City traffic and congestion: the biggest bet is to connect cities from the center to the periphery. The analysis
The periodic research conducted by INRIX at a global level (more than 1000 cities in 50 countries and 7 continents) detects interesting insights into the delay accrued on board the cars in city traffic due to traffic jams detected in 2022. The Italian city with the national primacy in terms of road congestion it is the capital of the Sicily regionwith a time “lost” by Palermitans aboard their vehicles equal to just over five days (121 hours) over the last year.
But that is not all. On the global scene Palermo ranks tenth among the most congested cities, after in 2021 it had accrued a total of “hours lost” due to vehicular traffic that was 11% lower. To this worsening add the condition of mobility in the city of Panormossignificantly aggravated by an average speed in urban areas not exceeding 15 km/h.
The “eternal city”, our capital, ranks 13th in the ranking of the most congested cities in the world and in 2nd place in the particular ranking of Italian cities, confirming the four and a half days (107 hours) of time lost by the Romans aboard their cars, as revealed by the same research in 2021. The third city on the Italian podiumscrolling through the ranking, is identified in the 29th global position occupied by the city of the Mole, with 86 hours (3 and a half days) of time lost in vehicular chaos in Turin.
The concentration of Italian cities is surveyed from the 60th position downwards, with Milan and Genoa in 4th and 5th position in the Italian ranking (61st and 66th in the global one). The situation in the Ligurian capital has improved slightly compared to 2021 (-3%) and 2019 (-15%), the year in which city traffic was significantly affected (also) by the absence of a strategic motorway connection after the collapse of the Morandi bridge. Still in the city of Flashlightcompared to 2019 and 2021, the distance that motorists managed to travel in 30 minutes decreased, just as the average speed worsened, going from 32 km/h in 2019 to 27 km/h at peak times of 2022.
The 2022 Global Traffic Scorecard, in summary, provides four years of data on mobility within the most congested areas of the world. The evidence of the Italian data does nothing but confirm how once again in 2022 a great opportunity to aim for a new organization of mobility has been missed and, therefore, of the collective transport system (TPL) by car and by rail. An aspect that today finds a synthesis in the delay in the diffusion of technology, starting from the “blockchain”, now used in the digital, secure and reliable management of large data, and then continuing with the IoT and Artificial Intelligence.
The governance of various countries today tends to develop potential applications to support sustainable mobility and to monitor and manage complex transport systems. The PNRR lays the foundations and conditions for developing technological progress necessary to improve the performance standards inherent, for example precisely, to vehicular congestion and to the so-called “parasitic traffic”, i.e. the traffic accrued for the search for parking.
The biggest gamble of Italian cities is to connect their urban center with the more peripheral areas through “intelligent” collective transport systems equipped with a high level of technology and IoT. Fast transport systems encouraged, also and above all, with the use of applications to integrate the different forms of transport. In a nutshell, the city must change and turn the page, guaranteeing a mobility system that includes widespread infomobility and ICT throughout its public and private transport network. The conditions are now all there, as is the public spending capacity.
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