Bologna City 30 wins European 2024 road safety award
From January 1, 2024, Bologna will be the first major urban center in Italy to be a “City 30,” meaning that the maximum speed allowed on city streets is 30 kilometers per hour. The initiative-which we had blogged about-had been much discussed, despite the positive results.
The goal of the initiative, we recall, was to make streets and squares safer and more livable in order to increase the quality and usability of public space, as well as to promote more sustainable mobility.
An important renaissance came in recent weeks: Bologna was awarded the Road Safety Awards 2024, the European Road Safety Prize, given to the City of Bologna specifically for the Bologna City 30 project.
The award is the official recognition of the European Union under the European Road Safety Charter (ERSC), led by the European Commission with the participation of public and private entities committed to the issue, such as companies, associations, local authorities, research institutes, universities and schools. The shared goal of those who signed the Charter, of which the Municipality of Bologna is a member, is to reduce accidents with fatalities and serious injuries by 50 percent by 2030 and to reach zero by 2050.
The Bologna City 30 project, among three finalists, took first place in the “Urban” (urban road safety) section of the award, which is dedicated to local government authorities that have a key role on urban mobility and “recognizes and celebrates the most outstanding and innovative achievements of local authorities in the EU in developing actions to dramatically reduce the number of people losing their lives on urban roads, toward the common goal of improving road safety across Europe.”
Indeed, the Bologna project was deemed meritorious by the ERSC with these reasons: “In Italy, 73 percent of road accidents occur on urban roads, with Bologna having the third highest road fatality rate among the fourteen largest cities in the country. To address this problem, the Città 30 initiative was launched with four main strategies: designate 70 percent of the city as 30 km/h zones, invest 24 million euros in new pedestrian areas and bike lanes, launch public communication campaigns and a sustainable mobility ambassador program, and increase police patrols to raise awareness and enforce traffic laws. Early results are promising: in the first three months of 2024, the city recorded a 14.5 percent reduction in accidents and a 12.6 percent decrease in injuries compared to the same period last year.”
The Bologna Città 30 project is no stranger to awards: in recent months it had already won several national awards, including ANCI’s “Urban Award,” the “Mobility Award” from the Future4Cities festival in 2023 and the “Mediastars Award” for the communication campaign in 2024, as well as several European awards, including the “Road Safety Award” from ECF in 2024.
Source: TTS Italy
