BELLUNO. How to lose the tourists. Red sticker weekend on the roads of the province. Starting from the A27, the 51, the 51 bis and the 52. Evoking them with the name can increase the sense of unease, and therefore the protest; better to consider them with the numbering.
Yesterday, Thursday, midweek day: early morning queues, in Castellavazzo, towards Cadore; the same speech at 4 pm, in the tunnel, towards Ospitale: «Thirty-five minutes», Franco, a journalist testifies, «to travel two kilometers».
What will happen today, tomorrow and Sunday? How to lose tourists, in fact. «Traveling in these conditions? Better to stay at home », Bruno blurts out. B. of Pordenone, with “good retreat” in Auronzo. “Other roommates are doing it,” he warns.
A real problem for those who live off tourism: Renzo Minella interprets the perplexities of fellow plant engineers: “As far as I’m concerned”, says the president of Anef Veneto, “in recent weeks the situation on the Agordino side has been improving, but on the on the other side, between the A27 and Alemagna there is no need to be happy. These obstacles along the way do not help a sector in difficulty, especially in a period in which, from the point of view of tourism, we have a pushed commute, especially on Saturdays and Sundays. If people get tired of waiting hours and hours in line, we lose a large part of our turnover ».
But there are also those who work outside the province and have relatives in Comelico, the “promised land” of nature-loving vacationers. The reason? “Returning to my village in Comelico, on weekends, is becoming a nightmare”, holds back the impatience Ing. Francesco de Bettin, founder with the brothers of the Dba Group. «After having endured the construction sites of the motorway, from Treviso north to Pian di Vedoia, I impact those of Longarone, on the Alemagna, therefore the slowdowns if not the queues of Domegge, along the 51 bis. And along the 52 Carnica, from Santo Stefano di Cadore to Padola, not one, but 10 construction sites. All necessary, it is true, but all together ”, the exponent of Confindustria Belluno asks himself perplexed,“ and in the middle of the tourist season? ”.
There is no one from Belluno who disavows the need, indeed the urgency of improvements to the Napoleonic roads of the province. But there is not one that does not question – critically – about planning. “We are joking with fire”, according to De Bettin, “in this way we scare off tourists, who do not return after such a bitter travel experience”.
“Apart from the inconvenience for the residents (just consider the emergencies that the ambulance or the medical car must face)”, De Bettin insists, “if our economic operators took into account the working hours lost in the queue, the delays in the deliveries, the damages would shoot upwards, finding no one to compensate them ». According to De Bettin, an absolutely different planning approach is indispensable.
Michele Basso, director of the provincial Confartigianato, collects complaints and protests from the associates. His testimony starts from a recent memory, the assembly of the Dmo convocata at the Longarone Fair for convenience of access and availability of spaces. “We were forced to start it well an hour late because the Alemagna was clogged.” «It is obvious that construction sites are indispensable, among other things, it is precisely the economic categories that urge them, but is it ever possible», asks Basso, «that there are no precautions to alleviate the inconvenience? Working at night and using the movieri: these promises often remain unfulfilled ».
“But one also wonders”, adds De Bettin at this point, “why in inactive construction sites, on weekends, traffic lights are still wasted”. Basso, considering the repercussions on the economy, imagines the possible reaction of the tourist who climbs into Cadore exhausted by the queues.
“The damage to image is irreparable,” admits Gildo Trevisan, hotelier in Pieve di Cadore and president of the tourist consortium. “Are we so sure that the holiday maker can decide to return after stopping in front of a dozen construction sites?”.
For Trevisan it would be important for an annual program to intervene, in order to distribute the interventions in the periods in which the roads involved are less busy.