The Tiny Trucks of Rome

In the U.S., where bigger is always better, nobody wants a truck that isn't capable of hauling an apartment building or, if need be, the Statue of Liberty.  See photo at left.



In Italy "small" has long been in fashion.  In the towns and countryside, tiny, 3-wheeled vehicles, often flatbeds, many of them running on noisy and polluting but powerful 2-cycle engines (mixing gas with oil) that are prohibited in the cities, carry wood, produce, building supplies, and sundries.  They're slow--they don't do more than about 30 mph--but they're inexpensive to operate, easy to fix, and for the farmers and tradesmen that use them, they're big enough to get the job done. 

Easy to park--here, in space reserved for scooters,
in front of the Italian House of Deputies (Montecitorio).

Small truck-like vehicles are common in Rome--again, partly because they're cheaper to operate than bigger trucks or vans, but also because parking space is at a premium and traffic insane.  They're not scooters, but they offer some of the same advantages. 

A three-wheeler.  Careful on the turns!

Many of these smaller trucks have only 3 wheels--sometimes 1 in front and 2 in back (unstable on turns) and, less often, 2 in front and 1 in back (better on turns, but more unstable generally). 

4-wheel Postal vehicle

The Ufficio Postale, the Italian postal service, is a big user of these vehicles for its pick-up and delivery services.  The one at left is a 4-wheeled model with small rear wheels and what appears to be a detachable door. 

This one belongs to a restaurant.  Dianne's there
for proportion. 

Others are owned by private businesses, from restaurants to flea-market vendors. 
(Ciarla, where we had dinner one evening, is on Via Appia Nuova). 

We thought about buying one to help us with the task of distributing copies of Rome the Second Time.

Unidentified trucks attract graffiti.  But then,
so does everything. 

Unmarked mini-trucks appear to be a prime target of beginning graffiti writers, practicing their "tags." 

Bill

A small flat-bed, used for hauling goods to a flea market. 

Parking a Scooter in Rome

A designated--but full--scooter parking area, near the
Spanish Steps

It's often said that it's impossible to get a bad meal in Rome.  If you've been in Rome for more than a few days, and did your best to enjoy a gloppy fetuccini Alfredo, you know that's not true.  The same could be said of "it's easy to park a scooter in Rome."  But why?  Scooters are small; the options are many; and, if need be, you can always squeeze another one in.  That's not how it works, at least not always.




Dedicated scooter parking, adjacent to Termini
(and one on sidewalk)



Scooters (and motorcyles) blocking scooters. Rude.

Unlike American cities, where parking regulations are posted in great detail on signs (Los Angeles specializes in byzantine instructions that require careful reading and deciphering), Rome has few postings.  The main exception is "Divieto di Sosta," a phrase you'll see on garage doors everywhere.  Parking in a driveway is a bad idea. 

About a decade ago, in an effort to bring some order to Rome's parking mess, the city created scooter parking areas, visible by the whites lines that set off individual scooter spaces.  If a designated area (photo above) is full, you can take a slight risk and park adjacent to the official area--as close as you can get--in a sense recognizing that the designated parking area exists and that you're doing the best you can to obey the rules (see photo at end of post).  Sometimes frustated drivers of automobiles will take up several scooter spaces--not nice, and surely illegal.  Perhaps the worst thing you can do is to park so that other scooters can't get out, as in the photo above  right.  Our Italian friends who work in the city center tell us that those who park illegally in the Centro are risking a ticket.  There's more tolerance, and less enforcement, in outlying areas. 

A Friday night at the MAXXI gallery, with sidewalk parking

Scooters park on sidewalks, too.  But which sidewalks?  Some sidewalks are fair game for parking, and others are not.  Custom prevails.  If you see a sidewalk full of scooters, you should feel free to join them--assuming there's a reasonable space.  If the sidewalk is clear of scooters, go elsewhere.  If there's one scooter on a sidewalk, there's a reasonable chance that it's OK to  put one more up there.  (By the way, it's perfectly OK to drive your scooter on the sidewalk--albeit cautiously--to reach a parking place).  Some commercial establishments don't mind scooters parking on the sidewalk (or in the Centro, on the street) on front of their businesses, while others--especially establishments catering to an elite clientel--obviously do.  Use common sense.  In the suburban-like Flaminio neighborhood where we lived for a time, we parked on the sidewalk in front of the building--tempting because it was so broad--but only if the designated area across the street was full.  When there's a large-scale special event in the neighborhood, like an exhibit opening at a museum, scooters use the sidewalks. 

Two things are wrong here: a woman has a) parked
her car in designated scooter spaces and b) knocked
over some scooters.  A bad day.  Bill helped her right
the scooters.  See his contemporaneous post. 

Scooters sometimes (and apparently legally) park in the larger spaces set off for cars, designated by blue lines.  But custom  pervades this area, too.  It is considered bad form--that is, piggy--to park a scooter in the center of a space intended for cars.  On a recent trip to the beach, where parking was available on the sides of the beach road, we parked the Malaguti in a space big enough for a car.  Young people in the car behind expressed their consternation and asked us to move, which we did, and easily enough.

Especially in very crowded areas, it's appropriate for a scooter to use as little as possible of the car space, leaving most  of the space free for a small automobile.  Parking between two parked cars is fine, but only if you leave enough space for the cars to clear your bike or, if the cars are parked side-by-side, enough space for car drivers and passengers to enter and exit.

Rural parking, below Monte Cavo

In rural areas, one can park on the side of the road with impunity.  In the photo at right, we've parked the Malaguti near an intersection in the Colli Albani, in preparation for a hike up Monte Cavo (photo right).  Many country roads are more isolated than this one, but we've never had a problem leaving our scooter on the side of the road, often for 6 hours or more. 

A small percentage of scooter owners in the city use a commercial parking garage at night.  We did so for a time, once because we were warned that thieves would relish the brown leather seat on our Piaggio Hexagon, again when we purchased a new Malaguti.  We slept better, and the scooters stayed cleaner when they weren't vulnerable to birds and Rome's pioggia sporca (dirty rain). But it's not cheap (about E60 per month), and garage-parking can be inconvenient: garages usually close at midnight, and ours closed on Sunday at noon. 

Bill


Designated scooter parking--Largo S. Susanna--with some cheating on this end



Torpignattara: Neighborhood on the Verge of....

We were intrigued by Laura Serloni's story in La Repubblica on the outlying neighborhood of Torpignattara, which lies east of the train station and the closer-in, now-hip community of Pigneto. The headline for the piece described Torpignattara as "dimenticata" (forgotten), and Serloni's story labeled its outdoor market "degrado" (degraded) and mentioned that the zone had no parks and that its 1930s movie theater (the only one in the area) was in disrepair, having long ago closed its doors.

We had been through the neighborhood many times, but only on the thoroughfare of via Casilina (the cross-street at top left), with a tram running through its center that cramps traffic in both directions. Until now, Torpignattara was for us a neighborhood to get through on our way to the campagna Romana.

So we went out there and walked around. We found the boarded-up movie theatre--perhaps no gem even when new--and ambled through the metal-shed market, which at 12:45 (some of the stands may have closed up, and the fish stands don't operate on Thursday) was occupied only here and there.
But we would add that older markets of this kind often have a forlorn appearance--one might as well use the words "rustic," or "authentic," or "comfortable"--and otherwise petty capitalism seemed to be thriving in this 'hood, sustained on some streets (e.g., via della Marranella) by communities of dark-skinned new immigrants, whose place of origin we failed to identify.

Although the oldest buildings in the neighborhood appear to date from about 1900, Torpignattara's architectural plant is also sustained by a number of structures built, like the theatre, in the 1930s, and datable by dates on the buildings,
sometimes presented in the Fascist system, which starts with 1922, the year of the March on Rome. Some of these buildings could use plastering and a coat of paint, but others have been nicely redone. The school at the corner of via dell' Acqua Bullicante and via Policastro has the solid, decent design of Fascist-era rationalist architecture.

The area will also benefit from the new "C" Metro line, now being built just a few blocks to the north under via Maletesta, once a lovely parkway but now a massive cantieri (construction project). The new Metro line is actually in Labicano, but it will provide reliable transportation to most of Torpignattara's residents. And given that, it may not be all that long before the word "gentrification" rears its ugly head and those nasty wine bars appear (there are none now).
We found what may be the early signs of that sort of redevelopment along the alley-like street of via Auconi, where smaller homes are being renovated (right).

We did find one small, usable, functioning park, off via del Pigneto at via dei Zeno (if we recall correctly).
It was being mowed, apparently for the first time this year (below right), with an actual power lawn mower (one of several in Rome; they are as rare here as Velveeta).

The problem with the parks, we think, is related to the city's program of underground parking lots. Once built, the lots are supposed to have parks at ground level.

But one of these parks (below left)had gone to tall, unmowable weeds, as if the city had been preparing the site for drug traffic and crime. In the circular entrance to that park's underground garage someone had fashioned a creche out of concrete, perhaps to offer comfort to those intrepid enough to use the facility (lower left).

The other, pictured in Serloni's article, had been fenced off. It would take an American neighborhood, with the help of the Lion's Club, about two weeks to have such a place up and running, with swing sets and redwood walkways and the like. But there is no Lion's club in Italy, and no tradition of voluteerism. And the government has failed to do anything but build the parking garages. Here it's all about cars.

Bill

The winds of Rome

High winds struck Rome during last evening's rush hour... apparently the illegal parking gods were partly responsible, as an illegally parked car was crushed by a falling tree right under our terrace.


We're not sure what gods decided to rip apart our patio umbrella, which was nicely folded up at the time.


And an Easter postscript... guilty pleasures... buying an Easter colombo (lit. "dove": sweet bread with candied fruit inside and topped with sugar crystals, in the shape of a dove) at 60% discount after Easter and stuffing ourselves with it for the next 10 days.


Dianne