Appia Antica Park president to Rome mayoral candidates: Will the Wild West continue to reign?

Appia Antica Regional Park President Mario Tozzi has written a letter to Rome’s mayoral candidates on the mobility issue. “Dear Mayoral Candidates, October is near your programs are certainly taking shape. Have you remembered to include a chapter dedicated to solving the mobility problem in the Appia Antica Park?” the letter published on the Park’s website begins with these words, and continues: "In 1997, the then Mayor Rutelli with an ordinance closed the Appia Antica to traffic on Sundays and holidays by creating gates controlled by the Municipal Police and indicating some parking areas near them. To this day that ordinance is still in effect, but it is completely or almost completely disregarded. In more than two decades, a permanent solution has not been found, or has been unwilling to find it, to give this place back the dignity it deserves. No one has found a solution that can bring together residents, compatible economic activities and sustainable tourist enjoyment. The result is that today the ’far west’ reigns." And he lists a series of points in which he expresses all the inconveniences in this area, from wild parking to speeding cars, from the state of cleanliness and decorum to transit and parking bans that are completely ignored.

The Park Authority has brought to “all the tables and service conferences that have taken place from 2013 to the present” its position, which is divided into three basic points: the elimination of traffic crossing the Appia Antica through electronic gates, making it safe for visitors to walk and bike along the road with speed limitation, a network of interchange parking lots, and an internal shuttle system to reach all the monumental sites.

“Are you in agreement with the enforcement of that old ordinance and will you allocate men and means in order to enforce it?” concludes Tozzi. "Are you ready to put an end to crossing traffic, or will you take responsibility for continuing to deface a 2,300-year-old monument that would not be tolerated anywhere else in the world?"

Ph.Credit

Appia Antica Park president to Rome mayoral candidates: Will the Wild West continue to reign?

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