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From the collapse of the Morandi bridge onwards, the entire Ligurian motorway network has been placed under observation and a process was first started to make numerous sections of the area safe and then a plan to modernize the network itself managed by Autostrade per l’ Italy.
This plan, underlines Francesco Sapio, director of the first section of Aspi (which includes Liguria), “no longer concerns the phase of making the infrastructure safe, but the adaptation to more advanced standards envisaged by the new regulations, to return 50 -60 years of new life to the works».
After the inconveniences, positive evolution
And if the works, first those for safety and now those for modernization, have, for five years now, created very strong inconveniences for users of the Ligurian motorways, Sapio assures that the situation is evolving positively in terms of traffic , even if there is a few months of delay in the completion of some works; that is, the adaptation of the fire-fighting systems of all the tunnels of the Ligurian network (“because three have been added to be adapted”, says Sapio) and the works in the tunnels of the A26 (“they are postponed because, this year, it was preferred to remove the construction sites since Easter»). All works that should have been completed by the first half of 2023 and instead will close later. But this does not mean, he adds, that the inconvenience for motorists will increase, provided, among other things, that “for the entire summer season on the Ligurian network there will be no construction sites on weekends”. Sapio excludes that this summer «there may be construction sites that lead to a significant increase in journeys. After that, it must also be said that, in the summer, Liguria has always been critical in terms of attendance and therefore we shouldn’t be surprised if there are queues even in the absence of jobs: there have always been».
The construction site agenda
The ASPI timetable, already from last year, envisaged a return to sustainable levels of mobility from 2024, and a normalization of the presence of construction sites from 2025 but with some sections completed no earlier than 2026 and a deadline of 2028 for the redevelopment of guards rail. The plan, says Sapio, «is confirmed but we have bypassed the peak: we are having an ever lesser impact on traffic. After all, we work during the day only 50% of the year: from April to September we work less and only from Monday to Friday, not at Christmas, Easter, during the Sanremo Festival and the Boat Show and not even during long weekends: in the end we only work 180 days a year. Nonetheless, on a constant basis for four years now, we have been spending between 250 and 300 million euros a year. Which means that we have improved our way of working: we are able to concentrate in less time, to do more work and to do it more organized».
The reduction of work in the summer
As far as this summer is concerned, the plan agreed by Aspi with the entities has seen the most impactful construction sites eliminated since July, i.e. those which, during the day, determine either an exchange of lanes or a reduction of lanes. There will remain, with an exchange, says Sapio, «one on the A12, between Lavagna and Sestri Levante and another, on the A26, between Ovada and Masone; but there, having three lanes, we are able to guarantee two in the prevailing direction of travel. Furthermore, both construction sites are removed on Friday at 2 pm to start again on Monday morning at 12. Still on the A26, however in Piedmont, we have three carriageway interchanges, only one of which, the one in the Olimpia tunnel, north of Ovada, with a permanent deviation also in the weekend”. Throughout the summer period, continues Sapio, «we try to almost completely eliminate night closures on the coasts. In particular, in the week of August 15th, there will be only a few closures on the A7 for the works on the sound-absorbing barriers in Bolzaneto, one closure on the A26 for exceptional transport and one on the Genova Ovest junction for the redevelopment works on the safety barriers, possible only during the mid-August period due to the decrease in traffic flows. Of course the night closures are shared with the administrations.