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retwo thousand four hundred comments. And a thousand shares. These are the reactions only on Chiara Appendino’s profile. Not to mention the debates that broke out on dozens of separate pages. The mayor’s “Ora Basta” divided the city in two. The social outbreak in defense of sustainable mobility and against undisciplined motorists has been feeding reflections and controversies for days, far from being virtual. “Just look for external alibis,” she wrote Sunday of the latest crashes, urging everyone to stop blaming scooters, pedestrianization, crossroads and bike lanes. “We have to respect the rules.”
meinvitation addressed “in particular to drivers of motor vehicles”. Open the sky. In a few minutes and the confrontation in the Facebook ring has turned into a derby: on the one hand who, by necessity or conviction, supports the engines and on the other the increasingly numerous group of “No Oil”. A pre-election dispute that, however, speaks a truth in the eyes of all: Turin’s mobility, whether we like it or not, has changed.
It all started with that announcement that most people had found a provocation. A bike path in via Nizza. What has always been considered (was) the direct link between the south and the city center. The first stretch of red asphalt appeared two years ago. Then a series of works – not yet finished – and in the end the roads became two: bicycles running between the sidewalks and parking lots, an infinity of gyms between the outdoor areas. Today, the straight line between Piazza Carducci and Porta Nuova is anything but a smooth road. Other tracks have come to redesign mobility and traffic: bike lanes instead of lanes previously used and consumed by cars and motorcycles. Sidewalk bike lanes and crossroads redesigned to make them unrecognizable.
More recently, the same fate has also run in the counter-revolutions that have become Zone 20, which means traveling by car at the same speed as those who pedal, with “advanced houses” at the traffic lights to prioritize cyclists every time the green is changed. . Turin has changed and habits have changed. This is confirmed by the latest data processed by the City Council’s mobility center, managed by 5T. They speak of a busier August than last year, but with a surprise: if the average daily traffic of cars and motorcycles has not grown by even two percentage points, the number of bicycle rides has increased by almost 7%. And this taking into account only the data from five bike lanes: by dora Siena, corso Francia (north and south), corso Castelfidardo and via Bertola. Finally, E scooters everywhere, and went everywhere. A tumultuous revolution, perhaps too much. In the absence of adequate resources, the coexistence of soft and heavy mobility has been entrusted to low-cost and sometimes creative solutions. Result: types of means of transport increase, safety is reduced. Not to mention the state of the roads, which does the rest: holes everywhere and very little money to cover them.
Far from social networks, the apparently opposite positions coincide in pointing out a single critical point: the question of security. “We don’t want to be a killjoy or a pass for the dinosaurs, but driving in these conditions has become a lottery: there is no room to load and drop off customers. Every time we have to face a crossing, we are afraid, ”says the president of Taxi Torino, Angelo Sabia, the first to drive a white car with an electric motor in the city.
“The The level of discussion must be raised – says Elisa Gallo of Bike Pride -. Sacrosanto wanting to respect the rules, but this should be the norm. Turin is realizing that cycling is the best way to move quickly, while respecting the environment and the community. To achieve this, interventions were necessary to discourage the use of cars. More investments and better leads to protect those who use them. But the transformation is underway “.