Fixed routes and a cap on operators. The new restrictions for golf buggies

Anyone who frequently passes through the capital’s largest building site, Piazza Venezia, cannot fail to have come across them. They whizz along, zigzagging over the cobblestones like the most daring of scooter riders, offering the six or seven tourists seated on board an experience of the city which, it must be said, is truly authentic and, for some, perhaps terrifying. We are, of course, talking about golf buggies, the new urban scourge that has followed in the wake of electric scooters, just as the darkness that enveloped biblical Egypt followed the locusts. Whereas tourists once arrived in the city centre aboard gigantic coaches that unloaded them onto Via di San Gregorio, a stone’s throw from the Colosseum, a tour of the capital has now become more fragmented and eco-friendly. Visitors now traverse the seven hills as if navigating a vast archaeological golf course. It is regrettable that the centre of Rome constitutes the least restricted low-traffic zone in Europe, with over 300,000 permits in addition to electric vehicles which, like golf carts, are allowed in regardless. In short, it was only natural that, little by little, these little vehicles packed with perched tourists would begin to annoy the Romans.

So, what is to be done? The Regional Council – an elected assembly not known for being a hotbed of legislation, and therefore always on the lookout for something to do – has decided to take up the matter. FdI councillor Marco Betucci has tabled a proposal to provide local authorities with the regulatory tools to curb the phenomenon. The draft regional bill could be approved by November. It provides for the establishment of a regional register of operators offering the service but, above all, grants local authorities the power to draw up pre-determined routes, which must be adhered to by tour operators using golf buggies. But will that be enough? Needless to say, the operators are already up in arms, as they consider the law harmful and incapable of solving the problem: “There’ll be a queue of golf buggies on the fixed, pre-determined routes.” The Mobility Department is already considering the possibility of a tender process that could resolve the issue. In practice, on each route set by the local council, only those operators who have won the tender for that particular section would be authorised to operate. This is somewhat similar to the approach already taken with the tender for e-scooter operators, which was in fact aimed at limiting the number of vehicles in different areas of the city. However, there are far more operators involved in the golf cart sector, making the idea of organising a tender all the more complex.