Walking in Rome "Safely", or "You Can Walk but They Can Kill You"

You can't.  Walk in Rome safely, that is.  But there are some things you can do, and information you need to have, to improve the odds of your staying alive in the Eternal City.

Parked in a crosswalk

1.  Cross the street at lights and crosswalks (with white stripes).  That would be sensible advice anywhere, but it's especially relevant to Rome, where Rome drivers are conditioned, more or less, to stop for, or avoid, pedestrians in white-striped crosswalks.  In theory, pedestrians have the right-of- way in crosswalks, but as Dad told me, "there's no right of way in heaven."  Many motorists will stop for a crosswalk pedestrian only if the ped is aggressive--that is, steps into the crosswalk, thereby indicating that he/she is determined to use the crosswalk, even if a car is coming.  And that's not something everyone will feel comfortable doing, or should.,  Older persons--older women, especially, it seems to us--use the crosswalk as if it were 1960, not even looking to see if there's a vehicle approaching.  Perhaps they imagine they're still in a rural village.  Today, in Rome, this is insanity.  Be aware, too, that the stripes of many crosswalks are faded, sometimes badly faded, and may be difficult for drivers to see.

And of course, sometimes vehicles park in the crosswalk. Worse still, in the Flaminio piazza where we lived, vehicles--cars, trucks, scooters (we do it, too)--routinely use the crosswalk to make u-turns up the adjacent street.  Keep you eyes peeled.

2.  Even when crossing at lights there are hazards.  Cars seldom go through red lights, but about 1 in 10 scooters pay little attention to the color of the light. Often scooters will approach a red light, slow down, then accelerate through it.  Moreover, traffic in Rome is such that when the light turns green, vehicles--especially scooters--move away rapidly.  Therefore, be sure you have plenty of time to get across the intersection; don't get caught in the street when the light changes. In the words of a 1970s blues tune, "stop on the red, go on the green, don't get caught by Mr. Inbetween."

3.  Understand that Rome motorists are distracted in a way they were not only a few years ago.  Today, many  motorists and scooter drivers are listening to music, on the phone with a spouse or lover (maybe having an argument), or otherwise not paying full attention to the road.  Some of those driving scooters will check their cell phones, and even text, while they're in motion (it is possible, though ill-advised, to drive a scooter with only the right hand, which covers the accelerator and one brake).  Not long ago, on the fastmoving Muro Torto, a woman on a scooter, on the phone (tucked into her helmet) was driving with the right hand while gesturing dramatically with the left.

4.  Watch out for Smart Cars.  Rome's Smart Car population is growing rapidly.  Two problems arise.  First, Smart Car drivers are among the most distracted in the city.  Why?  Because, unlike most automobiles in Rome, Smart Cars shift automatically.  Hence drivers do not have to use two hands, leaving one free to a) smoke b) eat c) use a cell phone d) gesture.   Second, Smart Car drivers, feeling liberated from the big cars they used to drive (and that had trouble navigating traffic), now act like scooter drivers, weaving in and out of traffic, often dangerously.  But they're not scooters.  They can't turn as easily as scooters or stop as fast as scooters.  It won't take long for Smart Car drivers to learn they're not scooters, but as for now the lesson hasn't sunk in.

5.  Scooter drivers vary in their behaviors.  Some will brake for pedestrians (no matter where they are), others will swerve to avoid them without stopping, and still others will avoid them, but barely--as if the pedestrians were cones in game of skill.  So beware.  Most scooters, thank God, can stop on a dime. But--this is really important--scooter drivers may be on the phone or listening to a favorite tune and hence somewhat distracted.  Even so, driving a two-wheeled vehicle without falling requires having eyes on the road at all times.  You can pretty much guarantee that a scooter driver will see you in the crosswalk and will be thinking about whether to stop or how to avoid you. Not so with cars.

6.  There is no right on red in Rome, and it's uncommon.  But some do it, anyway.

7.   "You can walk but they can kill you."  That's been our motto the past few years.  Unlike in the States, where a pedestrian walk light indicates that pedestrians can expect the intersection to be clear of vehicles, in Rome a pedestrian walk light is often coupled with a green arrow for vehicles that signals the right to move through the area you';re about to walk in.  If that seems crazy or wrong, get used to it.  To be safe, expect it, especially at complex intersections.

"You can walk but they can kill you."  Crosswalk, pedestrian OK, but cars turning right over the crosswalk,
in front of you.  That's Monte Mario in the background.  

Heavy traffic?  Scooters now and then use the sidewalk.

8.  In the city, use available protections.  In Rome's center, many streets have no sidewalks.  Some have poles in the street providing pedestrians with protection from vehicles.  Use them.  If the street has no poles, duck in between parked cars when vehicles pass.

9.  Sidewalks normally provide protection against getting run over.  But scooters often park on the sidewalk, and to get there they drive ON the sidewalk, sometimes for most of  a block. If traffic is very heavy, scooters may use the sidewalk as if it were another lane.  Be aware.

10.  While crossing one-way streets, look both ways.  Rome isn't London, where driving the wrong way on a one-way street would earn a quick ticket.  Scooters, especially (including this driver) will sometimes go the wrong way to find a parking space--or whatever.  Be conscious.

Bill
For more on scooters, see our posts on renting a scooter in Rome, riding a scooter in Rome, parking a scooter in Rome, getting a ticket in Rome, preventing scooter thefts, and junking a scooter in Rome.

Grandissimo Stronzo: [Bad] Parking in Rome

RST found this note on the windshield of a car in the quartiere of Trieste.  The owner had pulled the car up onto the narrow sidewalk, tight against a building, blocking pedestrians from getting through and forcing everyone to walk into a busy street to get past.  Parking on the sidewalk is the custom in many places in Rome, and no one pays much attention, but this perpetrator had gone too far--even we thought so.  Our pique was shared by the author of this note.  Roughly translated, it reads: "You s.o.b./ Where can people get through?  You moron.   Bill

You CAN Get a Ticket in Rome

Yes, you can get a ticket in Rome.  Not for speeding (never seen anyone get pulled over for that and, unlike the US, the cops don't lie in wait around the next curve).  Not for reckless driving, which is essential to moving traffic in Rome (and sometimes for mere survival).  Not for switching lanes without signaling (on many streets, there are no lines dividing one lane from another, and signaling is a now and then thing).  Although we've never seen it happen, you might get a ticket for going through a stop sign or red light, even though it's often done, especially by scooters. 

And you can get a ticket for driving through a camera checkpoint for the ztl (zona a traffico limitato/limited traffic zone) with the wrong kind of vehicle or at the wrong time of day, or through a similar checkpoint marking a lane reserved for taxis and buses.  If either of these systems is operating the tickets are automatic, issued by mail, and usually arrive in about 6 months.  We've gotten two for using a taxi/bus lane, including one for entering the Monti neighborhood from Via Cavour. 

An American friend, an attorney, has a better story.  Unfamiliar with Rome and needing to return a rental car at the Termini station, he circled the station, unknowingly using one of those forbidden taxi/bus lanes monitored electronically.  Not sure where the rental office was, he circled two more times.  The bill for the car rental had him responsible for not one but three tickets, all earned within 15 minutes.  He complained, sent in the money for one ticket, and that was the last he heard of it. 

Sidewalk parking job, at Parco
Leonardo, a Rome suburb

Sidewalk parking for an
evening event at MAXXI.
No chance of a ticket here.

Oddly, in a city where double-parking, and parking on the sidewalk or on the corner of an intersection, have for years been considered responsible behavior, one can, indeed, get a parking ticket. 

Comely ticket writers, on the prowl, Via del Corso

This is especially true in the center, where parking is tightest.  There, and occasionally in some other areas, teams of two ticket "writers" stroll (yes, the perfect word) the streets, writing up parking villains.  (BTW, the photo is angled because it was taken surreptitiously; didn't want to be caught photographing the cops.) 

Their job has been made easier in recent years by new lines demarcating actual parking "spaces" for cars and--smaller ones--for scooters; park in an area not so demarcated, and there is a some (though by no means absolute) risk.  These teams are sometimes of mixed gender, sometimes just men and sometimes just two maids of the meters, always impeccable dressed and usually shapely.  A far cry from LA's legions of punctural (to the minute) "Parking Enforcement" Nazis.   In this regard, you're still better off in Rome. 

Bill

Parking in Rome

While thinking of something to say about the soap opera "Parking in Rome," I was reminded of evenings spent some years ago in the Re di Roma area, sitting on the window ledge of our 2nd floor apartment, watching at dusk as frustrated drivers circled the block, then circled again, and again, hoping against hope that a space would open up.

Especially in the neighborhoods, where parking enforcement is weak or nonexistent, drivers are not particular about where they park.  If the regular spots are occupied, the crosswalk will do (see above left, with the car directly astride the white pedestrian-crossing lines), or the sidewalk (at right).  Another
technique, though one that undermines the value of owning a vehicle, is to never move the car. 

Some neighborhoods, like Piazza Bologna, have taken measures to prevent these transgressions, installing raised curbs guarded by sturdy posts at the four corners of intersections, and sometimes extending the sidewalks into the intersection to minimize the area available to rogue parkers.

In the near-burb of San Paolo, where these photos were taken, authorities met the parking crisis by converting a major vehicular underpass into a parking area (left).  All the vehicles in the photo, including those in the foreground and center/back, are parked.  Bill

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



Underground Parking: Rome's latest Panacea

Rome is in the midst of an underground parking boom. In many neighborhoods--all outside the center, where antiquities are less likely to be encountered during the dig--underground parking lots either have been built, are being built, or are in the planning stage. The authorities have generally chosen two kinds of places to build the underground facilities: properties with no buildings on them (usually small parks), and wide, multi-lane parkways with trees in the middle, where traffic can run in reduced fashion during construction. One parkway project is underway near the Park of the Aqueducts, off the Lucio Sestio subway stop on via Lucio Sestio. Another, in the neighborhood of San Paolo, is underconstruction along viale Leonardo da Vinci. Lots under parks or vacant lots have been built in Flaminio at Piazza Melozzo da Fiori, and in Tor Pignattara.

The reason for all this activity is obvious: there are too many cars in Rome, even in outlying zones, and parking is obscenely difficult. If you're out late in the evening in your car, you are guaranteed a 10-minute search for a (probably illegal) posto (parking place). Although scooters often park on the sidewalk, that is not the custom in every neighborhood or on every street, and the city's ongoing efforts to delineate legal scooter parking places using white lines have in some places had the effect of limiting choice. So why not ease the parking problem by building lots underground?

We're not civil engineers or urban planners, but we've seen some of the existing facilities and observed enough of the ongoing protests against those planned or under construction, to understand why the underground lots might not be a good idea. The Flaminio lot was completed several years ago and finished with a public piazza above it. But the lot isn't operating, perhaps because of safety concerns, and the ramp leading to it is covered with graffiti (and not the artistic kind). Moreover, the piazza was poorly designed--mostly stone slabs, with a few benches--and is today lightly used, especially given the area's population density. We saw the surface portions of two lots in Tor Pignattara, and neither makes us optimistic. One was covered by a small, elevated park with two-foot weeds (photo at right)--asking for trouble. The other was still an ugly field, awaiting landscaping.

We're most familiar with the viale Leonardo da Vinci project, which we passed several times a day, and with the protests against it that began while we were living nearby.
There in San Paolo, elements of the community have organized to stop the project, distributing flyers (at left), holding community meetings, putting up signs, and contacting local and national leaders and other organizations that might have an interest in keeping the underground lot out of the neigborhood. Interestingly, one of the signs (see top of this post) blames not only the current Rome mayor, Gianni Alemanno, but the former mayor, Walter Veltroni (who authored the Foreword to Rome the Second Time): Veltroni & Alemanno/'sto parcheggio/fa solo DANNO! (this parking lot does only damage).

The protesters have several concerns. One is for the safety of children who attend school at the "Principe di Piemonte" facility, located across the viale from the area's apartment buildings; they argue that the new traffic configuration, by eliminating the parkway strip at the center, will result in an unsafe crossing. Another, emphasized in one of the flyers, is that the project will destabilize nearby buildings (the area is unusual geologically).

A third concern, which dominates the hand-printed signs on fences along the viale, is environmental, centered on the destruction of the mature trees that line the sides of the viale and its center strip. One says "Alberi condannati/a morte/dal parcheggio" (trees condemned to death by the parking lot). Another (right) says, "vi do/ossigeno/ma mi/abbattono/x un posto/auto!" (I give you oxygen, but you take me down, [in exchange for?] a parking space!"

Finally, the protesters make the surprising but telling point that the lot won't really help make parking easier: only 80 new, expensive ("a caro prezzo"), underground spaces, less than the number of cars that could park on the viale.
One of the signs (left) picks up on the class aspect of the project, calling the parking lot a place for the "pochi privilegiati" (the privileged few).

We sense that the protests are too little, too late, especially when it comes stopping projects already under construction; that won't happen. But we share the concerns of the opponents of underground parking and wish them success. As long as we don't have a car.

Bill

Suburban Surreal II: Parco dei Medici and the Esso Building

The first non-stop sunny day in weeks sent us off on one of our treasure hunts today (May 18), and we didn't return empty handed. After gassing up the scooter, we headed into Rome's core on two errands related to the marketing of Rome the Second Time. Both were reasonably accomplished,
though not without suffering the Centro's traffic; we were astonished at the difficulty of finding a legal parking place (and in the end, we didn't, in part because authorized scooter places were occupied by Rome's smaller commercial vehicles, as in the photo at right).

Afterward, from near Piazza Colonna we headed out to the Tevere, then toward the south end of the city, through the Marconi district and around Piazza Meucci to via Magliana, a curvy, 2-lane thoroughfare that more or less tracks the river as it winds through middle-aged suburbs and aging commercial and industrial sites.
On the way, we stopped to admire a curious structure, the "Ponte sull'autostrada [bridge over the thruway] Roma-Fiumicino alla Magliana" as it's referred to in one of the architectural books, or the "Viadotto [viaduct] alla Magliana," in another. Although the 1965 "bridge" appears to be without purpose, we later learned that it's an important work of civil engineering. It's there because the highway, forced at this point onto unstable, wet ground near the Tevere, required the structure as a way of stabilizing the pilings below its center. At the end of the span to the right, a massive, pontoon-like counterweight (not visible) drives the center columns down, holding everything in place. The process is known as the "Morandi Method," after the engineer.

Our goal was a building we had seen from the Fiumicino expressway. Occupied by the Esso corporation, designed by architect Julio La Fuente, and opened in 1977, it's a unique, even bizarre structure. We were surprised to find that it's located in an enormous industrial park, Parco dei Medici, named after the Medici family of Florentine fame. Besides the Esso building, the park contains about a dozen large and decidedly ordinary corporate structures, housing businesses we'd never heard of, with names like "Syngenics" and "Corpoform." An abandoned building was once home to Erikson, the phone maker whose business has fallen on bad times. Security is tight; every building is surrounded by hundreds of discrete concrete posts, forming a fence that's both effective and graffiti-resistant, and it's impossible to enter any of these corporate sanctuaries without some sort of clearance. We imagine hundreds of employees in every building, busily at work in secret laboratories on the next Italian household appliance that looks great but fails in the first week. Outside, small groups of men in dark suits stroll the sidewalks on their lunch hours, trapped in (or enjoying) corporate Pleasantville.

La Fluente's Esso building makes the trip worthwhile. It's rugged and physical yet light and magical, mixing the bold earnestness of the Aztec with the a sense of playfulness straight out of children's building blocks.
The big white beams seem to have a function, to hold the structure together, but it's not clear that they do anything of the sort; they might be made of plastic, or rubber, as if they were part of a kit of toy parts, fresh out of the box. Who knows? With our best Italian, we try to talk the guard at the gate into giving us five minutes inside to look around (we tell him we're authors of a book on Rome, the building's a structure of historic importance, and bla bla). He's sympathetic and calls his supervisor, but the answer is no.

To the south of the Esso building, and of moderate interest, is a spa/restaurant complex (below left), complete with pool and a "private" club: perks available to the traveling businessman. And aross the way, nicely designed apartments with circular balconies for those who find the nearby Holiday Inn not quite nice enough.

We're off, back on the nasty, treacherous via Magliana, all trucks and busses and traffic and potholes. An old road-house restaurant beckons, and we pull over. "Tavernaccia," it's called, and uncleared bottles and dishes make it clear that lunch is no longer being served on the large veranda, which is only a few feet from the street but protected from the noise and dirt by massive screens.
Still, the blond proprietress has no problem in providing a mezzo litro of vino bianco (E2), which we sip while noting the Christmas-motif tablecloths. The door to the restroom is covered with wallpaper designed to resemble bricks. Later, when we gave the owner our book card and asked for the restaurant's bigliettino (business card), she complied by writing the name and phone number on a piece of paper, but seemed preoccupied with playing the gaming machines inside.

Bill

Scooters Down, Bill Forced into Role as Good Samaritan

As a scooter driver, I don't think I'm unusual in imagining what would happen if a car backed up into a tightly packed, domino-like row of scooters. Imagination is no longer required. Last Thursday the three of us--Dianne and I were touring with Judy, a new friend from Buffalo--had crossed Piazza del Popolo and headed up the short stairs on the piazza's east side to the road above when this Italian woman did just that: backed up into a bunch of scooters. I took a photo as the three of us walked by, thinking that was that. But she was upset (not very upset, to be honest, but she didn't want to leave the scooters on the ground), and she motioned me over to help her pick up the victims.
They're not easy to lift when they're down--the heaviest ones weigh about 500 pounds, and these perhaps 300--but this woman (now speaking broken English to me) and I managed the task, one at a time, as she called out lifting commands as we prepared to right each bike. Dianne didn't help, but she was there to take the second photo.

Bill