There was a time, not too distant, evoked by Gianantonio Arnoldi, now CEO of Concessioni Autostradali Lombarde, in which the architect Vito Sonzogni designed roads and connections on restaurant tablecloths, while today he prefigures a complex “infrastructural” project destined to leave a sign in the next hundred years”, as stated by Giovanni Sanga, president of Sacbo during the “Impact of Porta Sud” conference (for the 36th edition of the Netlipse Network Meeting), a 3D film is shown.
In this scenario of intersecting roads and railways, Porta Sud is the driving force of a system that makes, or rather will make, this area of the city the caput mundi of territorial interconnection. From here the e-BRT will be powered, which will connect with electric buses the intermodal hub of the Bergamo station with Dalmine and Verdellino and with the KilometroRosso, the new Bergamo railway station and the T2 tram line which will connect Bergamo to Villa d’Almè beyond to the train to the airport. And, among the irons in the fire, let’s also include the Bergamo-Treviglio motorway and the Cortenuova intermodal center. Projects launched or in progress about which (almost) everything is already known, but which in the kaleidoscope of speakers’ contributions have revealed some more practical details, but indicative of great concreteness. As, for example, outlined by Susanna Borelli, investment manager of RFI’s Northern Area Stations, the complete renovation of the station’s platforms and platforms with an area of over one thousand square meters of greenery to accompany it. «Bergamo will be one of the first cases of a series, since in the next ten years, with an investment of five billion and seven hundred million, five hundred stations will be rebuilt».
Then there is the speed of 25 km per hour with which the e-Brt electric buses will travel, saving 780 tons of Co2, as anticipated by Liliana Donato, director of Atb. Or even free flow for those traveling on the Bergamo-Treviglio route. «How could there not be this connection?», Arnoldi retorted, underlining how «the tender for this work was won by Vitali and this will allow the builder to be consistent with the new procurement code».
For the infinite number of implications, including «the mending between the North and South parts of the city» as reiterated by the councilor for urban planning Francesco Valesini, but also because, as stated by Carlo Masseroli, CEO of Nhood Services Italy, the project «stands as an example of one of the largest partnership operations between public and private on the national territory», all the spotlight is on Porta Sud. «Which is not just the station, work which sees the start of the construction site in these days – announces the developer Massimo Vitali -, but it is a complex project made up of services, residences and retail, and everything that can complete an intermodal hub like this. We are defining this part of the project with the municipal administration, or rather the development guidelines of the urban planning project and their implementation, in compliance with the dictates of the new Pgt. Let’s not forget that the project contains over 50 million public works, and among the contents, we envisage a new road system to the south, with a new car park to “move” the buses also to the south”. And soon the redevelopment plan of the airport will take an important step: «In practice – says Vitali – we will proceed with the administration to define the works to be carried out and all the resources that the project generates by the end of this mandate». A question, therefore, of three weeks.
