«First we had the motorway closed and then, with considerable delay, we brought the reprogramming of resources to the council. It is the result of a management that highlights a double responsibility: that of the General Directorate of the CAS and that of the regional Government” declares Giuseppe Lombardo, regional deputy of South calls North, returning to the issue of the Sicilian motorways and the timing followed to identify the resources necessary for the interventions.
«There is one piece of data that perfectly captures what happened: only on 29 September did the General Management of the Consortium transmit the interventions and therefore the validated projects necessary to be able to request the related financial coverage. A delay which becomes even more significant if we consider not only the timing of the warning, but also what emerged from the first inspection visits in April and May, as declared by Migliorino himself”.
For Lombardo, however, responsibilities cannot be attributed exclusively to the General Management of the Consortium. «On the one hand we have a General Directorate that transmitted the necessary interventions with great delay; on the other, a regional council that had these resources and which waited without exercising the necessary controls on the Consortium, allowing it to reach closure before bringing the projects to reprogramming at the end of the year”.
A timing that Lombardo defines as the result of a “serious planning inability”. «We are talking about sums that, without the reprogramming, would have gone into the economy, because December 31st represents the deadline by which spending must be closed. We have therefore arrived close to the end of the year to intervene on a situation that had already been brought to attention in the months of April and May”.
«This is the political and administrative point that cannot be avoided: why did we wait so long? Why weren’t the necessary checks on the Consortium carried out earlier? And why did the General Directorate of the CAS forward the interventions and projects validated only on 29 September?».
«We cannot close the motorway first and only then rush to find coverage for interventions that should have been planned in advance. There was no lack of alarm bells here: there was a lack of planning”, concludes Lombardo.
The group leader of the 5 Star Movement in the Ars, Antonio De Luca, makes no discounts on the new traffic restrictions on the A18 Messina-Catania and A20 Messina-Palermo motorways, ordered following checks by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, who is once again asking for the revocation of the concession from the Consortium for Sicilian Motorways.
“We are not faced with a sudden emergency, but the result of years of neglect and complaints that have remained unheard. We asked for the revocation of the concession to the CAS already in the last legislature, but the Musumeci government opposed it and that of Schifani did not change things. Today the ministerial inspections arrive to confirm the seriousness of a situation that we have been denouncing for years. In the meantime, Sicilians continue to pay the toll to travel on motorways with endless construction sites, narrow carriageways, poor asphalt and serious safety problems. It is simply unacceptable”, declares Antonio De Luca.
The new checks conducted by the director of the Ministry, Placido Migliorino, who had already certified the inadequacy and dangerousness of the Sicilian motorway sections, highlighted in particular critical issues linked to the safety barriers, making further measures to limit speed and circulation in the affected sections necessary. Among the measures announced include limits of up to 60 kilometers per hour for heavy vehicles and 90 kilometers per hour for light vehicles, as well as restrictions on the use of lanes.
For years, the Messina group leader of the 5 Star Movement has constantly intervened on the conditions of the Sicilian motorways, denouncing the critical issues of the tunnels, maintenance problems and shortcomings on the safety front. He had also presented parliamentary initiatives on the issue, asking for hearings and a debate at the Ars. Last September he once again urged the President of the Region Renato Schifani to address the issue of the concession to the CAS.
“Now comes yet another confirmation of what we have been arguing for years: the conditions of these infrastructures are such as to impose increasingly severe limitations. In practice we will travel at speeds comparable to those of ordinary roads, but we will continue to pay a motorway toll. It is absurd that, after 10 years of complaints, we have reached this point without the structural critical issues having been addressed and resolved”, continues the deputy from Messina.
“Blocker interventions and emergency measures are not enough. A radical change is needed in the management of Sicilian motorways. The Region must assume its responsibilities and definitively address the problem of the concession to the CAS. The safety of motorists cannot be subordinated to the inertia of those who should have guaranteed efficient and safe infrastructures. Sicilians have the right to motorways worthy of the name, not to obstacle courses for which they are even forced to pay”, concludes Antonio De Luca.