Winds of ‘war’ on speed limits of 30 km per hour between the Municipality of Bologna and the minister Matteo Salvini. The battle between the mayor Matteo Lepore and the deputy prime minister is over the ‘Città 30’ project which came into force in the capital of Emilia-Romagna last Tuesday, with the limit introduced in most of the city streets. Today is the announcement of a ‘crackdown’ by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (MIT) which – it has announced – is working on a directive “to clarify and simplify the issue of speed limits, with particular reference to centers urban and as established by article 142 paragraph 2 of the Highway Code”. “The objective of the Ministry – explains a note – is to find a reasonable balance between the need to guarantee safety (which remains a priority) and avoid forcing which risks generating the opposite effect”. In this sense, the MIT has already brought to the Unified Conference a proposal to limit the use of speed cameras in urban centers and to control limits below 50 per hour (as in the case of the municipality of Bologna).
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The objective – we read in the MIT note – is to use speed detectors and introduce the 30 Zones in sensitive areas at risk of accidents, rather than in a generalized and therefore less effective if not downright oppressive way towards road users. Criticisms of the project from Salvini and his ministry had already arrived on Friday, with a note from the MIT in which the 30 km/h limit was defined as “not reasonable” because “the problems for citizens (in particular for workers) risk outweigh the benefits for road safety”. Mayor Lepore was therefore summoned to Rome to discuss it.
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The Municipality of Bologna has already returned the criticism to the sender, stating that there are no speed cameras on the roads with a speed limit of 30 km/h. Minister Salvini for his part confirms in another note his maximum willingness to listen to all the requests and reasons of the local authorities, but at the same time states that “it is necessary to clarify some steps to avoid escapes forward which are then stopped even by the judges , as in the case of the obligation for heavy vehicles to have blind spot devices decided by the Municipality of Milan and then blocked”. It is in this spirit that the Ministry will issue a directive. And he recalls that “the political sensitivity of the current government is legitimately different from those who led the MIT or the country in the past and who are now in opposition at a national level”.