What’s Italy without traffic?

Last night, on my way home from a quick family vacation in Sabaudia, I stopped in the office in L’Aquila to catch up on a bit of work. Silvia and the girls also stayed in town, so we ended up leaving together for home.

One of the many negative consequences of the earthquake is the traffic. We used to complain if a few of the main streets slowed to a standstill at rush hour, but at most they slowed us down by 15 minutes a trip. People in Rome or Milan (or Chicago, for that matter) would probably have called it light traffic.

Now, with two of the major routs across town off limits (one passes through the Red Zone, the other has a bridge out), traffic is everywhere. The road system in town, like most cities with thriving downtowns, was organized in a wheel and spoke system. Most of the traffic flow went to and from the center - in the space of 30 seconds that all changed, there is no center and will not be for years. Offices, both public and private, are scattered in neighborhoods and outlying hamlets many of us had never been to. Add in a boom of heavy vehicles for the reconstructions and you have a permanent log jam.

Until after six in the evening, when people start to leave. Tens of thousands of us now live in outlying villages just in or out of the "crater" and in cities and towns up to 100 kilometers away, sometimes more. Many take the bus, of course, but it is striking to drive out after work. Last night at eight I started driving home. I have my secret back roads in town that are mostly deserted at the time, but it was from the roundabout at the cemetery all the way to Navelli that brought back memories of driving with the cars full on the evening of April 6th, I was part of long trail of cars driving orderly out of the city towards Pescara and Sulmona. Very few cars were going the other way, unlike April 6th when cars and buses left, heavy vehicles from the fire brigades and civil defense services in the other.

This happens every night. Logjams in the morning as people try to make it in before work starts, a slower more orderly trail home at night.

By the way, the months living in a family-run hotel in Montesilvano on the coast was not a vacation as some try to pass off. My clear complexion below the neckline is testifies on my behalf. While we were sheltered and fed and away from the aftershocks, like tens of thousands of aquilani, we lost hours of our lives commuting and creating an ever larger carbon footprint.