Milan has announced Strade aperte, one of the most ambitious mobility projects in Europe. The aim is to reduce car use in phase 2 by expanding cycle lanes and pedestrian areas. Among the expressions of support: a tweet from Greta Thunberg.
Greta Thunberg, just hours after the announcement made by the Guardian, praised Milan's ambitious Strade aperte active mobility plan in a tweet. The plan envisages converting 35 kilometres of roads into cycle lanes and pedestrianised areas by the summer. The aim is to prevent what is known as phase 2 — the period in which the use of public transport, the underground, and other forms of mobility such as car sharing could be replaced by a mass return to private car use — from choking Milan and its residents with traffic and emissions. And Greta is not the only one cheering on the ambitious initiative.
When approached by the Guardian, Janette Sadik-Khan, former transport commissioner for New York, has already identified Milan — a month ahead of other major cities in the world in terms of how the pandemic has evolved — as one of the cities to look to as a model for tackling the mobility challenge in the post-coronavirus emergency. "Milan's plan is important because it sets a replicable model."
A model that could prove to be "a once-in-a-generation opportunity — Sadik-Khan added — to rethink the urban fabric of our cities", where streets are no longer designed solely for cars but above all for people, who will be able to move around more safely. But the tendency to curb car use in the post-emergency period is widespread. In the United Kingdom, in Brighton, the seafront has been reopened exclusively to pedestrians and cyclists from 8am to 8pm. In Barnes, London, the roadway has been narrowed to make space for pedestrians and to ensure social distancing on one of the busiest shopping streets. In Ireland too, in Dublin, loading and unloading bays at the port and car parks will be reclaimed from cars with the same objective.
Milan is one of the most polluted cities in Europe and, like the rest of Lombardy, also one of the areas hardest hit by Covid-19. At the current stage of the emergency, the halt to activity has significantly reduced traffic congestion, which has fallen by between 30 and 75 per cent. With no traffic, businesses at a standstill and heating systems now switched off, emissions levels have also improved markedly.
Phase 2, however, could bring the situation back to what it was before the emergency — or even make it worse. The risk is that in a city where 55 per cent of residents normally use public transport to get to work, there will be a strong return to private car use, which is perceived as a private and therefore safer space. The Strade aperte plan, "which we are still currently working on", as Marco Granelli, Milan's councillor for Mobility and Public Works, confirmed to us, is designed precisely to respond to what looks set to become a genuine traffic emergency.
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Milan has announced the conversion of 35 kilometres of road into cycle lanes and spaces dedicated to pedestrians. The Strade aperte plan, announced on Tuesday, includes the creation — including on a temporary basis — of cycle lanes that can be built quickly and at low cost, alongside the widening or new construction of pavements, extensive use of Zone 30 speed limits to reduce car speeds, and the general creation of areas dedicated to pedestrians, cyclists and micromobility. According to advance information, work on the Strade aperte project could begin before the summer, starting with an 8-kilometre stretch of corso Buenos Aires — one of the city's most important shopping streets — with the creation of a new cycle lane and a widening of the pavements.
"We will have to accept that for months, or perhaps a year, there will be a new normal, and we need to create the conditions for everyone to live that new normal," said Pierfrancesco Maran, councillor for Urban Planning, Green Spaces and Agriculture. "Before the emergency we were working on the Milan of 2030; now the objective is 2020, because more than the future, we need to think about the present."
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Milan's solution could soon be imitated by many cities. Mobility is indeed one of the areas that will undergo the greatest transformations, beginning with phase 2 and over what looks set to be a very long period. What are the possible scenarios? Essentially two. The first is one in which, once the emergency is over, the car once again becomes the safest mode of transport — a kind of personal bubble, an extension of the domestic habitat. A physical barrier and a filter from the outside world that could protect people from the risk of further contagion. A return to private car use, at least in large cities, could slow down sharing models such as car sharing, which for obvious health and contact-related reasons will almost certainly go through a period of sharp contraction.
In a scenario where the use of local public transport will be greatly reduced — both due to the continuation of restrictions and due to public distrust — all major cities will need to follow Milan's lead and put in place a plan to develop and support so-called active mobility (walking and cycling) and micromobility, with the creation of dedicated lanes on the main urban access routes. A rethinking of intermodality, combined with growth in the e-bike market and bike sharing services — which will need to be supported by greater incentives and concessions — could also help to seize the post-emergency period to champion a new, alternative mobility, precisely as requested of the government in recent days by Fiab, the Federazione italiana ambiente e bicicletta, together with many other environmental associations.
