Sustainable Mobility Week End.
Cefalú, September 19/20/21 2014.
Car Free Day.
Sunday 09/21/2014
The City of Cefalú, by input from arch. Salva Mancinelli, green economy consultant of the Mayor Rosario Lapunzina, participates in the 13th edition of the European Week of Sustainable Mobility, yearly promoted by the European Commission.
The Department of Environment of the Italian Government, subscribing to the objectives of such an important date, encourages the citizens' active participation in the various events created by any Cities or private associations in addiction to the specific actions scheduled in accordance to the national planning.
The European Week of Sustainable Mobility takes place every year from September the 16th to the 22nd and aims to drive the municipalities to introduce and promote alternative ways of transportation, such as bikes and pedestrian mobility, as well as to improve public transportation, which, expecially in the case of big cities, allows a reduction of both climate-affecting exhaust emissions and noise pollution, thus playing a major role for the preservation of public health.
The topic choosen by the European Commission for 2014 ("our streets our choice") focuses on how citizens can actually improve the quality of air through their choiches concerning mobility, and represents an opportunity to arouse a wider awareness about the effects of motor-vehicles traffic on the levels of pollution in urban areas.
As a matter of facts, the 2014 European Week wants to underline the actual power of citizens who can choose how to "use" urban areas by opting for a sustainable mobility and by reducing their dependance from cars.
The European week of sustainable mobility originates from the event "in my city without my car" which took place in France on one single day in 1998.
The mentioned event is repeated every year in September when the Cities close their streets to motor-vehicles for one day so as to allow the residents to see them under a different light and to become more conscious of the environmental impact of their choiches about mobility. The succes of that first event led to set up the European Week of Sustainable Mobility since 2002; its importance has then progressively increased in Europe as well as in the rest of the world and this year Cefalú is joining the list of the participant cities.
"Our adesion to the European Week of Sustainable Mobility is definitively coherent with the programmed P.A.E.S. (plan for the Sustainable Energy) which will be submitted to the City Council in a short time. Its main concern is to put into effect a sustainable system of public transportation able to meet the needs of the residents as well as to achieve the purpose of reducing the levels of atmospherical pollution so as to make our town healthier and more liveable" (quot. Rosario Lapunzina, Mayor of Cefalú).
Within the frame of the European Week of Sustainable Mobility, which sees a variety of events in every country of the E.U. , Cefalú promotes the Sustainable Mobility Week End from friday the 19th to sunday 21st, ending by the Car Free Day on September 21st.
A detailed program of the event will appear on the City website in the next few days.
www.comune.cefalu.pa.it/comune/Default.aspx]