Poor rail links and polluted roads: Italy's toxic pollution cocktail

Environmental campaigners in Italy say poor metro and suburban railway services are leading to high levels of traffic and smog in the country's cities.

According to a new report from environmental NGO Legambiente, the total length of metro lines in Italy is less than half that in Spain or Germany. The organization says that poor public transport services, in turn, mean residents of Italian cities have to rely on their cars.

To dig deeper into how people move around Italian cities in their daily lives, CGTN met up with two residents of Rome.‌

"It's impossible"

Filippo Forino lives in the central San Giovanni neighborhood and drives a 13-year-old petrol car.

"Public transport doesn't work in Rome, it's impossible, it takes three times the time that it would take with your car," said Forino.

Mayor of Rome Roberto Gualtieri has expanded a "green" zone in the city center, which has tighter restrictions for vehicles with higher emissions. Existing metro services are also being extended but digging new tunnels is slow in a city that sits on thousands of years of history.

To help cut emissions and improve air quality, governments across Europe have also tried to encourage car users to go electric.

Forino says he would like to buy an electric car but believes they are too expensive.

While small, single-occupant, electric vehicles are becoming a more common sight in the capital, traditional petrol cars are still dominant across the country as a whole. Less than 5 percent of cars registered in Italy in 2023 were exclusively electric.

According to official EU statistics, Italy also has the highest concentration of cars within the bloc, with almost 700 per 1000 inhabitants in 2022. Latvia has the lowest, with just over 400 per 1000 inhabitants.‌

Adapting electric vehicles to cities

A short walk from the Italian parliament, Giuseppe Pugliese has managed to find a rare thing in central Rome: a free parking spot. There is even a charger for his electric vehicle on the sidewalk.

Pugliese is Vice President of Tesla Club Italy, a group of Tesla enthusiasts founded back in 2010. Despite his involvement in the club, Pugliese admits that electric vehicles still need to adapt more to cities around them.

"What I should not be allowed to do in a big city like Rome, and especially in its center, is to drive in with a car that takes over 11 square meters of space for only one person, and find parking in the center of the most beautiful city in the world," said Pugliese.

Transport's role in EU's emissions target

Making roads across the bloc greener will be crucial if the EU is to hit its ambitious targets to slash emissions in the coming decades.

The European Commission has recommended a 90 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, compared to levels in the 1990s.

Italy's packed roads also have an impact on air pollution. Monitoring groups say cities such as Milan and Rome consistently report some of the worst air quality in the whole of Europe.

If Italy's government wants to cut emissions and air pollution, it will either have to reduce the amount of traffic on roads or make the cars driving on them greener. Either way won't be easy.

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