We are coming to a city without cars

Corrado Clini*, from Longitude

In 1996, the Italian Ministry of the Environment championed the Car-Free Spoleto project. The aim
was to free the old town center from cars by setting up infrastructure and services for sustainable mobility, while at the same time testing an alternative mobility template that could also benefit Italy’s increasingly congested and polluted urban areas. 

Around the same time, the Ministry of the Environment began working with local governments – first in Bologna (thanks to the SIRIO system) and then Milan – to set up the first camera networks for monitoring cars entering the city center. The aim was to cut the number of circulating vehicles and encourage the use of public transport

The projects were lambasted on the grounds that they would limit the right to individual car use and entail a waste of public resources which would be better spent on new urban parking spaces. At the time, the building of parking spaces was seen as a sign of good government, and car sales were an indicator of economic growth. During those years, Fiat received public grants to build an experimental fleet of Hybrid Multipla cars and the Italian parliament green-lighted incentives to cover 60% of the purchase cost of each vehicle.The Hybrid Multipla outperformed the Hybrid Prius; despite this, by the end ofthe century Fiat decided there was no market for this kind of vehicle and opted out. In the mid-1990s, Fiat also received funds from the Ministry ofthe Environmentto prototype an electric car and a fuel cell car. Again, the company eventually decided that neither the engines nor the vehicles had enough market potential. Twenty years laterit’s safe to say thatifthe utopia envisioned by the Ministry of the Environment in the 1990s had been pursued, today Italy might be a top playerin the field of sustainable mobility, championing the best processes and technologies constantly emerging from the global service and car industries. 

Decreased traffic in urban areas and a shift to low-emission vehicles worldwide – from the United States to China, from Europe to Brazil – are a declared objective of local and national authorities. The main reason for this is that urban congestion and its costs must be reduced quickly. The costs of congestion and pollution have driven the world’s largest cities and economies to share a commitment to unclog their roads from traffic. The tools employed thus far have to do mostly with prohibitions, such as odd and even number plate restrictions and traffic bans.

London first and then Milan introduced congestion charges, but the outcome has been dissatisfactory.  Beijing and Shanghai limit the number of newly registered cars by choosing a random cap every year. Furthermore, China has earmarked government grants for electric cars and is setting up a broad network of charging stations. All these measures fall under a “command and control” scheme.The expected spin-off is that public transport will be boosted as an alternative to car travel.

The new urban economy highlights a growing gap between the flexible demand for mobility and the rigid supply of public transport. Big Data will help policymakers and planners bridge this gap. Beyond the traditional sources of information, the influx of Big Data is sustaining the paradigm shift toward new modes of transportation, such as ride sharing, pedestrianism, and public transport.

*Italian former environment minister