Milan has 51 cars for 100 inhabitants, which is the double of other big cities in Europe, like Madrid (291,3) o Paris (225,2). One of the consequences is that traffic is terrible, and Milan is, for example, one of the worst cities on TomTom traffic index

Another big consequence is that motorists will park cars everywhere, because the number of legal on-street parking spots much lower than needed (the number of on-street parking spots is already much higher than other similar European cities) . If you have ever been in Milan, you would know that you can find cars parked on the sidewalks, on the bike lanes, between the trees at the side of the road, on zebra crossings, at the corners of intersections, at the bus stops, double parked (take a look at the pictures in this article to get an idea). This is a big issue, because people with reduced mobility, parents with strollers, people with sight issues are strongly impaired by this situation. Moreover an average of 5 times every day, public transit (trams and buses) gets stuck because of some really badly parked car, causing delays for tens or hundreds of people.

The administration is not willing to help and tolerates the status without doing much except the worst situations. They fear that this will impact their popularity, and may lose next elections. It is a well known fact that getting a ticket for illegal parking is so rare, that it costs less than a legal payed parking spot!

People was so fed up with the situation that and association called “Sai che puoi?” was able to organize an event to count and map illegally parked cars during the night of May 16th. It took a long time and effort, with some tests on a few blocks performed in the past. They also did a great social campaign with posts and videos like this one , and developed a web app on purpose.

The results were astonishing: 2000 people took part, and were able to walk all the 1700 km of the 3780 streets in the city and count illegally parked cars, divided by parking location (on the street, on the sidewalks, between the trees)

the streets of Milan turned green because all of them were part of the count at the end

Results:

  • 64000 illegally parked cars (during the day the situation gets even worse, with people coming from outside the city!)
    • 37000 on the street
    • 15000 on the sidewalks
    • 11000 on the grass or between the trees

This means that the city administration could get 5.3 million euros of tickets in one night, which means the equivalent of 134000 public transit month tickets.

The final aim is to force the administration to act and do something. The idea is that neglecting the issue with such numbers should be more difficult.

I think this is a great story, and I never heard of something like this from anywhere else. I want to say thank you to the organizers and I would love to get this event known outside Italy