Bologna is rebelling against the 30 kph speed limit

You’re not supposed to mock the afflicted, I know, but I laughed when I read the news that the left-wing citadel of Bologna has introduced a 30 kph (19 mph) speed limit. Forcing the Italians – a nation of famously crazy drivers who make fabulous sports cars – to drive no faster than cyclists is to deprive them of an essential element of what it means to be Italian.

Poor Italians. Is nothing sacred? Not even speed?

I’ve lived for so many years cheek by jowl with the Italians and their ins and outs that I must confess I find anything that pulls their tails funny.

But of course it is far from funny that Bologna, traditional power base of the Italian left, last week became the first large Italian city to impose a 30 kph speed limit on nearly all its roads.

The stated justification is to reduce road deaths. But the unstated aim is to strike yet another blow at the internal combustion engine by those who also think that to save the planet you need a falling GDP and falling birthrate. Forcing traffic to a virtual stand-still is a perfect metaphor for their idea of progress.

There are already similar speed limits imposed by like-minded lefties in many European cities. Since May 2021, Spain has had restrictions on nearly all urban roads, as has Wales since September. There it could cost the Welsh economy up to £9 billion in lost business over the next 30 years due to longer journey times, according to the Welsh Labour government’s own analysis. To put that in perspective, the annual education budget in Wales is £3 billion. 

A record 468,389 people in Wales have now signed a petition that’s open until March calling for the abolition of ‘the disastrous 20 mph law’ which is more than the 443,000 votes Labour got to win the Welsh parliamentary elections in 2021.

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Yes, Italy does have a relatively high number of road deaths. The Italians, I admit, are very good drivers, technically speaking. But they drive like reckless bats out of hell and their roads are very badly maintained. Italy’s road deaths are near double Britain’s (3,159 compared to 1,766 in 2022).

The road that connects Dante’s Beach on the Adriatic coast where I live, to Ravenna eight miles away, is hardly wide enough for two cars. It has drainage ditches either side but no road markings, let alone cat’s eyes, and long stretches that are badly pot-holed. The Italians drive along it way too fast in both directions. It is also used by cyclists who invariably have no lights. My Italian wife, Carla, surges forth along this death trap of a road in our seven-seater Land Rover Defender sometimes even using her knees to guide the steering wheel while her hands apply her make-up. The further south you go the worse the roads, and the more reckless the driving.

Yet, despite this kind of thing, in Bologna (population 388,000) which is not far from Ravenna and Forlì, there are only around 20 road deaths a year. Apparently, road deaths in Spain only fell by a paltry 14 per cent in the first year after the new 30 kph limit came into force. Repeated in Bologna, that would mean just 2.8 fewer deaths a year.

Does that honestly justify all the extra journey time, stress and anger, or the extra cost in lost business activity the new 30 kph speed limit will cause?

The people of Bologna do not seem to think so.

A huge majority (79 per cent) want the speed limit abolished according to a poll for the Bologna based daily Il Resto del Carlino published on Saturday. Petitions calling for a referendum to cancel it are underway.

Buses are reported to be running on average 20 minutes late and taxi drivers are telling customers to add ten minutes to journey times. ‘It’s like climbing the stairs with only one leg,’ a taxi driver told the newspaper.

Probably, thank God, not even globalisation can change the Italian psyche, so one obviously less infuriating way to reduce road deaths would be to fix the roads. But that would be both expensive and out of kilter with the unstated aim of the 30 kph speed limit: the sacrifice of the traditional motor car to the cult of net zero.

In Bologna, the majority always used to vote for the Partito Comunista Italiana – the largest communist party in Europe outside the Soviet Bloc – until the fall of the Berlin Wall. Afterwards, all but once, Bologna has voted for its heirs who currently identify as the Partito Democratico.

But their 30 kph speed limit could easily cost the left the next city council election in 2026.

Matteo Salvini, Transport Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in Italy’s right-wing government, loudly opposes it and says he is thinking about forcing the city council to withdraw it except on genuinely at risk urban roads such as near schools.

The council’s online brochure about the marvels of its new low speed limit states that these include a reduction in noise by half in the vicinity of roads. This will ‘give space to other sounds of the city,’ says the brochure, ‘such as, for example, the song of the birds.’

Salvini gleefully pounced on this to add: ‘The right to sing of the birds and the audibility of their song must be balanced against the right to work of hundreds of thousands of people.’

The Mayor of Bologna, Matteo Lepore, accused Salvini of ‘spreading fake news’ by talking about the birds but unfortunately for him there it was down in black and white in his own brochure.

The default position of the Italian driver is to ignore speed limits if he or she can get away with it. The normal 50 kph (31 mph) limit in urban and residential areas elsewhere in Italy is enforced mainly by unmanned speed traps.

In Bologna, however, there are no plans for 30 kph speed traps. The new limit will be enforced by six police patrols equipped with laser guns. Penalties will vary from a €29.40 (£25.26) to an €845 (£725.98) fine, plus ten points and a 12 month driving licence suspension. But they will have a hell of a job trying to nab the guilty.

I foresee that one way or another the silent majority will rid Bologna of this troublesome speed limit.