Can you cycle in Rome? According to the law, yes. According to conscience, no. Or at least that's what many think, perhaps everyone, certainly too many. You can't cycle in Rome because of traffic, hills, cobblestones, and potholes. You can't cycle in Rome because that's how it's always been, because that's how it's always been done, or rather, not done, not cycled.

Yet cycling in Rome is possible, and perhaps necessary. To reduce traffic, to enjoy the hills, to survive the cobblestones and avoid potholes, because there are those who cycle in Rome, like the great Ciemmona people, like the die-hard representatives of various Fiab groups, like the brave members of VediRomaInBici. And like Franck Kuntz.

Franck Kuntz is a Frenchman who has lived, dwelled, and cycled in Rome for 25 years. An architect, he has designed roads and streets, in the sense of ways and methods to cycle in Rome. He does it every day to shop, take children to school, go to the office, tour the city, venture on an outing. But over time, instead of gaining confidence and trust, he discovered that tension was growing on the road, and fear was born. A gender war between buses and cars, motorcycles and bikes, between two and four wheels, let's add the legs of some surviving wheelchair, and also pedestrians. The law of the strongest, which is then the biggest. The law of hurry. The law of arrogance. The law that does not contemplate the only true law, that of respect.

But Kuntz didn't give up. On the contrary, he took care of it, he enjoyed it. And he wrote "Pedala Roma" (Ediciclo, 96 pages, 14 euros, with illustrations by Etienne Gendrin), a vademecum, that is, a small book to carry with me, with oneself, in a pocket or in memory, in the basket or in the head, to continue cycling in a city like Rome, eternal but dangerous, with the necessary awareness. And he did it with the schemes and precision learned in his profession, starting from the Highway Code, immediately listing the serious reasons why daily bike use in Rome is discouraged and the good reasons to insist, then addressing common themes for all users and all places, from bike type to storage and parking, from how to ride alone to how to ride in company, from insurance to prevention.

The most interesting parts concern bicycle common beliefs and those specific to Rome. Among the first: it's better to use a bike path than a bike lane (Kuntz disagrees: better the lane in the center, better the path in the suburbs), two-way is dangerous (Kuntz disagrees: experiences elsewhere - Paris, Lyon, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, even Bologna - prove the opposite), colored signage is essential (here too Kuntz disagrees: white is better). Among the second: bike paths in Rome are not usable (Kuntz agrees), Rome's traffic is dangerous for bikes ("Sometimes it can be so, but the culture of alternative mobility requires time for all road users and a strong political will"), in Rome bikes go on the sidewalk (Kuntz admits that "unfortunately" it is true). Another precious chapter - 10 points to evaluate a bike path or lane - is found in the appendix, but should be considered almost a premise for those administrators who plan a bike path (or lane) even to exploit public funding or just electoral convenience.

Bravo Kuntz. Bravo also when he argues that "today true progress would be doing without a large part of our cars".