Ancient hill ‘desecrated’ by car park
March 8, 2009
Amid a crescendo of protest, the city of Rome is about to start building a seven-storey underground car park beneath one of the city centre’s prettiest and most strategically located parks.
La Terrazza del Pincio is laid out on the summit of the steep hill overlooking Piazza del Popolo, the architectural masterpiece at the top of Via del Corso, Rome’s ancient main street. Both the park and the piazza below it were transformed by the architect Giuseppe Valadier in the 19th century after the French government then in control of the city noted the absence of well laid-out walks in the centre. The avenues are lined with oaks and pines and dotted with busts of eminent ancient Romans, and enjoy fabulous views across the city centre.
But the park is about to disappear behind high fences and, for several years, will be a building site. When the public is allowed back, the authorities claim it will be unchanged from before, but instead of earth and remains of the ancient city it will house seven floors of parking.
Believing it is still not too late, Italia Nostra, (Our Italy), an association dedicated to protecting Italy’s heritage, this week made an appeal for a suspension of the work and a re-examination of the whole project.
The association claims that the car park is being imposed on the city without proper consultation, without a thorough review of the archeological remains buried within the hill, and at the risk of damaging a vital acquifer that runs through it. It also claims it is unnecessary. As any visitor to Rome knows, many of the narrow cobbled lanes of the city are clogged with cars around the clock, despite parking restrictions that are often only theoretical. The Pincio scheme will be the third huge underground car park meant to address this congestion yet the car park under the Villa Borghese nearby is regularly half empty, the association claims.
The suspicion of some critics is that the true motivation for building a third such facility is to generate hefty construction contracts without the controversy that visible schemes attract.
Italians are conspicuously more attached to their cars than other Europeans. Recent figures published by Eurobarometer show that there are 670 cars per 1,000 Italians, a figure beaten only by the US. In Rome it is even higher, at more than 900 cars per 1,000 citizens.
Adrian Labucci, president of the Rome branch of Italia Nostra, said: “Car parks and monuments are incompatible. This is cultural vandalism.”
The city authorities say that the project will provide residential car parking for those living in central streets that are soon to be pedestrianised, and that all relevant officials backed the plan. But at the protest meeting letters were read out indicating that only outline consent had been given.
Source:     http://www.independent.co.uk       By Peter Popham
Tags: italy, parking, car parkRelated Posts:
LPG car explodes as driver lights cigarette
January 24, 2009
Peter Tidbury had just filled his Peugeot 607 with 40 litres of gas at a service station and was driving at around 30mph.
He could smell gas in the car and passed it off as remnants from the petrol station but it was in fact a cloud of fuel in the cabin.
Mr Tidbury decided to smoke a cigarette and the second he ignited the lighter, its flame sparked a fireball.
The windows were blown out and the bonnet and boot were thrown open by the force of the blast.
Nearby householders were evacuated for fear of a further explosion and the windscreen was discovered 50 feet away.
His clothes melted on him and firefighters believe he survived serious injury or death because the seats took the force of the explosion.
He had bought the car privately for £5,000 three weeks earlier and two garage checks gave it a clean bill of health before he got behind the wheel.
Mr Tidbury, 55, an energy-saving company manager, who needed hospital treatment for minor flash burns, said: “It just wasn’t my day to die.”
Mr Tidbury, a widower from south-east London, drove to northern England last weekend to visiting his daughter and friends.
After a website to locate a filling station selling LPG, he filled up in Monk Bretton, Barnsley, South Yorkshire.
He said: “I was told you get a slight smell of gas when you fill up so thought nothing of it and wound the window down to freshen the air and put it back up again.
“I fancied a fag so wound the window down again slightly and then lit up. I was doing about 30mph and as I lit the cigarette there was an almighty explosion.
“The windows went out, the bonnet went up and the boot went up just as you see in the Hollywood movies. I was belted in and braked sharply. I can’t remember this but I was told that I was directing traffic around the car whilst my suit jacket was still smoking.
“The fireball singed me on my face, hands and legs and melted my jacket lining and some of my shirt. I looked as if a firework had exploded in my face.”
It is thought a leak in the pipe from the filler to the fuel tank allowed gas to seep into the car which ignited when he lit up.
He added: “When I walked past that car to get in the ambulance I thought that was not survivable. For me it is miraculous.”
Mr Tidbury has ruled out buying another LPG car and intends to quit smoking.
Fire station watch manager Neil McQuillan said: “The car looked like a hand grenade had gone off in it. How anyone can survive an explosion like that when the car is severely damaged is remarkable really.”
Source:Â http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring
By Paul Stokes
Tags: fireball, US, autoRelated Posts:
China’s Zoomlion buys Italy’s construction machinery maker CIFA
October 8, 2008
Local construction machinery maker Changsha Zoomlion said yesterday it has completed its acquisition of Italy’s Compagnia Italiana Forme Acciaio SpA (CIFA), with Goldman Sachs and two other investors.
Changsha-based Zoomlion paid 163 million euros for a 60 percent stake in the Italian construction machinery maker from Italian private fund Magenta Fund and other CIFA shareholders in an all-cash transaction. Goldman, Mandarin Capital Partners and Chinese private equity firm Hony Capital will hold the remaining 40 percent.
The deal is expected to give Zoomlion a foothold in foreign markets and boost its overseas sales by “combining CIFA’s international brands, global sales and distribution network”, Zhan Chunxin, chairman and CEO of Zoomlion, said.
He said he expects the company to generate 40 percent of its sales outside China by 2010. Zoomlion recorded 1.02 billion yuan of exports in 2007, or roughly 11 percent of its overall sales.
CIFA, headquartered in Milan, has a 20 percent market share in Western Europe and ranks third in the global concrete machinery market.
Zoomlion is No 2 behind Sany Heavy Industry in the domestic concrete machinery sector and is expected to be in the top two in the global market after the acquisition.
“The deal will improve Zoomlion’s global sales and technology, which will make it the top Chinese concrete machinery maker by global sales. But Sany will still dominate the local market,” Xu Xingyue, an analyst at Beijing-based Changcheng Securities, said.
But some analysts warned of short-term risk, as concrete machinery is linked to the real estate industry and could be affected by current global economic woes.
The acquisition comes after Sany said it would invest in a new US plant.
China Daily
Tags: industry, chinese car parking, china parking websiteRelated Posts:
Rome’s Car-Parking Chaos Sparks “Barbarian” Debate
September 6, 2008
Visitors leaving Rome with anecdotes of cars parked on zebra crossings, blocking pavements or two abreast on narrow streets would probably think the locals would welcome plans for a giant new carpark.
But this is Italy, where the calmest of conversations looks like a row, and debate between conservationists and modernizers over a carpark on an ancient hillside has escalated into a raging debate with both sides calling each other “barbarians.”
Some of the biggest names in Italian culture and politics – film director Franco Zeffirelli, pop star Adriano Celentano and centre-left opposition leader Walter Veltroni – are involved.
In a city that is effectively an open-air museum, bulldozers starting public works are almost always halted by archaeologists hailing the discovery of yet another ancient ruin.
Pincio hill is a Neoclassical terraced garden designed by Giuseppe Valadier in the early 19th century astride 1st Century BC ruins that conservationists have dubbed a “Secret Pompeii.”
City hall chose Pincio two years ago for a seven-storey, 726 space carpark to allow the narrow streets between Piazza del Popolo and Piazza di Spagna — one of Europe‘s poshest shopping districts – to be reserved for pedestrians.
In a city whose drivers American travel writer Bill Bryson said “park their cars the way I would park if I had just spilled a beaker of hydrochloric acid in my lap,” there is a clear need for more orderly parking and more public transport.
The debate essentially forces Romans to choose between their passion for cars – Italy has one of highest densities of car ownership in the world — and pride in their ancient culture.
The Pincio carpark was approved when Veltroni was mayor but Rome is now run by right-winger Gianni Alemanno. Traditionalists in Italy’s conservative government want him to ditch the plan — as do some leftists like Celentano, who called it “degenerate.”
In the latest round, Culture Minister Sandro Bondi – a poet – accused the centre left of turning Rome into “a supermarket for mass tourism.” In a letter to one newspaper, he proposed an international contest to solve Rome’s traffic problems.
Veltroni, a novelist and modernist, says the real barbarians are those who say “no” to anything new “in the country with the most acute ‘Nimby’ (Not in My Back Yard) syndrome in the world.”
“Without local people the centre of Rome risks becoming a giant tourist mall … and local people must have somewhere to park their cars,” he wrote in Corriere della Sera Newspaper.
Source:Â Â Â Â Â http://www.reuters.com
Tags: EU, City, can ziplarRelated Posts:
New Online Car Park Reservation System
July 16, 2008
A dream has now become true also at Berlin-Schönefeld: Going by car to the airport, no stress of looking for a parking lot, a beneficial price, and a short distance to the departure terminal.
Like for the airline companies, where by booking in time you automatically get a chance for a fair-priced ticket, you will now have a possibility to use a beneficial car park in close vicinity to the terminal, by early reservation / booking.
On 1st July 2008, the online car park reservation system has commenced its start-up on the website of Berlins airports, in cooperation with APCOA.
The passenger can now comfortably book a parking lot via Internet on the car parks P1 and P6 as well as in the multi-storey car park P4 of the airport Berlin-Schönefeld and pay in advance. Reservation systems have been used by Scheidt & Bachmann also on other airports like Stuttgart Airport (Germany), Boston Logan Airport (USA) etc. but this new reservation system is more strictly dividing functioning and free design capacity. It is embedded in the own homepage.
Straightforward in dependence on the reservation time and advance booking time, a discount computer integrated in the system guarantees a fair price to the final customer.
During paying in the online portal by credit card, ec/Maestro card or by the PayPal method, the passenger also selects his access medium (credit card or ec/Maestro card). Entry and exit are performed without the ticket by the access medium selected. Paying at the automatic pay station is omitted because the customer gets the voucher on the parking fee posted by E-mail, thanks to the reservation system. All relevant information details such as parking time, parking lot, etc. are derived from the reservation confirmation. The availability of a free parking lot will be ensured by the reservation allotment integrated in the parking system. This is the reason that it may happen that the car park gets the occupation status Full although there might be vacant parking lot. These vacant lots are provided for the reservations.
This shows that early reservation has benefits only: fair prices, attractive offers, no stress of car park search, and a guaranteed vacant parking lot. All of these functions are available to the operator, without any further manual adaptation or acceptance of reservations by phone or fax.
What is the technical method to realize online reservation? By selection of the reservation period, a request is directed to the server of the parking system at the Airport Berlin-Schönefeld, where the basic tariff stored in the system is determined. For every parking period desired, it is possible to leave a certain discount product, which depending on contingency and in consideration of the reservation period, the time of reservation and number of reservations of the customer determines the individual tariff. This reservation system is a platform for car park booking at all locations connected. A special feature of this online system is the freedom of web design. Via the SOAP server interface, the reservation system has been integrated directly into the customers own web site. As there are no other windows opening in the browser, the functioning capacities of advertising banners will be maintained. This reservation feature can be perfectly integrated into the web sites of cooperating partners, as e.g. travel agencies. Additional special conditions can be awarded to these partners via the discount module.
In the back end, the management of the online payment portals is also supplemented by the administration of all reservation master data, as well as all reservations existing in the system. Apart from this, the allotment can be controlled on-site, and the difference counting integrated in the system regularly considers all reservations left in the system, via the dynamic parking lot control. By means of the contingency control it can be determined how many parking lots shall be reserved for future reservations. Thereby limited temporary campaigns to utilize free capacities can be planned and performed via the discount module.
Source:Â Â Â Â http://www.parking-net.com
Tags: EU, priority, urban parkingRelated Posts:
