A new deal for cyclists in Italian cities?

Positive news from Italy this time.  The association representing Italian cities is proposing some really interesting ideas to make life easier for urban cyclists.  Earlier this week, the Associazione Nazionale Comuni Italiani (ANCI; National Association of Italian Municipalities) presented a set of draft ideas to the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Maurizio Lupi.

© Agence France Presse

Maybe the most remarkable of their proposals would be a change in the burden of proof in case of accidents.  In legal disputes. the "less vulnerable" vehicle would need to show that it was not responsible for damage to the "more vulnerable" vehicle, or injury to the latter's driver.  As a cyclist, it's amazing to think that if I was hit --god forbid! -- by a car in, say, Milan, the legal focus would be on the driver to show that he or she wasn't at fault.  What better way to get motorists pay more attention to cyclists.

Some other ANCI proposals would:

• Allow for bike lanes along the right side of each direction of roadways;

• Require, in certain cases, an additional light on traffic signals for cyclists giving them a head start in making right turns;

• Allow cyclists to travel in both directions on one-way streets; and

• Require apartment building owners to provide bicycle parking areas.

The city officials are taking advantage of the fact that the transportation committee in the Chamber of Deputies is preparing to revise the national traffic code (Codice della strada) and that the Minister will be submitting his ideas for revisions sometime before the end of the year.

It's thought that the bicycle measures stand a good chance of being included in the code revisions since the same officials proposing the ideas would be responsible for their implementation.

Ilva Steelworks (again)

Italy doesn't need another long-running saga of corruption.  And my reporting on one doesn't say much of anything new.  But I came in early on this one.  And I've had a kind of morbid fascination to follow the story as it develops.  (See four earlier posts.)

This has to do with the Ilva steelworks, the largest steel producer in Europe.  The facility is located right next to the southern Italian city of Taranto in Puglia.  Last year, faced with hard-to-deny evidence that the facility was poisoning the air and the residents of Taranto, and that governmental authorities were unable or unwilling to stop it, judicial authorities stepped in.  They seized the entire facility and removed Emilio Riva and his two sons Nicola and Fabio.  The sons are under house arrest and the father has decided to live in England for a while.  

Taranto with the Ilva works in the background.

The authorities also began several criminal investigations.  The most interesting character to emerge so far appears to be a Girolamo Archinà, Ilva's director of "institutional relations."  In this position he developed and maintained relationships with individuals in all levels of government, the press, and the church.  He aim was always to allow the company to keep making steel and to avoid any constraining environmental or health rules.  As he would make his case, it must certainly have made a difference that Ilva is the region's largest employer with about 5,000 employees.  Even so, it appears Archinà may have been ready to use other means of persuasion.  He is suspected of paying 10,000 euros to a consultant to the prosecutor's office to have him tone down findings in a study of the sources of pollution in Taranto.

Ilva and Taranto are back in the news because new information from one of the investigations involves several political figures, the best-known of whom is Nichi Vendola, the governor of Puglia, an on-again, off-again national political figure, and subject of a mostly-complimentary Washington Post profile a couple of years ago.

Nichi Vendola, President of Puglia.

Apparently, telephone recordings indicate that Vendola tried to persuade the regional environmental protection agency (Agenzia regionale per la protezione ambientale) to go easy on Ilva so that it could stay open.  Vendola has denied any wrong-doing and says he hopes to meet with investigators as soon as possible.  

Meanwhile, thanks to two governmental decrees, the plant is still open, operating under a receiver.  But there are no signs the air in Taranto is any cleaner.

Following the Loire: Day One

Day One from Saint-Étienne to Feurs (24 July 2013)

I started with a short detour to Cycles Marcon on the rue Bergson; the street is a major thoroughfare running north in the middle of the city.  I'd forgotten to pack my cycling gloves.  The evening before, I'd found a nearly new store near the hotel called Cyclable specializing in "city bicycle riding."  I'm pleased to see new stores like this, and hope it's part of a successful trend (I came across another Cyclable branch in Orléans.)  But apparently city bicycle riders don't bother with gloves.  Cycles Marcon was a real bicycle store and I found what I needed.

Leaving Saint-Étienne, I'd planned to ride to Aurec-sur-Loire.  This was where I'd left off riding two years ago when I'd started at the source of the Loire at le Gerbier de Jonc and rode the first 200 kilometers.  But I should have studied the map better; and it should have been a topo map.  Saint-Étienne is set in a kind of bowl of hills.  A few, more or less flat routes lead out but they're mostly heavily-traveled roadways.  Probably for this reason Google maps directs a cyclist to take to the hills.  But Google maps may not know the cyclist is carrying 20 pounds of baggage.

Hills just outside of Saint-Étienne

I'd planned on averaging roughly 22 -- 25 kph.  As it turned out, between the hills and a couple of wrong turns, I probably averaged half of that for the first couple of hours.  I was getting worried that it could end up being a very long day.  At a point just west of Firminy, a town known for a le Corbusier project, Google Maps brought me to La Côte Martin.  I was facing a barely-paved pathway, way too steep to ride.  I wondered who devises these routes?  Was it some kid back at Google headquarters in Mountain View, who had no idea of the roads in this part of the world, who wanted to send me up this hill?  This wasn't going to work.  Looking at the map again, I could see there wasn't really any alternative; If I was going to go to Aurec-sur-Loire, I would have to do a lot of climbing.  At that point, it was nearly 1 p.m. and I still had about 50 km to go.  I decided I'd have to compromise a little in my commitment to ride the full length of the river.  Just ahead, along a nice, flat road, was Le Pertuiset.  It was on the river.  I could pick up my Loire route there.  It would only be 7 km downstream from Aurec.

Vacation homes at Le Pertuiset on the Lac de Grangent

But on the bridge at Le Pertuiset I saw that the road was going up again.  The Grangent Dam is about 6 km downstream from the bridge and has flooded any possible route down close to the river banks.  To go north towards Feurs I needed to climb up the D108 above the west side of the Lac de Grangent, the lake behind the dam.  Sometimes, after all the fretting, a climb can turn out actually to be fun.  From Le Pertuiset to the top of the climb at Chambles is about 7 km.  Over that distance the road rises about 200 meters (about 650 feet), which means a gradient of a little less than 3 percent.  But I didn't know that when I was riding.  All the way up I worried that the road would get steeper around the next bend.  And, at the same time, I was continually relieved that it didn't.  Most of France was suffering from a heat wave that week, including the areas around Saint-Étienne.  But long stretches of this road were shaded; I don't recall ever breaking into much of a sweat.  I also don't recall encountering more than one or two cars; several other cyclists, yes, but few, if any, cars.  At the top I felt great.  Coming to France I believed I was in decent shape.  But I wouldn't know for sure until I started riding.  The steep roads out of Saint-Étienne and the decision to turn away from La Côte Martin had made me nervous.  Here, though, I rode without any real strain.  I could handle this.

After the descent from Chambles, most of the rest of route to Feurs followed flat, straight roads.  Between the Monts du Lyonais off to the east and the Monts du Forez to the west, the Loire has created a wide, rich valley for agriculture.  I rode through fields of wheat and corn and felt for a moment like I was back in Iowa where I grew up.

Flooding in Italy

Two years ago today, heavy mountain rains caused flash flooding in Cinque Terre and other parts of Liguria in Italy. Lynda and I visited the area in 2006 and spent a wonderful day walking the narrow trail above the Tyrrhenian Sea from Riomaggiore to Monterosso. Vernazza (below) was about the mid-point of the 10 km walk.  We never thought of anything like this.  The flood waters rushing down the narrow canyons from the mountains to the ocean directly and indirectly 13 killed people and destroyed homes and businesses.  The area is still getting back on its feet.

Flash flood waters emptying into the harbor at Vernazza. © Tom Wallace

So, along with news about Berlusconi's latest legal problems and the Letta government's new budget proposals, flooding has been on Italian minds lately, at least some Italian minds.

Gian Vito Graziano, president of the National Geologists Council (il Consiglio nazionale dei geologi) warned recently of the likelihood of more such flooding and likely deaths. Everywhere in Italy, he said, misuse of land -- urbanization of agricultural fields, in-fill of wetlands, dikes along rivers -- has reduced its ability to absorb heavy rains like those that hit Liguria.

Unfortunately, the country’s creaky political institutions and sputtering economy (to say the least in both cases) probably mean that heads will be nodded sincerely, but little will change and the flooding risks will remain. (I recognize one could say the much the same thing about this country’s Republican-sabotaged politics and precarious economy and their effects on environmental policies.)

"No Tav": Turin-Lyon train line

Certainly lots of environmental issues are more significant than the high-speed rail line between Turin, in Italy, and Lyon, in France.  But an article on the project in today's Corriere della sera caught my eye.  I have a personal interest in the line having once followed the route on a train from Milan to Paris.  I'd paid for a ticket on a high-speed train, but in fact very little of it was high-speed until after we passed through the mountains and got into France.

For years, the French and Italian rail companies, backed by political authorities, have wanted to modernize the rail connection between the two cities.  The most dramatic engineering feature of the line is a planned 57 km long tunnel from the Susa Valley in Italy to the Maurienne Valley in France.  (Several famous Tour de France climbs, like the Col du Télégraphe, the Col du Croix de Fer, and the Col de la Madeleine, rise out of the Maurienne Valley.)

Environmentalists in both countries oppose the line out of concern, among others, for its impact on a fragile alpine ecology.  Questions have also been raised, especially in France, about its costs.  Lately, in Italy, elements of the "No Tav" ("Treno alta velocità") opposition has become violent.  The article in Corriere della Sera reported what is counted as the 15th incident of sabotage against the line.  Yesterday, while workers were off for lunch, someone entered a worksite at Bussoleno in the Susa  Valley and set fire to a piece of heavy equipment.  Bussoleno is about 50 km west of Turin.

This kind of violence is never acceptable opposition. It's dangerous and extortionist and those found responsible deserve serious judicial sanction, never mind their motives.  Still, I'm not sure yet where I stand on the matter of the line itself.  Will it, in fact, cause environmental harm?  I've visited the Maurienne Valley and it is not an isolated alpine environment, at least down along the highway running along the Arc River.  And that highway, as I rode my bike next to it, seemed to be carrying quite a bit of truck traffic.  Wouldn't that freight travel with a lot less pollution on a train?

Colorado flooding

For four years back in the early 1970s, Lynda and I lived in Boulder, Colorado.  It's been a while since we've been back, but i can still sort of recall the little stream that came down out of Boulder Canyon.  So the videos and pictures of the recent flooding are that much more remarkable, if not incredible.  The New York Times reports that 4,000 people in Boulder Canyon were told to evacuate immediately; and another 4,000 were told to move to higher floors.  The main campus of the University of Colorado has been closed.  Early estimates report that 20 percent of the university's buildings have had some amount of water damage, including the theater and main library.  There have been three reported deaths so far and more flood damage in and around canyons all along the Colorado front range.  The state's governor, John Hickenlooper, has referred to it as among the worst flooding in the state's history.

How could that much water collect and roar down the canyon and cause all that damage?  The Times reports 15 inches of rainfall in the past few days.  And where the rain fell on hillsides above Boulder and other canyons that had been burned by recent forest fires, there was nothing to absorb it.  Worse, heat from the fires had created a layer of soil that is virtually waterproof.  The rain falls and virtually all of it immediately heads downhill, collecting dirt, rocks, and all sorts of debris as it goes.  It knocks down and sweeps along almost everything in its path and doesn't stop until it looses energy on the plains beyond the mouths of the canyons.

After people recover as best they can from the shock, and after the cleanup, I hope the papers will continue to cover how, if at all, Boulder and the other communities respond.  It's a version of the situation following almost any weather-related disaster.  It's on-going in New York and New Jersey in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.  Is this combination of bare hillsides after forest fires and heavy rains an extraordinary, highly unlikely ever-to-be-repeated event?  Or does climate change make such extreme weather, even without the forest fires, more likely?  Is there a need to take steps to mitigate damage from similar floods in the future?  Would this influence land use decisions in the canyons?

The Écopole du Forez

Preparing for a trip can be nearly as enjoyable as taking as it.  This time, with lots of arrangments to make beforehand, that was particularly true.  How many days would I take to cover the 800 km?  How long would each day's ride be?  Were there certain towns where I wanted to stay?  Which chambres d'hôte seemed best placed and most attractive?

I didn't, though, plan what I'd be doing in each place.  I'd stay there at least two nights, giving me a full day to explore.  But I had no plans for that day, apart from possibly looking for something related to the river.  Invariably the chambres d'hôte offer multiple brochures describing local attractions.  Usually, traveling with Lynda, we already have plans and I ignore the brochures, except to stuff them in a drawer to make room on the desk for my computer.  This time, though, I thought they might offer something.  That's how, while I was in Feurs for the first two nights of my trip, I learned about the Écopole du Forez.

It took France a while to recover from World War II.  Eventually it did and from the mid-1950s through the 1970s, the so-called trentes glorieuses, the economy took off and grew steadily.  Especially after the destruction from the War, the growth meant construction -- roads, rail lines, buildings, homes.  And construction meant sand and gravel, much of which came from river beds.  Over time, the environmental effects of this became more and more evident.  In places with heavy extraction stream levels went down, in turn affecting fish populations and upsetting plant and animal habitats along the banks.  

In the mid-1980s, environmentalists were trying to stop extraction of sand and gravel from pits along a stretch of the Loire in the middle of the Forez Valley.  The mining was lowering the river bed, which, in turn, was affecting fish populations and upsetting plant and animal habitats along the banks.  In 1987, the Fédération Rhône-Alpes de Protection de la Nature (FRAPNA) managed to find the funds to buy one of the gravel pits covering about 27 acres.  That same year, three companies with contiguous pits decided to donate to FRAPNA an additional 370 acres.  The Écopole's history is silent on what may have been going on in the background to cause this.  Now, with responsibility for nearly 400 acres, FRAPNA turned to the European Union for funds to restore the pits and surrounding areas.  La Nef ("The Vessel"), a wood and glass visitors center recalling an inverted ship's hull.  The building sits on pilings several feet above ground, both to provide a vantage point and to protect against Loire floods.

They also found resources to build

 The center opened in 1993.  Twenty years later you need the old photos on display there to know what the area was like before.  The old pits have become a series of ponds bordering the west side of the Loire.  Grasses and reeds cover the banks and black alders and willows have grown up on the land nearby.  The restored habitat has brought fish to the ponds and lots of birds, including cormorants, grey herons, black kites, egrets, and several varieties of ducks.  The upstream Grangent and downstream Villeret Dams eliminated beavers from the Forez Valley.  But Écopole staff successfully reintroduced the animal several years ago.

On a daily basis the Écopole concentrates on environmental education.  It has ties to universities in Lyon and Saint-Étienne.  It works with schools in the area.  And it hosts a regular flow of tourist like me.  It is also trying to extend the écopole concept up and down the river.  This year, at the end of May, during the celebration of the Écopole's 20-year anniversary, supporters designated the center as the first component of what they're calling the "Transligérienne."  "Ligérien" (feminin, ligérienne) describes someone or something related to the Loire River.  The term derives from the Latin name for the river, the Liger.  Supporters of the Transligérienne idea hope to see a series of similar natural preserves created all along the 1,000 km of the river.  Eventually, too, they hope to link to the Via Rhôna, a hiking, cycling trail along the Rhone River.  The dream is a line of nature preserves from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.