Rome is banning tour buses
 

Italy's economic stagnation is making it hard to maintain its spectacular quality of life. Every year La Sapienza, the main University in Rome, does a quality of life analysis of the 110 major cities. Some years a city goes up, other years, it goes down. It is based on dozens of factors such as jobs, environment, schools, crime, health care, amount of leisure time, peoples' feeling of well being and satisfaction, etc.

In this year's ranking (see link below), Mantova has the highest quality of life. Where it says Gruppo, the third column, there are four groups. Group 1 means the quality of life is excellent. Group 2 means the quality is acceptable. Group 3 means the quality of life is poor. Group 4 means the quality of life is unacceptable. The fourth column is the number of points out of a potential 1,000. "Posizione 2015" is where the city ranked last year, so you can see if it is getting better or worse.

Rome is in the bottom 20% this year, in the unacceptable quality of life group, and is falling. One of the decisions that they have made to stop the slide is to ban tourists buses of all kinds from the city center; double deckers, the hop-on-hop-off, and all others. They can be outside the center, but the daily fee is going from 50E to 700E, effectively ending them there too. The only buses that will be allowed in the historic center, outside of city transportation buses, will be school buses. This is part of a broader transportation overhaul of the city, and won't go into effect until Jan 1, 2018. So if you like bus tours, you should do it in 2017. The Rome Minister of Transportation said, "This is not an attack on tourists, it's an attempt to improve the livability index of the city."

http://download.repubblica.it/pdf/20.../vita2016a.pdf

Wish they would do this in London as well, it's getting out of hand and errodes citizen's quality of life at the expense of visitors

In the 90s, when I was living in Rome, I had my sister visit me for a day or two, who wanted to take an (dis)organised quick tour of the city. Back then, ATAC (the agency running the city buses) had these "normal" looking buses (more seats, though) that would leave from Termini and run through town going by several of the famous sights/monuments. They would also include two ~60 minute long stops at the Vatican and Piazza Venezia. They cost really little (if I recall correctly, it must have been around 10,000 lire or about 5 €, or twice that amount) and any kind of explanation came from the driver who, obviously, did not speak anything but romanesco. We took the "tour" a second time with my in-laws and I was really disappointed later when I found out that these were no longer offered. :)

Actually, on an experimental basis, it is going to happen sooner than January 1, 2018. People say, "Don't drive in Rome, it's a madhouse, it's congested, there's no place to park." What the Rome Transportation department is trying to do is take back control for the benefit of the citizens.

The Spanish Steps, Fountain of Trevi, and Colosseum, were gray or almost black from pollution until their recent restoration. Seeing them now in their glorious original color is breathtaking. Preventing smog spewing buses from parking next to them again seems reasonable.

Tour bus driver groups are raising a stink so there will be protests, probably strikes, and some compromises, but that's just Italy.

On an experimental basis they are going to set up a strict anti-tourist bus, anti-truck ZTL in the historic center soon, ending April 30, 2017. They are setting up 21 ZTL cameras that will photo any vehicle longer than 7.5 meters that enters the city center, and the owner will receive a the fine in the mail unless they obtained permission to enter the city beforehand. Unlike usual ZTL machines, for now these 21 machines will also be staffed by police officers.

The European Union liked the idea so much that they donated an additional 51 ZTL cameras, saying, "It's time to regulate access to this area."

This is what any car has to do to enter the ZTL areas of Florence, Torino, and many towns in Italy. The goal is to, "eventually reduce private traffic, increase public transportation, and reduce pollution." I suspect this is only a first step, as they are planning a huge increase in the size of parking lots at key train stations around the periphery of the historic center, so that people will be incentivized to use public transportation.

One of the headlines today is, "Roma, pugno duro sui bus turistici: «Fuori chi è senza permesso». Da domani stop nell'anello ferroviario."

That means, "Rome, a hard punch to tourist buses: Get out, who doesn't have permission. Starting tomorrow, stop at one of the train stations that ring around the city."

Measures such as clamping down on tourist buses, AirBnb, etc., can be hard to understand from the perspective of a tourist, but the EU's donation of additional ZTL machines as a gesture of support speaks volumes about the perception that they need to regulate harmful aspects of tourism to achieve social, economic, and environmental outcomes favorable to local citizens that would not be achieved with a wide open, unregulated marketplace.
http://www.buro247.me/images/5816898...hStepsRome.jpg
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/rome...s-73638119.jpg
http://www.tods.com/en_ww/colosseum/

We did a night tour of Rome and while there was a bus involved almost half of the tour time was spent on foot. The access to the sites is incredibly limited.

I am sure that I could have had a better time, tour just taking cabs/ public transit and Googling the sites myself. The tour guide was horrible. We paid half of the posted rate and even at that price it was not worth it (we did not take the dinner option) :( https://www.greenlinetours.com/tours...t-with-dinner/

While they are reigning in buses, and even the crowds around the Fountain of Trevi are being limited by posting guards there who only allow a certain number of people to get close to it during the busy hours, it is actually pretty difficult to become certified as a tour guide in Rome. It takes a months to years of studying it almost as in going to college for it, then passing a very rigorous test to become certified. It seems like you just chose a bad company. If you had tried for example, Context Travel, or hided a private guide of which there are many, I'm sure you would have had a better experience. Tour guides tend to be great. Tour buses, not so great.