Potholes are becoming the modern ruins of a degraded Rome
Jason Horowitz
On a rainy Sunday morning, Cristiano Davoli stopped traffic and rushed into the middle of the street to save the day.
The 45-year-old comic book salesman, wearing a Patch Me logo across his chest, emptied a bag of asphalt into a deep and perilous pothole. He beat the pitch down with the back of a shovel. He pounded it with his boots. dents, hours of traffic and
“That’s called an emer- windfalls for tire dealers. gency intervention,” said One pothole was credited Davoli, a vigilante hero in the with shredding the tires of battle against the voracious 15 cars in under an hour. potholes that have opened The perpetually embatacross the city. tled mayor, Virginia Raggi,
All roads may lead to this month inaugurated a Rome, but when you get 17 million euro “Marshall here the mean streets and Plan” (not to be confused wrecked pavements will with February’s 90 million puncture your tires, break euro “Pothole Plan”) to patch your axles, herniate your up 50,000 potholes a month. discs and, in one recent case, The city has unveiled its “Potswallow your SUV whole. hole Patching Machine,”
A poisonous Roman cock- which it claims can fill 150 tail of chronic mismanagepotholes a day. And prosement, corruption, bureau- cutors have opened a broad cracy, neglect, heavy traf- investigation to get to the fic, rare snow and constant bottom of the crackup. rain has turned Rome’s roads Romans say the problem into a modern ruin that has has never been this bad, but surpassed overflowing gar- the Raggi administration, bage, busted water pipes which has been in power and striking bus drivers as for nearly two years, blames the emblem of a degraded its predecessors. Margherita city in another decline. Gatta, the city’s chief infra
First come the cracks, structure official, said that resembling spider webs. the world’s other cities had They give way to the grooved lots of potholes too, but that pattern of a dry desert floor. it was “normal that the capUltimately gaping potholes itol makes news.” open up. Camouflaged in a Someone spray-painted rainy March under cappuc- “pothole” before a pothole cino-colored puddles, they in the shadow of the Colos- twist ankles, topple zigzag- seum. The cobble-stoned ging scooters and turn car road from the train station to rides into brain-rattling off- Piazza Venezia, in the heart road excursions. of the city, is rutted, and taxi
“It’s a disaster,” said drivers say bobbling tourDavoli, who has made fill- ists laugh as if on an amuseing potholes his personal ment ride. mission, risking fines for Scooter drivers, already filling them in unauthorized accustomed to the new areas. His appeals to volRoman slalo m , find the unteer citywide have been degree of difficulty increased ignored by the mayor. by mogul-like bumps raised
The city has closed streets by pine-tree roots and pitchand reduced the speed limit black streets darkened by in many places to an ancient broken lampposts. ComRoman crawl. The potholes muters say their backs hurt. have caused untold acci- Spleens are getting ruptured.
Milanese always called Rome uncivilized. But now so do people in Naples.
Romans, conditioned by centuries of seen-it-all cynicism, sometimes even find themselves astonished.
In the Monteverde section of the city, Patrizia Ambrosini, 70, stopped to look at a 15-foot chasm fenced off on the street. The ground had given way days earlier and engulfed a Dacia Duster.
“Well, this is a first,” she said.
Earlier, and the earliest, Roman administrations seemed to care more about road maintenance. The Laws of the Twelve Tables, Rome’s first set of rules dating back to 450 B.C., included instructions to make straight roads 8 feet wide, stipulated what to do in case of water damage and decreed who “shall build and repair the road.”
Around 300 B.C., Romans started building roads to move their troops, citizens and goods. Starting with the Appian Way, named after the censor who ordered its construction, Romans paved an empire. Revolutionary populist Gaius Gracchus helped build public streets because he understood the junction between a road and the rabble’s heart.
Rome protected its streets by limiting chariot traffic and put a daytime ban on commercial carts. Julius Caesar fought to procure the position of temporary commissioner on the Appian Way, ancient stretches of which still stand. (Parts of the modern counterpart, the New Appia, do not. On Thursday, another sinkhole opened up under a couple of cars.)
After Rome collapsed, urban planning fell by the stant maintenance under wayside for centuries. In the heavy traffic.
1700s, Monsignor Ludovico In 2005, Mayor Walter Sergardi, who oversaw pub- Veltroni tried to remove lic works at St. Peter’s Basilmany of the cobblestones ica, helped introduce the to improve traffic conditions, beveled black basalt cob- but subsequent adminisblestones, known as sampi- trations had different polietrini, which are central to cies. In the past decade the the city’s charm. Lore has it city’s streets have become that he started laying them an unattractive patchwork of down after potholes nearly asphalt, cobblestone, gravel overturned the pope’s carand rubble. riage. In May 2016, after the city
But these days, the sam- estimated that half its buses pietrini have proved treach- broke down because of damerous for the city’s many age caused by potholes, or scooters, slippery for dress buche, the city introduced shoes and murder for stilet- the toll-free emergency line tos. And they require con- “060-BUCHE.”