“It’s not a country for bikes”: in Italy we spend 100 times more on cars
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How much does our country invest to encourage cycle mobility? For direct support for the purchase of bicycles or other light electric vehicles and mobility sharing servicesthe total expense was 300 million euros. For structures intended for promote cycling, the total budget was approximately 600 million euroof which 400 for tourist cycle paths And 200 for urban ones, mostly funded by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. To these resources are added some funds allocated with the 2016 stability law and refinanced for the following years.
Overall, between now and 2030, funding for cycle paths in urban areas amounts to 438 million euros, of which 141 are still to be awarded. We are just over one billion, with a ratio of almost 100 to 1, with respect to investments in the automotive sector. These are the very little comforting data that emerge from the latest report “Clean Cities. It’s not a country for bikes”, published by Clean Cities, fairy tale, Kyoto Club and Legambiente precisely to take stock of the state of cycling in Italy and develop some concrete proposals to support the decarbonisation objectives, through non-polluting forms of mobility.
Pollution
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The comparison between investments for greener means of transport and cars, in our country, is merciless. There are 98 billion spent for example in the automotive sector – between car purchase incentives (also used by buyers of diesel and petrol vehicles) e financing for the construction or maintenance of private transport infrastructure that Italy has committed in the last three years and for the next seven. These are enormous figures, if we consider that we are the European country with the highest density of motor vehicles per 100 inhabitants (67 in 2020) and that the transport sector is responsible for 30.7% of total CO emissions2 in 2019, 92.6% attributable to road transport.
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The cycling infrastructure
As regards the cycle pathsalthough there have been some important improvements, Italy still remains far behind in Europe, above all because of the very strong difference between some areas and others.
The good news is that, according to Istat data for the year 2020, published last summer, between 2015 and 2020, provincial capitals and metropolitan cities increased their share of cycle paths by 20.8%, reaching 857 km. The largest increase was recorded in metropolitan citieswho have added 30% of cycle paths, with Milan who leads the classification with 93 km more, followed by Venice (+47km), Brescia (+46km) and Rome (+45km).
Important but still insufficient results, if the overall picture is taken into account. Indeed, according to the report, the Italian provincial capitals have an average of 2.8 km of cycle paths per ten thousand inhabitants. But the average value hides large disproportions between cities. If, in fact, in provincial capitals such as Reggio Emilia, Modena and Ferrara between 12 and 15 km of cycle infrastructure can be counted per 10,000 inhabitants, in other urban centers such as Caltanissetta, Campobasso, Chieti, Trapani and Vibo Valentiawe are still at zero.
The cycle paths: a comparison between Italy and Europe
To get an idea of the situation in the rest ofEuropein the city like Helsinki And Ghent it reaches 20 km per 10 thousand inhabitants, Amsterdam And Antwerp 15km and Copenhagen 9km. Therefore, in the face of some virtuous examples, in line with European standards, we have a quarter of the Italian capital cities that does not even reach the kilometer of cycle infrastructure per ten thousand inhabitants.
It’s not better in metropolitan cities: Venice it is the most cycle-friendly metropolitan city, with 6 km per ten thousand inhabitants, Bologna about 4km, Milan, Turin And Florence have between 2 and 2.5 km, Rome has just a 1 km per ten thousand inhabitants and Naples And Catania 0.2 and 0.3 respectively. And there are few cities that from their Urban Plans for Sustainable Mobility (PUMS) foresee a significant expansion of cycle paths.
“It’s obvious,” he comments Claudius MagliuloItalian manager of the Clean Cities campaign – that large urban centers cannot aim for a cycle infrastructure that fully covers the travel needs of their inhabitants, therefore the hope would be to create a cycle network that is coherent and integrated with the public transport, in order to eliminate the use of private cars”.
However, it is indicative, as well as very worrying, that the cities with the highest number of cars circulating per inhabitants are also those with the least cycle facilities. So what are the prospects for the future of our country’s cycle paths? The Clean Cities dossier identifies some plausible scenarios.
Taking into consideration the growth rate of cycling infrastructure recorded from 2015 to today, should the trend remain stable, by the end of this decade there should be around 7,800 km more of cycle paths in Italy.
- If, on the other hand, the i PUMS extension of all Italian cities, keeping unchanged and respecting all the projects already approved or adopted by the municipalities, the Italian cycle infrastructure should reach just under 13,000 km.
- A more optimistic scenario that envisages a greater effort by the Italian Municipalities, in order to adjust the investment plans of all the Italian provincial capitals (to be clear, even those that, at the moment, have not envisaged any projects), would lead to exceed 17,000 km by the end of the decade.
- The third scenario, the more ambitious one, links its goals precisely to the Net Zero objectives of 2030 present in the plans of all European countries and most of the Western countries, concentrating efforts precisely in the transport sector which represents the sector in which it would be easier and more effective to intervene in order to achieve the decarbonisation objectives. With a total expenditure of 3.5 billion euros, about 500 million a year, between now and 2030, 21,000 km of lanes and cycle paths could be reached in Italy.
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It is an ambitious but not unattainable goal, underline the leaders of the Clean Cities Campaign. And, precisely to give greater impetus to this perspective, raise awareness in the Italian parliament and try to involve local administrations as well, an online petition was launched, coinciding with the publication of the report. “We want #CittaCiclabili” is the collection of signatures that asks the government to include in the budget law currently under discussion a extraordinary fund for the creation of cycling infrastructures throughout Italy of 500 million a year.
“Currently – explains Claudio Magliulo – a total of 400 million euros have been allocated to encourage cycle infrastructure, a figure that is largely insufficient to tackle the problem of pollution in our cities. There is much talk of climate objectives for 2030, but in the meantime we continue to finance the purchase of cars and invest in the cost of polluting fuels”.
“Today, in Italy, the use of the bicycle to get around remains an ethical choice, not one of convenience, precisely due to the lack of adequate infrastructures – continues Magliulo. Every time a person takes a bike, instead of a private car, there is tangible savings for the community, in terms of pollution and also economics. It is calculated that for every 10 km traveled by bike, the saving is around 1.80 euros in health care costs and in the absence of pollution, against a cost of 1 euro to be borne by the community, as a result of using a private car to travel the same 10 km. These are reflections that those who decide where and how to allocate public money have a duty to make”.
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