Il The GRAB – Grande Raccordo Anulare delle Bici (Rome’s cycling ring) is one of those projects that, in Rome, sparks debate and genuine enthusiasm.
It’s big, ambitious, complex. It splits public opinion, creates expectations, and fuels frustration. And that is exactly why it deserves to be told through a wider lens—one that goes beyond a single segment or a single controversy.
Because the GRAB is not just a bike route. It’s an idea of the city.
The origins: the Grande Sentiero Anulare
Before becoming an institutional project, the GRAB began as an intuition.
The idea behind the Grande Sentiero Anulare was simple and powerful at the same time: to read Rome through its parks, urban nature reserves, great historic villas, and secondary streets, and build a cycling itinerary capable of crossing the city without forcing it.
Not a bike path everywhere, but an original project that doesn’t chase other European models.
A permeable, adaptive network. Deeply Roman.
Rome needs a different kind of intelligence: a route that slips in, enters and exits neighborhoods, alternates protected sections with shared ones, and relies on urban “gaps” and possible connections.
When the intuition becomes a project
Over time, that idea met the institutions.
Over time, that idea met the institutions.
The Grande Sentiero Anulare became the GRAB: it grew in scale, took shape, attracted funding, expertise, and regulations. Inevitably, it became more complex.
When administrations get involved, projects change. It happens everywhere, it happens even more in Italy—and Rome is no exception.
The GRAB has become, in part, a pachyderm: slower, more articulated, more exposed to conflict. But that doesn’t make it pointless. On the contrary.
A project that divides (and that’s normal)
The GRAB has raised doubts, criticism, opposition.
Environmentalists, local committees, residents, technicians: everyone has brought legitimate concerns, especially when the route touches green areas, historic parks, and nature reserves.
These tensions are part of the process. They’re a sign that the project truly affects public space.
What matters now is how the conflict is handled.
The real risk is that the debate gets stuck on a single segment, losing sight of the overall vision and the project’s experimental value.
The GRAB as a testing ground
Beyond the final outcome, the GRAB represents something rare for Rome: a project that required a single direction, coordination among different bodies, designers, and skills—forcing everyone to work together.
That alone is already an achievement.
The GRAB’s real value goes beyond asphalt or signage. It lies in the method it tries to build.
An attempt—imperfect, exhausting, slow—to move past isolated interventions and finally think in terms of a network.
Rome can’t be copied (and shouldn’t be)
Rome is a one-of-a-kind city, and it needs targeted solutions.
Turning it into a “standard” European capital isn’t realistic—and perhaps not even desirable.
The idea of putting a bike lane next to every sidewalk is unrealistic.
This doesn’t mean surrendering to chaos.
It means accepting that Rome’s evolution must be inspired, visionary, bold—able to find formulas that fit the city without overturning it.
And this is where the original idea of the Grande Sentiero Anulare still feels extremely relevant: a form of mobility capable of interconnecting main cycling corridors, bike lanes, neighborhood parks, urban nature reserves, great historic villas, and the internal secondary streets of each district.
Even if the GRAB has become something else, that idea hasn’t disappeared.
It still lives inside it.
A model that can be replicated
And this may be the most interesting aspect.
In all its complexity, the GRAB can become a major urban laboratory.
But the idea that generated it—the Grande Sentiero Anulare—is replicable and scalable at the level of boroughs and neighborhoods.
Local networks: lighter, more agile, built from the lived experience of those who cross the city every day.
Not as an alternative to big projects, but in dialogue with them.
No longer “if”, but “how”
The GRAB is no longer a theoretical possibility.
It’s an open challenge.
Now the question is how it will be delivered—and with what capacity for collective learning. Because the GRAB’s true success also lives beyond completion: in its ability to leave behind a different way of thinking about mobility and urban connections in Rome.
And from there, perhaps, to start again. come verrà realizzato, e con quale capacità di apprendimento collettivo. Perché il vero successo del GRAB vive anche oltre il completamento: nella possibilità di lasciare in eredità un modo diverso di pensare la mobilità e le connessioni urbane a Roma.
E da lì, forse, ripartire.
