“In recent weeks, the President of the Region Giani announced with great fanfare the start of work on the North-East Ring Road by June 30, with the closure of the construction site scheduled for December 31, 2025. To date, however, it seems that the work has not started. But above all, it is not clear what the real situation is”.
Pisa city councilor Francesco Auletta, who has always been critical of the project with his group Diritti in Comune, as well as the environmentalist front, returns to the great work that has been discussed for some time. The group leader announces that “in the past few weeks we have made a request for access to the documents to the Province of Pisa to also have a copy of the approved executive project, essential for the start of the works. To date we have not had any response from the Province of Pisa. At this point we ask all the institutions involved in a public manner: has the executive project been approved? And if it has not been approved, why?”
The other front on which clarity is needed “is that of resources and the times for their use. The cost of the first lot alone has gradually increased over the years to the current 27 million euros, covered by resources from the Development and Cohesion Fund for 17 million, from the Region for just over 6.8 million and from the Province for 3.3 million. For our part, we have always been against, together with environmental associations, this great project supported in a bipartisan manner by the centre-right and centre-left coalitions, even during the City Council meeting held in January at our request on the North-East Ring Road. This infrastructure will generate more traffic, and therefore more pollution, as always happens when roads are increased, it will consume land and irreparably destroy the agricultural plain north of Pisa, offering no alternative to the use of private cars for those who need to enter the city. The Ring Road is an old project based on a concept of mobility that is no longer sustainable, because in the years since it was first designed the framework of the need for interventions on mobility has drastically changed”.
It is a question of services for Auletta: “The northern area of Pisa will be freed from the grip of traffic when commuters find efficient and frequent trains, trams, buses, when cities and services are designed to be easily accessible by public transport. We want to see the money from the Fund for Development and Cohesion invested in this, and not in new concrete and traffic: this work will not alleviate anything, indeed it will cause problems for the health of those who live in two areas of the city, the Passi district and that of Ghezzano. This was highlighted by Arpat in its evaluation of the work dating back to 202, going so far as to define the impact of noise as unacceptable, in particular in Passi, also given the impossibility of implementing mitigation and giving a negative opinion on the construction of the sections that involve this district, and in Ghezzano. The analyses conducted by Arpat in fact, estimate that the legal limits on noise pollution will be exceeded by 30% and highlight that neither the laying of special asphalt nor the construction of anti-noise barriers would be useful. limit such excesses, which are also expected during night hours”.
Not to mention that the infrastructure “will further fragment the territory, damaging what remains of the alluvial plain of the Arno and Serchio, where ecosystems of great environmental value are protected by the Ramsar Convention and by UNESCO, in addition to having a devastating impact on an agricultural landscape of great interest that includes the cultural heritage of the parish churches, villas and the Medici Aqueduct. Why insist on a useless and devastating project instead of planning a major redevelopment of the Pisan plain, creating an Agricultural Park between the two municipalities of Pisa and San Giuliano? It would create new quality economies, pedestrian and cycle paths, ecological corridors for biodiversity”.
” Added to this is an enormous waste of public money with costs that are gradually increasing: for the Madonna dell’Acqua section alone (lot nodes 1-2), the cost has gone from 21 to 27 million euros in a short time, 6 million euros more. And we are talking about the first section of just 2 km, compared to a work whose overall cost has already increased, and the initial 70 million are destined to increase further, without there being a definitive forecast of the final figure to date”, insists Auletta, who concludes: “We ask ourselves how the centre-right and centre-left can repeat that we are facing a ‘strategic work’, and how they continue to insist and indeed want to accelerate on a work for which the definitive design of the lots that go from node 5 to node 10, i.e. the section that intersects the Mediceo Aqueduct, and the coverage of the costs are completely lacking, so much so that appeals to the Government for the allocation of the resources necessary to carry them out are multiplying. There is a serious risk, in addition to creating a work with strong impacts and few benefits, of condemning the territory to decades of interrupted workwith endless construction sites. The project needs to be completely rethought from a modern perspective, obtaining the desired benefits with other forms of mobility. We still have time, stop”.
