If we have to wait a few more days for the city council's yes, another important verdict on PUMs arrived just yesterday: the sentence with which the Catania Regional Administrative Court rejected the appeal presented by 14 traders from Viale San Martino and surrounding areas, with which they requested the annulment of the resolution approving the PUMS by the Council and, in particular, of the hypothesis of extending the pedestrian area of the Viale up to Villa Dante. For the TAR the key point is that the contested one is only a «hypothesized pedestrianization» and that «the PUMS is a planning act in which the objectives of the overall mobility system are defined which must then be implemented through “specific actions and interventions”» . Therefore «a strategic planning tool, with a programmatic nature, which normally does not express final and prescriptive provisions». Traders, therefore, will always have the opportunity to challenge any subsequent measures, because the “programmatic indications” contained in the PUMS would become “concretely harmful” only if “implemented by traffic regulation resolutions”. Only at that point, and “in the face of an effective prejudice to one's subjective sphere”, the measure to implement the pedestrian area extended up to Villa Dante, the contested one, may possibly be challenged. «At present, however – concludes the judge – the provisions of the PUMS alone (which have not yet been definitively approved), are not suitable to prejudice the position of the appellants and it is documented in documents that the current pedestrianization of the area, in force until 16 June 2024, and the simultaneous regulation of parking and circulation in the neighboring streets, find their source in the council resolution of 4 January 2024, which was not contested”. Hence the decision: appeal inadmissible.
The TAR, in its provision, recalls a deadline: next Sunday, in fact, would be the last day for the pedestrian area of Viale San Martino. The Administration thought it could issue a definitive pedestrianization measure if the PUMS was approved by the city council. The postponement of the vote to Monday will, however, force the mayor and deputy mayor to act with a further extension, probably until September. At that point we will be able to move on to the definitive pedestrian area and provide those certainties which, as explained yesterday by the deputy mayor Salvatore Mondello, «are necessary for those who want to invest. There are entrepreneurs who have told us clearly that they will invest in Viale San Martino only in the face of structural and definitive measures.” For whom, now, it is only a matter of time. (seb.casp.)
