The legitimacy of the decision by which the Cagliari City Council, within the framework of the Police and Urban Security regulations approved under Mayor Paolo Truzzu, established, to safeguard the livability and decorum of the city, a ban on chaining bicycles "to public infrastructure not intended for this purpose," under penalty of fines ranging from 100 to 300 euros, has been confirmed.
The Council of State decided this with a ruling confirming the rejection by the Sardinian Regional Administrative Court of an appeal filed by the Cagliari branch of the FIAB.
The judges at Palazzo Spada, stating that the ban "is not intended to modify the areas where bicycle parking is prohibited... but to protect, from the perspective of urban decorum, those public infrastructures which (...) mainly exist on sidewalks and other urban furnishings in squares, parks, stairways, tunnels, porticoes, and monument enclosures" and in relation to which "vehicle parking is already generally prohibited," held that "the provision in question does not violate the Highway Code."
Furthermore, in the Council of State's opinion, "it is also worth highlighting that the alleged unequal treatment between 'weak users' who travel by bicycle and 'strong users' who travel by car or other motor vehicles does not exist. Such unequal treatment can only be established when the situations being compared are perfectly identical, and this is not the case" in this case. "Finally, the disparity, also invoked in the appeal with respect to scooters, does not appear to be proven in any way."
The objections alleging that the first-instance ruling was erroneous for failing to address the contradiction between the contested regulation and the objectives established by the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan were also deemed unfounded. This is a discretionary assessment for which "the judge cannot replace the administration."
(Unioneonline)
