Modern Living: The Roads of Rome

Like great beasts sickening with a common plague, the world’s big cities have long been struggling to keep from choking to death on the automobile. During the past few years, in the wake of Italy’s economic miracle, Rome developed an advanced case of the disease in its streets designed for chariots and its piazzas designed for people.

Ten-minute trips turned into hour-long undertakings, and it was always rush hour in this siesta city, where people normally go home to celebrate the three-hour lunch. Business suffered, and so did social life; instead of zipping across Rome in their Ferraris to make three parties a night, the glitter set began going only to parties in the immediate neighborhood. Last week Rome was incredulously experiencing something nobody thought would ever happen again—traffic was moving.

How had the miracle been wrought? By a series of simple edicts, issued by Traffic Commissioner Antonio Pala. On 57 main streets in Rome’s three-square-mile central area, all parking—even stopping—was banned. Everywhere else, parking was limited to an hour, and all parked cars were required to display cardboard disks showing the hour of arrival and the hour of expiration. Not even M.D.s were exempt. “A doctor can do almost anything in an hour,” a traffic official declared. At the same time, a fleet of midget buses was launched to ferry people from parking areas on the edge of the disk zone to the center of the city.

At the end of the Pala plan’s first fortnight, Rome was wondering whether it could possibly last. Other cities, including New York, have tried much the same measures, but they have usually foundered on the failure of the local patrolmen to enforce them (a $10 bill in the right hands from time to time works wonders in any town, in any country). Could the Roman cops—so much more noted for their ballet technique of directing traffic than for their enforcement of law—maintain the zeal that has them handing out more than 5,000 tickets a day? And how long would it be before Roman individual ism rose triumphant to beat the system?

“If I put my car in a garage, it will cost me $56 a month,” one descendant of Romulus mused. “And if I leave it on the street and get a $1.60 ticket five days a week, it will only set me back $32. But suppose the cops give me one ticket for every hour overtime? And suppose they raise the fine?”