Blocco Totale del Traffico

Oggi c'e' stato il blocco del traffico, ma non piu' totale. Yesterday there was a "traffice free day" but it wasn't totally free of traffic. Why is this just a "preso in giro" (untranslatable at the moment)?

I love the idea of a day when no cars circulate in the city. Clean air, quiet, safe streets, no fear for the kids getting run over, all very tempting once in a while. Of course it can only happen an occasional Sunday when no one really has to take a car anywhere and it is unlikely to have any significant long term effect on the environment if people just anticipate or postpone their car trips around it. The only real advantage is to expose citizens to the joys of car-free city living.
But Rome has once again blown the opportunity out of carelessness.
1. Making exceptions for Euro 4 and other less-polluting vehicles means that instead of experiencing a wonderful car-free city people watch the city taken over by the "lucky" few who have new cars. The message is clear: I better get a new car too. This won't mean better cars but more cars on the road since I will sell my slightly older car to someone else or keep it as an extra car. Rome, we know, is already bursting with cars so more "clean" cars will jam up the streets making more "dirty" cars drive longer, idle more, etc.
2. A relatively traffic-free day is a great opportunity to convince people of the benefits of public transportation. Normally hostage to crowded streets and thus slow and unpredictable, on such days there is no excuse for buses not to run like clockwork. Since people are essentially forced to take public transportation on these days you would expect the system to be beefed up significantly, bringing in more money and showing people who normally sit for hours in traffic or circle endlessly looking for parking the joys of hopping on a bus and arriving at a central location painlessly. But, no, the Sunday schedule stays in effect and buses are as rare as ever. The message learned is that you should have just stayed home until this blocco totale was over and then started up your car again.