From senatorial horses to horsepower, the Eternal City is eternally threatened. Paddy Agnew reports on Rome's apparently intractable traffic problems
Ancient Roman history teaches us that the Emperor Gaius Caligula made his favourite horse, Incitatus, a priest of the temple. Later he proposed to appoint the beast a senator.
One suspects that if Caligula were around today, he would be doing the same thing for his favourite motor car. The reality about modern Rome, of course, is that the Eternal City has long since been overrun by the automobile. Indeed, if Romans don't watch out, the car will soon have taken over completely.
According to a survey released this month by Rome City Council, the urban Rome area has 2.4 million cars as opposed 2.8 million humans - that's 893 cars for every 1,000 citizens.
Traffic in Rome is such a problem that even well-meaning guide books devote space to it. The Eyewitness guide to the city issues a grim warning about the "insubordinate" nature of the Roman driver, adding that "in the usually clogged streets first impressions suggest there can be only two sorts of pedestrian in Rome: the quick and the dead".
True, visitors take one look at Rome's traffic and ruefully shake their heads, often making reference to the apparent "madness" of the "modern-day chariot race".
To the visitor's eye, traffic moves fast and without too many apparent rules. For the Rome-dweller, unfortunately, it doesn't move nearly fast enough and to hell with the rules.
The survey released by Rome's Mobility Department (cynics have renamed it "the Immobility Department") certainly confirms the worst impressions of those of us who regularily head out into the great Roman traffic snarls.
For a start, the number of cars registered in the urban area makes for a revealing comparison with other European capitals.
Rome's list-topping figure of 893 cars per 1,000 citizens (almost double the next highest city, Madrid) makes for an average traffic speed of 18 kilometres per hour - and down to 4-6 kph at many bottlenecks. With 36.7 per cent of the city's population preferring to drive to work, it's hardly surprising that 48.3 per cent of Romans complain that they take from one hour to 90 minutes to commute.
Just to make things worse, as the country's capital, Rome witnessed at least 70 major street protests last year, demonstrations that further paralysed the already semi-static traffic.
Little wonder that 64 per cent of Romans complain about suffering from stress prompted by traffic pollution, both from noise and smog which are well above Italian legal limits in many parts of the city.
It's true, of course, that Rome's huge car population reflects the city's serious infrastructrual shortcomings with regard to public transport. While London can claim 260 kilometres of underground railways and Paris 110 kilometres, Rome has but a 24-kilometre, two-line system.
Shoddy and/or corrupt local government in Rome throughout much of the post-war era doesn't totally explain the lack of a decent "metro". Both the current Mayor, Walter Veltroni, and his predecessor, Francesco Rutelli, have made serious efforts at confronting the problem throughout the past decade.
Nor can Rome's problems be exclusively blamed on the powerful impact that the Fiat-led motor car lobby had on national politics since the end of the second World War, prompting as it did the development of an extensive and excellent national autostrada network at the expense of public transport.
NO, Rome's problems are also linked to the unique nature of the Eternal City. Put simply, every time a JCB starts digging in Rome, it sooner or later turns up an ancient Roman artifact, forcing site closure until archaeological experts from the Arts Ministry check it out. (If you're smart, you put the arteifact in your pocket, keep digging and say nought). A proposed third metro line recently suffered a major setback when the city's archaeology superintendant, Adrano La Regina, pointed out that its proposed path could seriously destabilise priceless ancient monuments, including even the Colosseum itself.
Concern about the extensive ancient heritage tends to slow down inner-city transport projects. After all, who wants to go down in history as the architect or engineer who got his or her calculations wrong and brought down the Colosseum?
Yet, the site of ancient Rome is also the teeming capital of a huge modern state and is accordingly beset with traffic chaos. In that context, the City Council has sent its survey to the office of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with a note attached requesting the right to implement emergency powers.
The mobility department claims such powers are needed to get around the cumbersome bureaucratic procedures of local government. It wants to have the freedom to immediately introduce a series of initiatives, among them lanes for buses and taxis, more car parks and a radical re-think of Rome's overall road map.
"We don't need money," says City Council spokesperson Simona Innocenti. "What we need are emergency executive powers."
Those of us who have lived in Rome for some time might be tempted to argue that what is needed is a miracle - namely, the total abolition of the car. Given the Italian attachment to the car, that currently looks a very unlikely starter. All Hail to Senator Sig. Car!