The first Formula E Grand Prix will take place in Rome in April 2018. Electric racing cars, cousins of those in Formula One, will compete among the skyscrapers of Eur. An expected event with a multimillion-dollar budget and green companies to promote the initiative that supports sustainable mobility. The beauty is that such spectacular events are opposed to delays and waste, equally millionaires. That of cycle paths and the 400 million euro of the law approved in the House on November 14th makes us think. Italy is the first European country producing bicycles with a turnover of over one billion euros. The potential in the two-wheeler-environment combination is among the most interesting in the collective effort to reduce polluting factors.
Concerned mayors have launched an appeal to get the law approved in the Senate as well. Parliament, for the time left to it until the spring elections, should hurry. Also because we will hear about sustainability and urban mobility in the coming months. It is feared that it will take years to have cycle paths, while 65 percent of people continue to travel less than 5 kilometers of road by car. They could ride bikes, supporting the thousands who have collected signatures for the law now mired in the Palace.
Municipalities have the urban pollution rankings in hand for 2017: among the worst in the last ten years. The public funds allocated promote the use of bicycles with the obligation to create municipal, provincial and regional bicycle plans. We should see bike sharing stations, so widespread abroad, near railway stations and bus interchanges. The paradox is that the law of 14 November refers to the Highway Code, which states that when a municipality fixes the roads it must necessarily trace the cycle paths. Unused money is lost.
Another push comes from the Friends of the Bicycle Federation (FIAB), which supported the law with environmental associations and two-wheeler companies and does not intend to be passive in the face of parliamentary delays. He surveyed the Regions, based on environmental parameters, where something has been done. Something, because only 12 Regions entered the rankings with just 30 Municipalities. Veneto and Abruzzo are distinguished. Puglia, Calabria, Sardinia have one municipality each; Lazio, Campania, Sicily, Basilicata and Trentino not even one. They can improve with the funds provided by giving a little confidence to the 8 workers in the sector who, obviously, hope that all the Regions will enter the rankings.
