The Regional Administrative Court annuls the 'Bologna city 30' measure

The generalised application of the 30 km/h speed limit in urban areas is not in line with the Highway Code. The Regional Administrative Court of Emilia-Romagna upheld the appeal by taxi drivers and cancelled the measure with which the Municipality of Bologna instituted the '30 City'. In particular, it annulled the detailed urban traffic plan and the ordinances instituting the zones in which the speed limit was raised to 30 kilometres per hour. For the plaintiffs, the extended imposition of the 30-kilometre per hour limit would have resulted in almost double travel times, with a consequent reduction in the number of calls to be answered and a considerable reduction in revenue.

The Ministry of Transport was also involved in the dispute, and in its pleadings it called for respect for institutional roles, recalling that the law provides for the possibility of the ministry's exercising its substitutive power to obtain compliance with the Road Code. Code that, in fact, the municipality would not respect.

The administrative judge makes it clear that his decision does not enter into the "goodness" of the choice to limit the maximum speed to thirty kilometres per hour in the urban area, and therefore of its compliance with the public interest from the point of view of expediency and convenience. In the Tar's sights enters the part of the City 30 Master Plan that proposes to adopt a generalised limit: 30 per hour for all roads with the exception of those highways where the limit remains 50. An objective that, however - the judges point out - does not take into account the regulatory framework of reference, outlined, in the first instance, by the Highway Code (Article 142), which provides that the speed can be reduced under certain conditions: from the proximity of schools and hospitals to places where special protection is required for pedestrians. In addition, according to the ministry's directive (777/2006), the measure must be characterised by proportionality and appropriateness.

To legitimise the lowering, circumstances range, moreover, from the absence of pavements and intense pedestrian movement to the abnormal narrowing of road sections, from the winding of old towns to the presence of building sites. The reduced limit must, therefore, take these assessments into account. The administrative judges note that the choices of the detailed plan were made "after drawing up maps on speed, on accidentality and on the presence of sensitive receptors and commercial establishments, but there is no elaboration," the sentence reads, "that relates the findings of these maps with the decision to subject individual roads to the adversary speed limit.

The result is a contrast between the Plan's forecasts - which are generic and not punctually motivated by the specific reality of the places - and the rules of the Highway Code. Hence "the violation of the limits of the regulatory competence of the municipality in matters of traffic and road safety, having, the latter, introduced a new generalised speed limit and not also, as permitted by law, to be applied to individual roads with peculiar characteristics with respect to each urban road".