Handbrake applied on the Via Salicchi roundabout. The work was supposed to start after the end of school and finish by September. And now?
“And now there is the intervention of Geal’s new sewers with the closure of Via di Sant’Alessio to traffic, an important and long-awaited intervention – says councilor Buchignani -. We can’t start another construction site at the same time, it would throw the area into chaos, it would be a disgrace to the inhabitants of Sant’Alessio.” And then there is a date, significant for via Salicchi, that of 5 July.
“After various failed attempts we finally managed to schedule a meeting with the Province for July 5th for the Via Salicchi roundabout. It will be an important moment because the Province has jurisdiction over a stretch of road affected by the new roundabout.” Therefore, the go-ahead from Palazzo Ducale for that stretch of road to which it belongs becomes crucial for the unblocking of the roundabout construction site as much and more so than the works in via di Sant’Alessio.
“The works could start after the end of the Sant’Alessio construction site, therefore after August. Everything will depend on the Province – says Buchignani -. We certainly want to convene the services conference in via Salicchi by the end of July. We already have the opinions of the Civil Engineers, among other things they also granted us a partial move of the hill to make room for the roundabout. This means a new lane and new sidewalks. It will be a truly decisive work for that area, which could be part of the system together with the new bridge over the Serchio. What matters to us is to actually carry things forward, if we had wanted to make it the subject of electoral campaigns we would have postponed the construction site by a couple of years.”
The new roundabout in via Salicchi will affect the intersections between via della Scogliera, via per Camaiore, via Salicchi, via Matteo Civitali, viale Galilei and via Borgo Giannotti as foreseen in the study carried out by the Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering of the University of Pisa, work that allowed us to define the optimal geometry of the road adaptation solution with roundabout circulation, identifying it in the so-called ‘double drop’ structure. Solution which should guarantee 30 percent fewer cars per hour on Via Salicchi (something like 300 vehicles per hour) and faster crossing times than the current ones.
The ‘double drop’ geometry will allow all five arteries involved to be connected. The construction of the new work involves two subsequent phases. The first in which the direction of via Salicchi (north-south) will remain unchanged but the direction of travel of the last stretch of viale Matteo Civitali up to via del Brennero will be reversed. This expedient in the projections should reduce the influx of vehicles in via Salicchi from around 1000 vehicles per hour to 700. The second phase – at full capacity – with a new active bridge and suburban axis (the latter probably in 2025) in which via Salicchi will only be used to exit the roundabout and traffic will be conveyed southwards through the last stretch of via Civitali.
LS
