CREMONA – «Without infrastructure, territories do not grow, for too long Cremona has been the symbol of a shameful infrastructural gap present in our region but things are changing.” Thus the Transport Councilor of the Lombardy Region, Claudia Maria Terzi, arrived in the city this afternoon to support the electoral campaign of the centre-right candidate, Alessandro Portesani. At the Novità electoral headquarters in Cremona the mayoral candidate ‘interviewed’ the transport councilor, posing a series of questions of strategic interest for our territory which «must find a new centrality in the regional socio-economic geography».
In the first place there is the question of the doubling of the Milan-Mantua railway line and the frequent inconveniences affecting Cremonese commuters. «The work – explains Terzi – has been among the priorities of the Lombardy Region for a long time and in fact the project involving the Milan-Codogno section has already been presented. We are now working on studies of the second Codogno-Bozzolo section.”
An essential link to remedy the chronic delays affecting the route: «On such a long and scandalously still single-track line it is unthinkable to increase the number of trips because a simple fault, in the absence of an alternative track, would still compromise all traffic on the line. The investment by RFI and the Lombardy Region is substantial, in the order of hundreds of millions of euros and now we must ensure compliance with the deadlines: for the first section the works should be completed by 2026″.
From the railways to the Po river, Portesani’s questions move to another hot point of the city debate: the bridges over the Great River. «In particular that of San Daniele Po and Casalmaggiore, which go beyond our municipal administrative boundaries but which affect the province and its inhabitants – specified Portesani -. We believe that Cremona should take on the role of capital city and be the bearer of the needs of an entire territory.”
Also on this front, Terzi offers reassurances on the commitments that the Region has undertaken to «have the renovation of the Casalmaggiore bridge included in the Anas program contract. We cannot insist on maintenance on works that are increasingly close to the end of their life. Obviously the construction of new structures requires considerable funding and timing.” If for Casalmaggiore we are talking about 90 million euros, for San Daniele Po, whose bridge will be built by the province of Parma, the timing remains uncertain. And questions about the timing also arise regarding another work promised to the area for years: the Cremona-Mantua motorway. On the subject, Portesani attacks the Galimberti administration which «has avoided dialogue in the Region, without having the courage to go and ask where it was necessary to ask».
On the topic of motorway connections, the focus is first and foremost on the production sector which, in the words of Terzi, «cannot make a territory grow without the necessary infrastructure. On the issue of Cremona-Mantua, the Region’s (favorable) opinion is also known to the Sassi. Beyond this it must be said that we are stuck in legal proceedings since Stradivaria, the company assigned to carry out the work, challenged our resolution. And more generally, the topic is part of the ongoing dialogue with the ministry on Tibre since the two works are complementary. With previous governments the issue had almost been set aside but with Minister Salvini we have obtained commitments several times regarding the feasibility of the work. In this way the Cremona-Mantua route would not only be part of a broader project but would also give meaning to the Emilian stretch of the Tibre”.
Portesani then concluded by listing the further priorities of the territory to be brought to regional tables on the subject of infrastructure. «To rebuild the bond of trust between the various municipalities in the area, we need to give space to all the needs, which in fact are many», he comments, citing the Paullese road and the state of maintenance of the Cremona ring road, the management of which should be entrusted, in the centre-right programme, in Anas.
