“Tomorrow, Tuesday 25 June, the municipal council will approve, in advance, the definitive project of a 200 meter cycle/pedestrian path which, starting from via Fiume Abbandonato near the primary school outside Borgo Montone, will connect with the cycle/pedestrian path behind the ‘ESP. From there you can enter the cycle/pedestrian path of via Quaroni to reach viale Alberti and the city. Once in the town, cyclists coming from outside will avoid risking their lives by taking via Einstein and taking the Austria roundabout, which directly connect Borgo Montone with the shopping centre. Lista per Ravenna will not vote against, as the general usefulness of the intervention is evident. However, the benefit for Borgo Montone, being minimal, will not reduce the tormented living conditions of its inhabitants due to the unbalanced political choices that allowed the construction, 200 meters from the town, of a hypermarket with “100 shops and ExtraCoop where everything is possible” (says the advertisement) and to concrete over, putting the entire area at greater risk of flooding, almost 50,000 square meters of former agricultural land, with 3,300 parking spaces and an immense lunar road just below the Montone river. We see it below.
MINIMUM BENEFIT FOR BORGO MONTON
According to the agreement stipulated with the Municipality in 2014, ESP should have carried out this work to compensate Borgo Montone for such an invasion. However, it will not be built in the short term, because the final approval of the definitive project will still require time and the procedure for expropriating the necessary land and approval of the executive project will then be needed so that the works can be assigned and carried out. Only a small part of the town’s inhabitants will use it, given that access to the cycle/pedestrian path is 350 meters from the center of the town, while the total distance to reach the main entrance of the ESP is 800 metres.
VIA EINSTEIN AND ROTONDA AUSTRIA IN CHAOS
For the 90% of the inhabitants who live in the center of the town, to get to the ESP, there is no cycle/pedestrian path parallel to via Einstein, crossed continuously by infernal traffic, especially heavy vehicles, nor a reserved lane on the Austria roundabout. This is as narrow as it was before the ESP was doubled in 2017 and in 2022 the Rosa dei Venti, a large residential facility for non-self-sufficient elderly people, was built on another 15,000 square meters next to the roundabout. Borgo Montone already had a nursery school, an elementary school, the Adalgisa hospice, three residences for the elderly, a pharmacy and 1,750 inhabitants.
The 2014 agreement provided for, to be paid by the ESP, the “widening of the Austria roundabout, with the creation of a preferential lane towards Borgo Montone” (written to us like this by councilor Del Conte). The land had already been staked out and permission to build the project was being examined, when the Municipality decided that “it was not strictly indispensable”in exchange asking ESP to resurface the Austria roundabout and the exit branch from the Adriatica state road, “as a road section affected by access to the area and by vehicles for loading goods”, therefore to the exclusive advantage of ESP. The Municipality’s commitment to fulfill “at a later time” this work, promised seven years ago, has so far been ignored, despite pressure from Lista per Ravenna.
NEW ROAD BETWEEN SAN MARCO AND ESP SERIOUSLY LATE
There is still no news on the new road connection between via Fiume Abbandonato, near San Marco, and the ESP, another commitment undertaken by ESP in the 2014 agreement, very important because all the motorized traffic arriving in Ravenna from the south west, directed to the ESP and the entire eastern part of the city, would be diverted towards the ESP and from there onto viale Alberti, greatly relieving Borgo Montone and the unfortunate via Einstein and rotunda Austria. This new road, as well as the cycle/pedestrian path that the City Council is now discussing, must be completed by the ESP by 27 June 2027.
LIST AGENDA FOR RAVENNA
Is it possible that the Municipality did not demand that ESP decently urbanize the territory of Borgo Montone before ESP began to invade it? Incredible, but he didn’t even set a maximum completion date for the work. It would therefore have been valid, as for public works of all agreements, the deadline of 10 years from the stipulation, i.e. 23 June 2024, if the legislation on the Covid-19 pandemic had not however granted a three-year extension.
Note the deafening silence of the Borgo Montone Citizens’ Committee, as in the best former and post-Soviet People’s Democratic Republics. Lista per Ravenna will talk about it again, presenting an agenda.”
: A cycle/pedestrian path between the Borgo Montone school and Esp. Still many shadows for the inhabitants of the town){kind=link}