By Suzanne Sprague
Milan, Italy – [Ambient sound from inside a car.]
Suzanne Sprague, KERA 90.1 Reporter: Carmine DiPalo is cruising down the Italian highway en route from the urban magnet of Milan to the lakeside retreat of Como. It's about as long of a drive as going from Dallas to Fort Worth. But in Italy, you might think twice before making this trip because the price of gas is going to leave tread marks on your wallet.
Carmine DiPalo, Italian driver: Well, it's quite expensive. It's 2,000 lira per liter, which in U.S. units is $4 per gallon.
Sprague: So to fill up DiPalo's mid-size Italian sedan? DiPalo: It's around, I would say, $40.
Sprague: But wait, it gets worse. DiPalo, who works in the finance industry, says if you take into consideration the lira's purchasing power, it's more like an American spending $80 to fill up the tank of a Ford Taurus.
Carlo Altomonte, Professor, Bucconi University: The problem is that Italy is not rich in its own natural resources, so we have to import most of them from outside, mainly the Gulf and North Sea.
Sprague: Those high production costs are only part of the reason for soaring gas prices here, according to Professor Carlo Altomonte, who teaches economics at Bucconi University in Milan. Altomonte: We tend to believe that national oil producers or importers tend to collude together. And so there's a sort of cartel of companies keeping the oil prices high.
Sprague: In fact, the Italian government already has fined several oil producers about $15 billion for collusion. Unless a court slashes or overturns the fine, it will be the largest judgment against private industry in Italian history. But Altomonte says even that threat hasn't brought down gas prices much.
Altomonte: What the government has done last year to curb the effect is they have reduced for one year the taxes charged on petrol by 15 liras per liter.
Sprague: That's about two cents a gallon out of the $2.30 Italians pay in taxes on every gallon of gas. They roll their eyes when they hear Americans complain about the cost of fuel in the States. But last year, when the price of gasoline reached a ten-year high, Italian drivers joined their European counterparts by blocking oil depots in protest. Still, this is a culture steeped in Fiats and Alfa Romeos. Italians just don't seem deterred by the high cost of driving. In fact, they rank behind only the United States and Australia in the number of cars per capita. [Ambient sound of car driving by and honking horn.]
Frank Caruso, Resident of Como, Italy: Most Italians prefer the car. They love their cars. And there isn't a sense of carpooling. It doesn't exist here. Everybody takes his own car here and goes.
Sprague: Frank Caruso says he is an exception. The English teacher and translator takes the train for his commute to Milan. But he is still on the hunt for bargain basement gas prices in his hometown of Como, just 15 minutes south of the Swiss border.
Caruso: What we do of course is we drive to Switzerland to get gas, which is about $.50 cheaper. So, it's quite a bit of a savings. And of course once we're there, we stock up on tobacco or cigarettes, which are also cheaper; and since we're in Switzerland we also get chocolate, of course [he laughs].
Sprague: The Italian gas stations near Caruso's neighborhood caught on to this and started offering some residents special cards to buy their gas with in Italy.
Caruso: And with this card we get special reduction in the price of gas so now we don't have to go to Switzerland anymore. But of course that means not getting the chocolate we used to get. [he laughs]. So I don't know whether we have gained much on this.
[Ambient sound of man on the street singing "La Donna e Mobile" from "Rigoletto."]
Sprague: The streets of Milan are a euphonious mix of lyrical Italian debates, opera karaoke and antique trolleys. But navigating a car through the narrow streets of the city center is a real challenge. And parking is impossible.
[Ambient sound of trolley coming to a stop at a street corner.]
Sprague: So, it seems like just as many people here are riding the trolleys or subway as driving their own cars. Or, they top off their work wardrobe with a fiberglass helmet and weave on motor scooters through the backed up lanes of traffic, just like newspaper correspondent Ugo Tramballi.
[Ambient sound of motor scooter driving by.]
Ugo Tramballi, Correspondent, Il Sole 24 Ore: So to drive a car is a messy job. With a bike, with a scooter is easier. But of course a scooter, for instance, in India is the worst source of pollution. Here in Italy we made some rules, some regulations; of course the scooters are less polluting than in the past.
Sprague: They may be cleaner than a few years ago, but they still spew fumes that leave a heavy haze in the urban air. During morning rush hour, I walked from the city center to Santa Maria Delle Grazie, where Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" was painted. It only took me about 15 minutes to get there, but I was wheezing by the time I arrived - all from the air pollution. On the plaza in front of the church, university student Gaia Narciso told me how non-profit groups are trying to raise awareness about air quality.
Gaia Narciso, University Student in Milan: People have to put these sheets outside the windows of their apartments, and you see the difference - like in a month, this white sheet is like grey. So you think, "That's what I'm breathing every day."
Sprague: Although Italians consume less energy per person than most industrialized nations, their cars pollute more, partly because they still use a lot of leaded gasoline. The national government has been reluctant to ban leaded gas, but Gaia Narciso says it has developed other anti-pollution strategies.
Narciso: Since last year, there has been this No Traffic Day. The first Sunday of the month, the city center is closed to traffic, and everybody has to take trolleys or subways or just by the foot; and this is very good, I think.
Sprague: 40% less benzene, a toxic auto emission, was pumped into Milan's air during the first No Traffic Day. And a survey by the environmental group Legambiente reported half of Italians were pleased with the results. Fiat has also volunteered to make its fleet of cars emit 23% less carbon dioxide by 2010. So the signs may point toward a new day for Italian energy policy. But in a country where residents are as passionate about their autos as they are about the opera, it may be a hard line to tow.
[Ambeint sound of man singing opera on the street.]
Sprague: For KERA 90.1, I'm Suzanne Sprague.
* * * * *Suzanne Sprague's reporting is made possible in part by a fellowship from the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Photo: Milan, Italy/Janet DiPalo