Reducing pollution from motorbikes

Summary

Bologna wants to reduce pollutant emissions from motorbikes in the city and sought to explore possibilities to restrict access to the centre based on the environmental impact of the vehicle.

Implementing sustainable mobility

In order to reduce emission from motorbikes in the city centre, Bologna was planning on deploying an automatic control and enforcement system. This system would have restricted access to the historical city centre for motorbikes based on their emission levels.

The main objective of the measure was to:

• Trigger a conversion of motorbikes towards less polluting models.

Bologna has positive experiences with intelligent transport systems (ITS), also with regards to access restrictions. These systems have however not effectively controlled access by motorbikes as the deployed cameras are not capable of detecting their small licence plates.

Progress

Bologna stopped the implementation of the measure because an analysis of the national public registry of licence plates revealed that the database of motorbikes is not compatible with the envisaged enforcement system. To go ahead with the measure, the municipality would have had to ask citizens to provide information on their motorbikes. This procedure would have been very costly, difficult and still it would not have provided data on all owners of motorbikes. The municipality realised that many authorised vehicle owners could be fined unfairly. The municipality therefore decided not to proceed with the measure.

Outcomes

As the measure was not implemented, no results have been achieved.