Linking the network of regional and national cycling routes with the national waterway network could boost slow and sustainable tourism, opening up new opportunities to enhance local areas and develop cycling and walking itineraries along Italy's rivers and canals. This represents a historical and naturalistic heritage stretching approximately 200,000 kilometres, already widely exploited across Europe by countries that are more advanced in building their cycling networks; yet there is no shortage of problems on the regulatory front, with the rules governing safe management often unharmonised and inconsistent even between neighbouring regions.

An agreement between four organisations to expand cycling routes

For this reason, Anbi (Associazione azionale degli enti di bonifica e irrigazione), Fiab (Federazione italiana ambiente e bicicletta), the Centro interuniversitario di ricerche economiche e di mobilità of the University of Cagliari, and the Politecnico di Torino – Dipartimento di architettura e design, have signed an agreement to develop initiatives and research programmes studying the relationships between the national waterway network and the regional and national cycling route network. The collaboration – focused above all on harmonising the rules governing safe management – aims to establish the guidelines for a national regulatory framework that overcomes the current difficulties; and that facilitates the development of a national cycling network (and the sustainable tourism linked to it) in harmony with those who already operate along our country's waterway network.

Abroad, cyclists are already riding along the Rhine and the Loire

Anyone accustomed to cycling across Europe knows this well: in many countries, the infrastructure already present on the territory has been used for years to build cycling routes, with riverbanks such as those of the Rhine or the Loire and the network of canals connecting them serving as cycling corridors. In Italy, the infrastructural heritage represented by the network of irrigation and land reclamation canals, managed by the Consorzi di bonifica responsible for their upkeep and administration, amounts to as many as 200,000 kilometres. Moreover, Law no. 2/2018 "Disposizioni per lo sviluppo della mobilità in bicicletta" provided for the recovery for cycling purposes, with public use designation, of the embankment roads along rivers, streams, lakes and canals, including land reclamation works, aqueducts, energy networks, sewer pipes, decommissioned bridges and other road structures.

Indeed, in the development of the national cycle tourism network in recent years, routes along waterways of particular naturalistic and scenic interest have already been favoured, and cycling routes following rivers and canals are present in several Italian regions; others are under construction, such as the ciclovia VenTo, which will connect Venice with Turin. But a full realisation of this enormous potential is not without its problems: Italy's territory, already complex in geographical terms, is compounded by the chronic inconsistency of regulations and by the relationship between those who operate and work in the areas crossed by waterways and those who instead see them as an opportunity for tourism and culture. These are difficulties that hold back the use of waterways as cycling and tourism infrastructure. The aim now, with this agreement, is to overcome them.