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ECONEWS
Serving the Vision of a Sustainable Vancouver Island
[. . .]
WHEN IN ITALY, DO LIKE THE FERRARANS
by Tooker Gomberg
Stepping out of the Ferrara train station, I noticed something was clearly
different. A thousand bikes were parked in a jumble, many askew and
toppling over. A professor told me: "I have six bikes. Two in Pisa for
when I go there, two for getting around Ferrara, a nicer mountain bike and
a road bike too."
It began to rain, so I scurried to a nearby phone booth. What a strange
shape, I thought, until I realized it was specially designed for cyclists
with bikes! How civilized. As the rain continued, cyclists responded by
riding with umbrellas. Not that the whole town is a cycling paradise.
At the outskirts things were more "normal", with trucks and cars cascading
down the asphalt - it's in the heart of Ferrara where something special
happens. Ferrara, with 140,000 people, sports 100,000 bicycles. The town
is small and compact. Dating back to medieval times, the streets are
cobbled with old stones and bricks. Most of the old town centre is off
limits to private cars, and motorists park their car at the edge and rent
a bike to get around, or hop a taxi or bus. A few streets are off-limits
to motorized traffic, reserved for shoe and pedal power. The top of the
city's ancient wall even doubles as an elevated bike path !
Opposite the 14th century Estense Castle I plunked down 18,000 lire ($10
US) and pedalled off. No petrol for this traveller, just a few steaming
cappuccinos (cappuccos, as they say) and an occasional hazelnut gelato.
In Germany and the Netherlands, specially signed bicycle paths make it
clear that the bicycle has its place in the transportation engineer's bag
of tricks. In Ferrara there is little engineering - without fanfare,
cyclists just do their thing. The bicycle has woven its way into the
local culture. City workers have free white bicycles for local errands;
hotels offer free bicycles to their guests; at the train station one can
hop aboard the 'Bicibus', a special bus that takes passengers and their
bikes to the Adriatic coast.
Theft isn't a huge issue, since there are so many bikes to go around.
Ferrara has joined the European movement "Cities for Cyclists" to compare
notes (http://www.ecf.com/). 30% of trips in this town are by bike, which
is higher than in Copenhagen. After riding the streets of Ferrara, a
simple solution emerges like a phantom out of the mist: from the seat of a
bicycle we can solve the climate crisis and make our cities more liveable.
And eat well, to boot.
Tooker Gomberg is Greenpeace's
Climate Change Campaigner
[. . .]
EcoNews, Guy Dauncey, 395 Conway Rd, Victoria, B.C. V8X 3X1
Tel/Fax (250) 881-1304 guydauncey@earthfuture.com
Deadline for March Issue: February 24th
Guy Dauncey,
Sustainable Communities Consultancy
395 Conway Rd, Victoria B.C. V8X 3X1, Canada
Tel/Fax (250) 881-1304(wk) 881-1555(hm)
http://www.earthfuture.com
guydauncey@earthfuture.com
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