February 27, 1968
ROME, ITALY — The Fiat is rapidly devouring the Eternal City. And because Rome is unable to satisfy the automobile’s growing appetite, its narrow streets may be the stage for man’s first showdown with the motorcar.
Rome’s traffic problem has become a legend in its own time, growing at such a frantic pace that officials here describe the situation now as “Tragic!” Currently the city has more than 775,000 vehicles plying its streets and new cars are being poured into the traffic stream at a rate of more than 10,000 monthly.
Even if the current growth rate for private autos does not accelerate as expected, Rome faces the task of moving in excess of 1,000,000 vehicles by 1970. Traffic experts here say that the saturation point is around Rome’s next corner because the city cannot be shaped to meet the demands of the car. While its European and American counterparts have devoted larger and larger shares of their available land to the auto, Rome cannot consider cutting a swath of expressway through ancient ruins, Renaissance palaces and medieval neighborhoods.
The Roman love affair with the auto, growing more passionate with each car rolling out of Turin, is incompatible with the charm that makes the world love Rome.
Best Defense a Good Offense
To American eyes, Rome’s traffic is funny and fascinating at first glance. The smaller, more agile European cars dart through the streets, resembling the “Dodge ‘Em” at an amusement park and are piloted with equal zest. The right-of-way belongs to the motorist who takes it and hesitation can spell long delays or detours of several blocks. People with older, less valuable cars or driving big vehicles seem to make the best time. Busses and large trucks receive the most preferential treatment, based on sheer size.
To a disciplined American driver, navigating through Rome’s streets can be nerve shattering. While the U.S. motorist is being trained to drive defensively, the Italian demonstrates that the best defense is a good offense. It’s not unusual to see a Roman driver make a right turn by cutting across five lanes from the left or cars headed the wrong way on one-way streets. Lane markings serve only to keep street department painters occupied.
The Romans’ defiance of rules is almost logical at times. Recently, during an evening rush hour, this reporter was one of several hundred motorists trapped in a large intersection on Via Andrea Doria after a rainstorm caused a power failure and darkened electric traffic signals. Converging traffic locked together, each stream refusing to yield to the others. After five minutes, filled with shouts, horns and gestures, the jam was broken when irate drivers pulled off the street and headed down the sidewalks to bypass the intersection.
How High the Price?
The occasional amusement of driving here, however, does not offset the automobile’s cost to Rome. There are no figures available on the economic cost of traffic congestion here but experts say it certainly must account for hundreds of thousands of lost working hours each week, not to mention time wasted traveling to and from work. Currently, traffic is being blamed for causing an alarming number of nervous breakdowns.
The social cost of traffic in the Eternal City is easier to define. The Roman street debate, a unique institution, no longer ranges over each piazza since the large gathering places have been turned into parking lots. Window-shopping in the narrow streets — some only 10 feet wide — has become a risky pastime. A pause to admire a new fashion creation can earn the hypnotized shopper anything from a rude horn to a brushed backside. Even a simple stroll is punctuated by warnings to the idle sightseer to beware the machine. In the marketplaces, it’s become difficult to smell the oranges over the exhaust fumes.
The chemicals from auto exhausts are suspected of doing permanent damage to the travertine facings on many of the city’s most treasured buildings, stains on the stone appearing more frequently with growing air pollution from vehicles. High speed streets, like those built on the banks of the Tiber river, have generated so much traffic that vibrations are damaging priceless frescoes on nearby buildings.
Roots of Discontent
The Automobile Club d’Italia recently sponsored a high-level seminar here titled, “The City and the Automobiles A Time for Decision.” Maxwell Lehman, former New York City official and professor of public administration at New York University, told local leaders that the dominance of the car especially harms those unable to use the automobile — the poor, the handicapped and the aged.
“There are 40,000 people coming to Rome each year from the south of Italy to the city’s southern suburbs,” Lehman asserted. “How do they get to jobs? Remember the discontent that contributed to the riot in Watts? Men were unable to find jobs because they lacked transportation. I suggest you might be brewing a Watts here.”
The clash between man and the motorcar is dramatized here each time an elderly, black-garbed woman struggles feebly to cross a busy street, her hands outstretched imploring oncoming cars to spare her. Rome’s crosswalks have been described as “special traps designed to contain the terror.”
The Night Rome Stopped
Wilfred Owen, director of the transportation research program at Brookings Institute, projected himself to the year 1990 and then took a backward look at Rome’s traffic situation in the Auto Club seminar.
“You will recall,” he said, “that by the end of the Sixties, traffic had overrun the city and seized the sidewalks. And then what had been predicted happened on Feb. 12, 1970 — the night Rome stood still. It was at 7:16 p.m. that disaster struck. The evening rush hour was underway when a driver double-parked his Fiat on the Via Barberini. At the same time, a driver headed in the opposite direction triple-parked his car, completely closing the street. By midnight, not a single Roman wheel was turning.”
In Owen’s parable, it took six weeks for the traffic to untangle. In that time, Romans had their first breath of fresh air. And the leaders of Rome decided to take steps to end traffic congestion for all time in the city. The steps taken by Owen’s imaginary Romans might have been taken as well by New Yorkers, St. Louisans or Parisians.
The Prescription
First, a nationwide system of new urban settlements was created, including satellite cities and linear developments made possible by the automobile itself. Dispersing the population off the central city avoided “unmanageable situations.” A second step was decentralization of functions in the city—moving those activities from the core, which could operate just as well, on the periphery. This reduced massive congregations of people in small areas.
Next, an integrated transportation system was developed — using a variety of kinds of mass transit. Underground parking garages were constructed; their development speeded by new sensing devices, which showed engineers how to avoid ancient ruins still to be excavated. Expressways were built from the suburbs to parking areas on the periphery of the city center, with busses from the parking areas to the core. New pedestrian areas were developed in the city to once again permit people “to walk the length and breadth of Rome without dodging autos.”
Owen’s analysis of the 1968 traffic situation in Rome is supported by city officials. They say the city will be “absolutely paralyzed” by 1970, if not sooner.
But like the Rome in Owen*s tale, the real city also may have to stand still before it can move freely.
Too Little and Too Late
The political leaders of almost 3,000,000 Romans meet in the Campidoglio on Capitoline Hill, a building designed by Michelangelo, which sits on the ruins of an ancient temple. From this awesome platform, plans have been announced for dealing with “il problemi di traffico.”
The most important step, officials say, is a new development plan for the City of Rome — a broad, long-range program to channel future growth into outlying areas. Three areas are set aside for development — Pietralta and Centocelle on the east and E.U.R. (Rome Universal Exhibition) south of the city.
Romans living and working in these areas would not contribute to congestion in the city’s core. The City Fathers are also trying to encourage firms located in the center to relocate in the suburbs.
Plans are underway to move many offices of the Italian government to the new areas. The Automobile Club, as an example to others, moved its headquarters to the southern edge of the city. But few firms have rushed to join the movement.
A major rapid transit system in Rome appears several years in the future. The city currently has an underground transit system constructed by the Mussolini regime but it runs only from Termini Station in the center to E.U.R. and the Lido di Ostia (Rome’s bathing beach), doing little to alleviate traffic congestion.
Rush Hour on Via del Corso
The city’s efforts to extend the underground have been a source of inspiration for satirical editorial cartoonists here. The construction work reportedly progressed only about 200 feet in five years because each new excavation uncovered more Roman ruins. The press comments were especially caustic when the City of Montreal announced the completion of its new subway in just three years.
Officials now say the new line — from Termini Station to suburban Cinecetta — will be completed in two years. They have plans for a second extension to run from the Termini to an area near Vatican City, a route that would take it through the oldest part of the central city. There is no schedule of construction, officials explaining only that it will take “a long time because of the difficulty of crossing old city quarters.” Some skeptics doubt the line will ever be built.
Another recently-announced program would construct 26 underground parking garages throughout the city. The first two are scheduled to be started later this year — one to house 1000 cars and the second for 500 autos. The larger one has come under fire from the conservation society, Italia Nostra, which claims the garage will carry the intrusion of the automobile further into the picturesque city park, Villa Borghese.
Where Have All The Riders Gone?
The public transportation system here marred by strikes and under a growing barrage of criticism, lost 155,000,000 passengers in the past three years as more and more riders defected to the private automobile. Like many others, it is faced with a mounting deficit. Passengers complain that the busses and streetcars require too long a wait and frequent transfers on many lines.
The bus, primarily because it must compete for street space with hordes of cars, offers riders the prospect of spending nearly two hours to reach a destination three miles from Rome’s center in rush hour. The average trip time ranges from 40 minutes to one hour on public transportation, compared with 30 minutes for the private auto.
In hopes that the travel time required on busses can be reduced to make it less than travel by private car, the city is planning to install 10 experimental routes later this year. The special routes will be open only to busses and taxis. Parking of private autos will be forbidden on the routes.
All these steps, while endorsed by planners, are years away from having an impact on the current congestion in Rome’s streets. To prevent the crises of 1970, immediate steps must be taken to stem the tide of traffic.
The Roman Lament
The most obvious need in Rome is enforcement of existing rules-especially parking regulations. Cars here are parked, perched or abandoned in piazzas, driveways, alleys, bus stops and door fronts. They sit on sidewalks, curbs and the wrong sides of streets — double-parked, triple-parked, quadruple-parked and parked sideways.
In Lehman*s remarks to the Auto Club, he said that terminals have been constructed for trains and airplanes but not for automobiles. He might have suggested that Rome has become one large automobile terminal.
City officials lament that Rome’s 2700 traffic policemen are insufficient to deal with the traffic enforcement task here. “There is no sense of discipline among our drivers,” a Roman official told me in a masterpiece of understatement.
The Green Wave
Last July, traffic engineers installed a system of 11 high-speed routes in the city, controlled by synchronized traffic lights, a computer and television cameras to monitor the traffic flow. When the system was plugged in, traffic stopped for several hours because drivers failed to obey the signals. The system — called “onda verde” or “green wave” — is gradually being accepted.
The city has increased the number of electric traffic signals to 385, compared with 65 ten years ago, but many signals are turned off. More than 1000 stop signs have been installed in the central city but many are ignored. As one official observed, “You can spend the rest of your life at a stop sign.”
The use of one-way streets has become a major tool of traffic engineers here. An estimated 80 per cent of the streets in mid-Rome carry the “Senso Unico” legend.
The Lack of Green
City officials are the first to acknowledge that the control measures the city has taken have done little to solve the traffic problem here. They explain that more traffic devices or more police officers are considered out of the question because of the city’s staggering debt — now totaling $1.6 billion — which has brought it to the verge of bankruptcy.
Just as worrisome to political leaders as the lack of lire is the political price of dealing effectively with the motorcar. Roman drivers, like their American counterparts, want the traffic problem solved without giving up their right to drive anywhere at any time.
The Automobile Club d’Italia has endorsed the idea of a parking ban in the core of the city from 7:30 to 10 a.m. and from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Such a ban, they believe at the club, would discourage people from driving private autos to work in central Rome since they could not park their cars. But club spokesmen cite the need for peripheral parking facilities and improved public transportation in conjunction with the parking ban.
Banning the car altogether from parts of the core is frowned upon by the club. “This is a democracy,” reminded one club official. He added a moment later, “Fiat must construct cars, you know.”
Banned in Rome
Twice, the city traffic commissioner has ordered an experimental traffic ban in parts of mid-town Rome. Each time the ban was lifted following a storm of protest. Shopkeepers in the areas declared off-limits to traffic complained the loudest about the ban but shoppers, who were expected to benefit the most, also criticized the experiment.
Some observers here point out that one reason the last ban was lifted after only three days was the fact that the traffic commissioner is a member of the Socialist party while most of the irate store owners were members of the majority Christian Democrats. Despite the politics, city officials insist they have not given up the idea of a ban and will try it again.
At the same time, the traffic snarl is interwoven with another sensitive subject — the midday siesta. Rome not only has two unmanageable rush hours as workers start and finish the day, it has two more when stores close down after noon and when they reopen late in the afternoon. There is some hope here that Rome may abandon the siesta as Milan has but an end to the tradition appears at least five years away.
The Wisdom of Caesar
After becoming dictator of the Roman Empire in 46 B.C., Julius Caesar decreed a ban on all wheeled vehicles inside the walls of Rome from sunrise to nearly dusk except on festive occasions. By day, only pedestrians, horsemen, litters and carrying chairs were permitted in the city’s streets. In modern terms, this might be translated to mean only busses, taxis and special vehicles.
Traffic Rumbles by Castel San Angelo Toward St. Peter’s
Of Caesar’s decree, the historian Jerome Carcopina relates, “The great dictator had realized that in alleyways so steep, so narrow, and so traffic ridden as the vici of Rome, the circulation by day of vehicles serving the needs of so many hundreds of thousands caused an immediate congestion and constituted a permanent danger.”
Now, nearly 2014 years later, Caesar’s decree may have to be dusted off to help save the city he helped to build. If man makes a stand against the automobile here, Rome’s experience will again be a lesson for the other great cities fighting the same fight.
Piazza Venezia: A Sea of Cars Fed by Rivers of Traffic
Received in New York February 29, 1968.
Mr. Meeker is an Alicia Patterson Fund award winner, on leave from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This article may be published, with credit to David A. Meeker and the Alicia Patterson Fund.
