The most cycle-friendly cities in Italy and the world

 

This week we asked ourselves whether Italy is a cycle-friendly country or not. We took a closer look at our country to better understand how it is structured and organised to accommodate us bikers.

We obviously realised that there are municipalities that are more organised than others and Cycling cities already a great little example of eco-sustainability and green lifestyle.

We must give the Italian Environment and Bicycle Federation credit for having methodically begun to map our country from a cycling perspective. We are talking about the 'Comuni Ciclabili' project, conceived by Alessandro Tursi. launched in the summer of 2017 in the form of a collection of voluntary applications.

The project invited interested cities to participate by filling in questionnaires to be verified by local representatives. The result of the first edition revealed a total of 69 participating municipalities, to which 13 more were subsequently added.

As of July 2020, there are now 136 bicycle-friendly cities and towns. Specifically, we have seen that Florence is the fourth regional capital to have joined after Turin, Bologna and Trento.

LEmilia Romagna is the leading region with 25 municipalities, followed by the Veneto which comes in at 21. In third position is theAbruzzo which, with the new coastal municipalities of Vasto and San Salvo, comes to a total of 15, we finally find the Lombardy with 12 municipalities.

During the 2020 edition, postponed due to Covid, Rome also joined the pool of Italian Bicycle Municipalities, an encouraging result given the wonder of our capital city and the many municipalities it encompasses.

Italy therefore confirms itself as an increasingly transforming and bike-friendly country. The Covid-19 pandemic is changing the geography of mobility worldwide through the implementation of an extensive network of cycle paths.

Public transport, considered a safety risk due to its inability to foster social distancing rules, has increasingly pushed citizens towards sustainable mobility.

This is helped by the adoption of the Bonus Bike and other important regulatory changes, such as the inclusion of the Advanced House in the Highway Code.

The figures speak for themselves, in May alone there was asurge in bicycle research and salesconfirming an epochal turning point that is now tangible.