Trouble in Via Panama: What's a car to do?

 There's trouble on via Panama. Congestion. Delays. Honking horns. And most of it was   avoidable.

The street is located on the edge of the swank Parioli neighborhood. It may have been intended to be used mostly by locals, but instead it's a busy thoroughfare, running along the south end of Villa Ada (a massive park). Because it connects two main roads/places—the notorious via Salaria and the very popular, heart of Parioli, Piazza Ungheria—some motorists would be tempted to use it to bypass always hectic viale Liegi, with its buses and trams. 

Last year, the city decided to reconfigure about half of via Panama, adding a wide new lane for bicycles, turning the existing bike lane into a pedestrian sidewalk, and adding cut-outs for buses. Already a one-way street heading south, vehicular traffic on via Panama was smushed into one lane. Locals don't like it.

As it turned out (reading the papers the next day), we arrived to inspect the damage just after a protest demonstration occupied the still-under-construction street. We found a remnant of the manifestazione: a chalked sign on the street, reading "Con le stampelle/Niente Bici/Serve Auto!!!" ("With the divisions, no bicycles, cars are needed")

In our humble opinion, there's just too much build-out, too much concrete (especially to provide space for people to wait for buses), and too little space for cars and trucks and scooters. 

The photos that follow (and the one above) are more or less in order, beginning at the "top" of via Panama (at Piazza Ungheria) and continuing down the street, to the point where the reconstruction ends. The photos were taken in October, 2025.

In many cities, including ones with nasty winters like our own Buffalo, New York, municipal authorities are bending over backwards to provide bicycle lanes, as if the bicycle is the solution to to the automobiles that clog our streets. It's beginning to happen in Rome.

The idea that bicycles can materially replace cars in Rome is questionable, at least, and the reconstruction of via Panama demonstrates that it can be taken to an unhelpful extreme. There is already talk of redoing the project, of cutting it back. That won't be cheap.

Bill 

The Vehicles of Rome

"Thelma Senza Luise"  Combination of a car and a scooter. By LAC 68, Nomentana station. 

While scurrying from one Rome "destination" to another, it's easy to miss the cool stuff that's all around you: the beautifully designed manhole covers, a wall of graffiti that celebrates a neighborhood's politics and local hero, the tiny dogs that Romans favor, the woman who's feeding cats, trees trimmed so thoroughly you're sure they'll never grow back, one unbelievable mound of garbage after another. 

And the vehicles. Romans--and the tourists they sometimes revile--get around the Eternal City in a variety of (for the observer, anyway) entertaining ways. Here are a few we've seen over the years:

A very long delivery bicycle, 2016

Now there's a load. 2013

For transporting children. Via del Corso. 

For transporting tired dogs

This guy's delivering for Frutteria Aloise. The vehicle is a weird one--a scooter of sorts
with a wide platform, small wheels, and no seat (and no helmet required). 2017.

And here's a delivery guy taking his bicycle up from the Metro.

Looks like a waiter transporting garbage, but I'm open to other interpretations. 2015

Sicily. Man delivering melons in a crate. Photos of Toto and (apparently) JFK. 2016. 

        Delivery, and delivery vehicles, are important enough that there are paintings of the them.

via Quatro Venti, 2016

2016. Neo-futurism. Not in a gallery. 

The mail has to be delivered, too, and in Rome it's usually by scooter, rather than truck. 

Woman delivering the mail. San Paolo, Rome, 2016.

Rome is a dense city and many of the streets are narrow. So there are lots of small vehicles.

Small yellow car. Dianne at right. 2016.

Bill, wondering if it's safe to drive. 2010. Looks the door is made of canvas.

The Ape is a common delivery vehicle, especially in rural areas. 3 wheels.

2016

Big guy with small bike. 2016.

Unlike Los Angeles and other American cities, Rome has not yet been populated by food trucks. However, all kinds of items, from clothing to batteries, are sold out of cars and small trucks. 

Mondo Arancina. A 3-wheeler. The drawing on the side depicts an historic battle. 

Ladies' garments. 2016. 

Small delivery boy, 2016. Life is hard.

Common sight: Woman with grocery shopping cart. 2016.

Scooters and motorcycles are common in Rome, to say the least. There are about 1 million of them. Less common is a fallen scooter or motorcycle. This one is unusual, in that there's a note on it, written by a passer-by, that says who did it and gives the license number of the offending owner's vehicle. 

2018

Tourists relaxing on their Segways, the Quirinale, 2016.

A rental scooter. This one is a 3-wheeler (two in front). Safer, but not safe. 

A scary sight: tourists on red rental scooters, crossing the Ponte Sublicio, 2018. 

Rome's latest transport scourge is the E-scooter. 

Guy with dog collecting iron with cart in Pigneto. You can't do that with an e-scooter.

Delivery guy on E-scooter

E-scooters. Helmets were not required; they may be now.

Bill

(and from Dianne - if you haven't had enough, try searching for "scooter" in RST, and you'll see more than 150 posts; trucks, more than 50 - for a start)

Playful Romans: Their Decorated Vehicles

We can't be sure that decorated vehicles are more common in Rome and environs than elsewhere, but it does seem so.  Perhaps the tradition began with the Italian Futurists, whose fondness for speed and movement made the painting of fast-moving vehicles, from bicycles to airplanes, a natural.

 Futurism was serious and ideological.  In contemporary Rome, it's playfulness that rules.

 Scooter owners like to sticker their rides. 

This fan of the A.S. Roma soccer team likes stickers that attack Juve (Juventus, a Turin top league team), Rome's nemesis:  Juve Merda (Juve is shit), and Juventino Bastardo (adding the "ino" - means "Little Juventus")

 Near the Vatican, we found a car, apparently abandoned, "decorated" with the owner's philosophical message.

 If you read Italian and have the patience, you can figure out what that message is.  It seems Luigi has a website. 

 Decorated commercial vehicles are common.  Below, the first promises home grocery delivery.  The second is a panel truck from Ariccia, a town in the Alban Hills that's famous for its pork. 

And this one, which bills itself as a Europa Club Fiat 500, advertises a slots parlor while welcoming Mr. Grava.  OK.   

Rome, the streets of Trastevere, a bicycle-driven cart, fully decked out.  And abandoned. 

Finally, back to the (contemporary) art world.  Here, street artist Alice decorates a mini-trailer in the parking lot of the L'ex-Lanificio, an avant-garde art space on via di Pietralata. 

Bill

A New Bauletto: the Curious Charms of Porta Portese

Intimidating

Porta Portese is best known for its enormous Sunday flea market, and perhaps to motorists for the rather harrowing twist into and through the porta from the Lungotevere.  But it has still another attraction: as the site of the biggest collection of shops devoted to scooters and motorcycles--and bicycles.  You need it, it's there: helmets, gloves, jackets, pants--and yes, bauletti, the lockable storage boxes for helmets and clothes and the like that sit on the back of the machines.  And we needed one.  Ours was old, and the hard rubber pieces that anchored the bauletto to the metal frame above the rear fender were cracked and warped, to the point that we were worried about it falling off.

Our Malaguti at box 40

The entrance to the narrow back alley of shack-like shops at Porta Portese can be intimidating; you feel like the white guy in the ghetto.  Still, we summoned our courage and drove the Malaguti 250 into the center of things, asked a few questions, and in less than two minutes had found the right shop--box 40--and the right bauletto.  Although Porta Portese is known as a discount place, the bauletto is not cheap: Euro 110 [about 150 bucks] with or without installation.

Price includes installation

Installation is important.  The connections are tricky, require parts and tools most people don't have, and more than a little experience at the curiously intricate task.

Crowd gathers

The job took about 20 minutes and, as it turned out, attracted the attention, and the assistance, of other shopkeepers.  It was a slow day.  We fretted that somehow our machine wouldn't accomodate the new bauletto.

But then it was done, and off we went, pleased.

Bill

Bicycles, too