 |
 |
MOBILITY SHOW 2006 - Session C
"Towards an organised city"
W. Scapigliati
Urbanamente, Siena |
The “Italy of the hundred cities”, goes a catchy slogan, to illustrate how, to portray our country, we must speak not of a few big metropolises, but of a widespread network, in the north, centre and south, of many small and medium important cities. A peculiarity of Italy, which has a multitude of medium-size tourist resorts composed of urban centres with a low number of residents but a great ability to attract tourism, sometimes even millions of them.
Cities with historically precious urban structures, usually Medieval or Renaissance cities, all with narrow lanes and often steep gradients, certainly not designed for cars and not even to take up such high numbers of guests.
This situation creates huge criticalities, especially in the historic city centres, which concentrate not only residents and tourists but also local services, commercial and social activities.
The impact of vehicles, combined in most cases with ineffective public transport services, is a barrier to their proper, orderly socio-economic development.
These problems can be solved through coordinated actions and activities, which do not always involve big investments, but carefully-planned policies supported by specific regulations. Some real applications showed that there are no shortcuts and/or simple remedies, as proven by the experience of the ‘park and ride’ areas (considered by many a cure-all), which have proved useful only in big cities connected by railways.
The purpose of a proper policy for these urban centres must be to place constraints that will help bring as many people as possible to the historic city centres, but in an organised manner.
For instance, experience tells us that one of the possible tools is signs. Since statistics suggest that 30% of traffic is caused by people looking for a parking place, proper signs must be installed, and these signs must not be generally targeted to parts of the city but must indicate the parking areas that adjoin the most attractive areas. Fixed signs that, starting from the road network outside the city, must indicate at the intersections, through variable-message panels, what areas are free and what areas are full.
At the same time, the historic city centre must be organised by designating some Limited Traffic Areas to organise pedestrian areas, provide car parks for residents and prevent other vehicles invading the centre.
This can be done by enforcing special regulations and implementing effective automatic control systems at the entrances and exits to/from the limited-traffic areas of the city.
Especially important is the regulation of parking in the existing parking areas, as well as a rating system that keeps into account different types of demand (residents, operators, workers, tourists, etc.).
For example, in most cities, apart from regulating road parking, ‘turnover’ parking areas must be developed, and in this case it is important to locate them, since they do not only have to be close to the historical city centre, they must be located in areas where their ability to attract traffic will not cause more problems. In addition, they must be placed in the shape of a ‘crown’ all around the historical city centre for smoother ‘docking’. In addition, the ‘crown’-like layout of the historic city centre redistributes the property and commercial rent, by evenly redistributing the pedestrian flows and remarkably increasing them even in degraded areas.
Then, in the historical cities, there is the need to remove the residents’ cars from the streets and squares, since the regulation of the parking lots within the Limited Traffic areas is not sufficient, by implementing a specific policy to build parking lots pertaining to these areas for the residents and the businesses of the city centre and the immediate surroundings.
Another critical point is the inbound and outbound transport of goods within the city, the so-called “last mile”.
Since cities, especially art cities, are a natural shopping centre, goods supplies must be properly organised.
So far, many local bodies have taken care of the problem only by establishing time ‘windows’, which resulted in the decrease of entrance times and the stay of commercial vehicles. The result is that all inbound and outbound goods flows tended to concentrate at some given times of the day, with serious consequences in terms of traffic, pollution, pedestrians’ safety, etc. Paradoxically, if we managed to divide the number of vehicles by the hours of the whole day, there would be fewer at any one time.
An approach to the problem may be to reduce the number of inbound and outbound vehicles through a rational consolidation of the loads, an optimisation of the trips, the use of low-emission vehicles and even a good number of load/unload parking stalls in the historical city centre, managed in an optimal way and regulated by strict rules that forbid any “attempted sale”.
The tourist industry, especially in art cities, has very similar, if not identical, features, such as: same seasonality, a time of the year from the week before Easter to the week after the holiday of November 2nd, a high number of incoming tourist coaches. Tourist coaches raise a problem, because when the tourists climb on and off the coach the vehicle has to be moved four times (arrival- drop off, drop off-parking, parking-pick up, departure from town), so that, in case of, for instance, an average number of 40/50 tourist coaches a day, it is as if there were 160/200 coaches driving around town, with devastating effects on traffic.
For these reasons, the movement of tourist coaches too needs to be strictly organised, which means compulsory booking, accurate organisation of an adequate number of drop off and pick up areas scattered across town. |
Further information:
Show management
Tel. +39 0585 787963
Fax +39 0585 787602
E-mail: info@mobilityshow.it
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
