Tourists tired from a long walk, those lazy and distracted who don’t even want to think about putting together an itinerary, those who don’t even see Florence, sleeping comfortably on the traveling chair. They are the people of the groups that motorize themselves in Florence by climbing on electric caddies to get a quick overview of the city’s postcards. Not a new phenomenon, but ora has taken on impressive dimensions, with historic squares that have become road junctionswith such traffic that the drivers themselves ask for checks.
«Here we need rules, it’s a jungle in which everyone does what they like and more and more are popping up. If there were rules, limits, it would be to the advantage of those who, like me, are regular workers. Because many drivers in the city are not.” This is told by a driver who works for a large company, with prices for the most popular tours starting from 45 euros (per tourist) for the one-hour tour in the center, to 60 for the 90-minute tour which also includes Piazzale Michelangelo.
Piazza Pitti, Piazza Santa Crocewhere at a single glance you can count 9 of them, pPiazza San Lorenzo they are the great stations of the caddy people. The tourist leaves the museum or church and is attracted by the electric car, which offers tours with a multilingual audio guide. For everyone, Americans, Spaniards, French, Germans, Chinese, Russians and Japanese.
But, compared to the past, there no longer seem to be any limits on the routes: «Let’s not enter Piazza del Duomo and Piazza della Signoria. I honestly don’t know if it’s just a common sense choice or if it’s a rule. But for sure the regulation announced several years ago by Palazzo Vecchio never came into force. And we can go almost anywhere, even on pedestrian streets”, says the woman.
To think that before the pandemic, the Municipality had announced a ban on pedal rickshaws from the Duomo and Piazza della Signoria, while had indicated a much larger area of prohibition for electric caddies. Another announcement that remained a dead letter.
But the controls are also missing: if, as the driver herself explains, among the very few rules in force is the ban on acting as a tourist guide (to do this you would need a driving licence) and the obligation to adapt to the audio guide (even if someone takes advantage of this and goes much further and puts on a speaker instead of headphones, to the delight of passers-by too), there are those who come down in front of Palazzo Pitti and illustrate with broad gestures to American visitors the history of the Medici house, then became that of the kings of Italy.
The multiplication can be seen at all levels: in the squares, in fact, but also in the streets of the center and even on Viale Michelangelo, where in a tourist tangle the caddies themselves are slowed down by yet another double-decker red mammoth. But it can also be seen in commercial funds, where more or less improvised agencies dedicated to this segment of tourist exploitation are increasing.
Via Guicciardini and the corner with Ponte Vecchio remain the epicenter of madness, the perennial traffic jam, the consequence of failed choices by the administration or, depending on your point of view, of national laws that make any regulation impossible or almost impossible: in addition to the taxis and the few residents, here are the transporters at every hour of the day, here are the black NCC cars (now the majority of vehicles that travel in pedestrian streets), here are seven young American tourists traveling on three scooters (there are actually three of them on one), with the policemen who this time scold them and make them get off.
While the sidewalks are not enough to contain groups of more than 50 people pouring into the street: and if in terms of cruise passengers we are not yet at full summer, the school groups will take care of blocking the unfortunate person who has to pass by and has nothing to do with the tourism economy.
