Italy confirms itself as the European nation most linked to car use, with one of the largest vehicle fleets in the old continent: 666 cars per thousand inhabitants, 30% more than the average for France, Germany and Spain.
Legambiente states this in the report "Commuting-Special urban areas" in which it explains that what weighs on this choice is the lack of interconnections between the various mass transport lines, of TPL (local public transport) and of soft mobility, of integration of the stations with the pedestrian and cycle urban fabric.
"The immobility of Italian cities, increasingly fragile and vulnerable due to the climate crisis, which also shows how little investment is being made in transport", observes Legambiente, explaining that from 2010 to 2023 there were 182 extreme weather events which, for example, had impacts on railway services with slowdowns or interruptions caused not only by intense rain and flooding;
landslides due to intense rainfall, but also record temperatures and strong gusts of wind.
The most affected regions: Lazio (37), Lombardy (25) and Campania (17).
The environmental association recalls that "the latest budget law for the first time since 2017 does not provide funds for rapid mass transport, the fund for which has been defunded, nor for cycling and soft mobility".
For Legambiente, greater investments are needed for metropolitan areas to resolve the unresolved issues of mobility and pollution.
The environmentalist association asks the Meloni Government to "start a season of policies for urban regeneration, starting from greater care and strengthening of rail transport, the improvement of the service along existing lines, more sharing mobility and electric mobility, together with the implementation of actions adaptation of infrastructures to extreme weather events, in order to rethink the use of streets, squares and public spaces, adapting them according to people and not cars".
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