the norm is the limit of 50 kilometers per hour, and the exception are the areas with a limit of 30:if the law were to pass, in urban centers the norm would be a limit of 30, with some exceptions in major arterials at 50.In addition to this, the proposed law provides for interventions tactical urbanism to reduce the speed of cars, gives more powers to municipalities and local police, and plans education activities on road safety and sustainable mobility.

“The car is much more dangerous than all the other instruments of our daily life:we use it with great ease, without thinking that we have a weapon in our hands", he concludes Drufuca again.“In Italy we have an unjustifiable delay on these issues:we have slept on our dead for too many years.The time has come to find new answers."

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