Here in Florence the ruling mayor is playing with fire. Just a few months before the election they:

1. Declared the whole city area “special traffic zone” to ban all the old polluting cars, installing hundreds of cameras to automatically fine trespassers
2. Created bike lanes (real lanes, not just paint a line on the street) by narrowing streets
3. Spending millions to create new tram lines (and that means narrowing or closing streets)
4. Installing new Speed cameras on 4 lanes roads that are set to give fines with an extremely low tolerance like 1 over the limit
5. Giving the traffic police new equipment that scans the license plates and automatically fines cars with expired tax, insurance, biannual inspection

The traffic police has really got the hang on giving fines. There’s a 90% increase from past year, we’re the number one city in italy, with 200 euro of car fines per Capita! That’s insane if you calculate that even babies are included.

So… good, right? All the carbrains are pissed! “They want to take away our cars!” The elections for the new Mayor are in two months and the other populist parties are basically saying “we are going to undo all of this, cancel the tram, remove the speed cameras”

Between my circle the opinion is that the mayor went too far and the ruling party must be removed.

And all those fines that are coming just before the election aren’t going to help.

I’m an hypermiler and I drive really slow to save energy but I personally got 3 fines by driving 1 kmh over the limit on a 4 lanes road coming out from the highway. Can’t imagine the typical rage filled carbrain how many fines got over there. (Context: in Italy the traffic police is extremely slow in processing fines. They install a new Speed camera and the fines arrive 4-6 months later. People unaware of that will get dozens of fines to pay. At work I heard people complaining about getting 15 fines in the same road - that’s 3000 euro - he would definitely remember this when he’s going to vote)

The same party is doing advertising like “we want a cleaner Europe” [photo of polluting industries], or “we want a solidary Europe” [photo of migrants dying in the sea] or “we want more families” [photo of hands in front of a pride flag].

I’m scared that with a campaign like this, the populist far right party has easier life. People are scared of change and are going to vote the asshole that is saying “yes cars, no pollution limits, no migrants, no gay families”.

Since the war, here the left Always won the elections, but would pissing the carbrains, xenophobes and homophobes change the situation?