“I asked our offices to prepare an order that requires MIT and Autostrade to present a work plan to the Region that combines mobility with safety in our area. I hope they want to do it without challenging the act”. This was announced by the President of the Liguria Region Giovanni Toti, defining the situation of construction sites on the Ligurian motorways “a disaster”.
“We are ready to go to court to ask for compensation for the damage suffered by our citizens and our businesses. A gigantic damage. Finally I ask that the Government, as partial compensation, immediately finance all the works that the economic categories of Liguria are asking for and which they consider indispensable. And everything must be done quickly because the lack of answers is becoming intolerable. “Two years have passed since the tragic collapse of the Morandi Bridge and in all this time little has been done. Now, suddenly, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Highways have decided that all the lost time should be made up in these weeks, when tourists arrive, when our ports start working again, when Liguria comes back to life. It seems absurd to me but I have no way of preventing it, “Toti underlines.” We asked for a serious work plan, which will make our roads safe without killing our territory, a plan that will not transform our highways into bumper cars because of infinite yards. For now our requests have not been answered. Now there is talk of a plan to shut down even parts of our network. I say it clearly: it is unacceptable! “
“If the highways depended on the Region, I would make a safety plan that starts from the situations deemed most at risk and gradually faces the less problematic, organized so as not to destroy the possibility of moving and reaching the region, so that pay are not our citizens and tourists trapped in traffic and our businesses that are already struggling to leave. It does not take a genius. It takes someone who takes responsibility for it. And by law at the moment it can only be the Ministry and Highways. Any other hypothesis produces the chaos of these days and means that someone does not want or cannot take on the responsibilities that belong to him. I don’t even want to think that – he concludes – it is done on purpose to exacerbate the political climate of our region “.
On the chaos galleries is total. On the one hand Autostrade per l’Italia, which announces the possibility of having to plan the closure of entire sections in Liguria, next week, in order to be able to complete the works on time. On the other, the Ministry of Infrastructures, willing to complete the investigations in the tunnels. In the middle are motorists, road hauliers, vacationers, hostages queues. Like this morning, when there was an 8-kilometer traffic jam on the A26, in the direction of Genoa, between the A26 junction and the A7 Milan-Genoa and Masone branch. The one between Autostrade and Mit can be said to have become an arm wrestling with a question at the center: what is the condition of the vaults in the motorway tunnels of Liguria and concrete under the “unduline”? According to the commissioner of the MIT, Placido Migliorino, Autostrade has the obligation to find out in what are called “primary inspections”, by July 15th. According to sources from Aspi, on the other hand, it was Migliorino himself, on 27 May, who asked for the dismantling of the corrugated board within a very tight deadline. Hence the closings and the construction sites. Just Migliorino has made a commitment to evaluate the state of health of the tunnels by not dismantling the corrugations, as Autostrade is continuing to do, but through non-invasive analyzes, using geo-radar (a useful tool if they are plastic, not if are made of metal). In this way, the commissioner is convinced to understand in 147 times, in less time, which ones need urgent insights and which can wait until after September, when the flow of tourists in Liguria will be less.
In the meantime, however, the days pass and Autostrade is continuing to dismantle the corrugations to close the controls on schedule. Also because inside the dealership they are not sure that the new MIT method can work on all the tunnels that still need to be analyzed. Autostrade is on its way and the nightmare of the total closure of six tunnels on the A26 and eight on the A12 is on the horizon. What Autostrade is thinking, which has translated in the past few hours into a report to MIT, is to close the sections where it is necessary to check the twin tunnels of others that have already been closed for restoration work. This is because, if major defects were found in the new tunnels to be inspected, the section would suddenly close, leaving an incalculable number of vehicles in uncontrolled chaos. By planning the closings, however, every motorist or hauler would be in advance which route to take to get to his destination. With huge delays compared to the normal journey, of course, but without the surprise effect. The closings would then be in the central days of the week (presumably from Tuesday to Thursday) in order to avoid impacts on exodus and against exodus of the weekend. But even with these little tricks it would be impossible to avoid infinite inconvenience. In this deadlock situation, MIT takes the floor, which has called up Autostrade per l’Italia for tomorrow to optimize the actions to be taken regarding checks in Ligurian tunnels and a plan to mitigate road traffic problems. “The MIT – reads the note from the ministry – has maintained constant contacts with the motorway managers to ensure that checks are carried out, while limiting the inconvenience to traffic”.
In the meantime, to face the chaos that construction sites and inspections at motorway tunnels are creating, the Bureau of Anci Liguria has obtained, on Tuesday, a video conference meeting with the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Paola De Micheli. “The minister accepted the request for an urgent meeting on the critical situation facing the roads in the region, sent by President Marco Bucci on behalf of all the Ligurian mayors on 18 June. The minister – reads the note from Anci Liguria – in order to start a fruitful discussion on the road network that affects the Liguria region. “In the letter, the president of Anci Liguria Bucci wrote that the Ligurian road network is” a bad business card for a territory who lives mainly on tourism, and who wants to start again after a long lockdown. Yet this should be the time of the restart which, for us, means tourism and welcoming visitors, who, however, seeing these images and thinking about whole days stuck in a cockpit on a highway, will hardly be enticed; this generates significant damage which adds to what has already been endured in this emergency phase “.
That the block-total bomb is about to explode, it is clear from Anspi’s plans. The multiplicity of construction sites and the good weather that invites tourists to reach the rivieras make this a red dot weekend for Liguria. To support users on the road, Aspi has increased its presence along the routes for monitoring traffic conditions and assisting stations: mechanical rescue wagons located in strategic points of the network to minimize intervention times, teams dedicated to any distribution of comfort items in the event of significant queues, in addition to emergency vehicles from 118 and the Fire Brigade.
Liguria is preparing to face a weekend with a black dot also as regards trains because tourists and Ligurians have also chosen alternative means of transport to move around. An excessive influx on trains to Liguria this morning at Milan Central Station forced several people to get out of the carriages and Trenitalia set up an extraordinary train that left at 10.35. The difficulties were registered early in the morning, in particular on the Milan-Genoa regional train, which leaves from the Central Station at 8.30. After all the seats were occupied (halved compared to the normal capacity due to the spacing planned for the contrast to covid-19), people started to station in the corridors and on the entrances. At that point, the authorities took steps to get the people down, amid protests by those concerned. At the end the train managed to leave, with an hour of delay, around 9.30 and an extraordinary train was set up with departure an hour later.
It should be remembered that the tunnel case has erupted for several months, after 30 December and the collapse of the material from the vault of the Bertè tunnel on the A26 Genova-Alessandria-Gravellona Toce highway. Since then, the MIT has ordered a series of inspections, which have revealed the structural defects of dozens of tunnels.
The director of the Genoa trunk of Autostrade per l’Italia Mirko Nanni received a notice of guarantee with an invitation to appear notified by the prosecutors Walter Cotugno and Stefano Puppo, owners of the investigations that are going through a sieve to manage the motorway tunnels of the Genoese node . For this line of investigation, which has been added to the investigation into the collapse of Morandi, to that on falsified reports on viaducts, and that on noise barriers, at least a dozen technicians and managers of the various companies involved in the control and maintenance of the highway network. Mirko Nanni has been director of the Tronco di Genova since January 2019, when he replaced Stefano Marigliani, investigated for the collapse of Morandi; his warranty notice, therefore, is the first received by the “new management” fielded by Aspi following the 2018 disaster: a turning point by the Genoese judiciary that could have different meanings, first of all the fact that that despite all that happened, a sort of continuity of the management methods by the company was identified, regardless of the individual people.
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