The Roca government imagined that the link with the Nation was going to be complicated. What the authorities did not know about him was that he barely 24 hours after the arrival of Javier Milei to the Presidency, The municipality was going to receive a notification informing remove the traffic lights that are at four entrances to the city, on Route 22.
“They notified us on December 11, “a very opportune date,” said the mayor, María Emilia Soria, ironically, detailing that the letter received is an “eviction action.”
This name leaves no doubt about the position of the new political leaders of National Highways: if the traffic lights are not removed by the municipality, it will be the agency itself that will clear the way.
The mayor explained that the notification establishes a deadline for a formal response, which is still valid.
But while the formal steps to be taken are defined, the Soria personally took a letter to the National Highway authorities, during a recent trip to Buenos Aires.
“There we put all the background information, because perhaps in the new government there is someone who does not know the history of this painful and ruinous Route 22,” said the president.
Since when are the traffic lights on Route 22?
That history referred to dates back to September 2018, when the then mayor, Martín Soria, enabled the first traffic lights, at the intersections of Route 22 with San Juan and Mendoza streets.
With the expansion work paralyzed and faced with recurring accidents – several of them fatal – the municipality’s decision was to place the guided traffic devices, knowing that a National Road Regulations were being violated, but putting the prevention of potentially fatal crashes first.
The measure was later extended to the intersections of Vintter and Félix Heredia streets, at the east and west ends, and was also imitated by other municipalities.
The current president – who slipped a suspicion of discrimination because Roca was the only municipality ordered to remove the traffic lights – he anticipated that “We are going to respond to this eviction action and we will surely also present an amparo, to avoid the removal.”