Comai-bis Road Project Set to Alleviate Traffic in Riva by 2001
The project for the Comai-bis is decisively back on the agenda: those 400 meters of road (with a cost of 5 billion lire) from the intersection of Viale dei Tigli-Statale della Val di Ledro will eventually emerge onto Viale Trento, helping to alleviate congestion in Viale dei Tigli, Varone, and the Pasina area. In recent days, the designer, engineer Bruno Gobbi Frattini of the Ata studio in Arco, submitted the revised and updated project to the Municipality, complying with the conditions set by the Province.
The document has been signed by Mayor Cesare Malossini and sent to the Tutela e Paesaggio department, which will review it within approximately two weeks and must approve it. Afterward, the bureaucratic process continues, with the hope of opening tender bids by the end of the year and starting construction in the early months of 2001. The intervention is expected to last, and this will be formalized in the contract with the winning contractor, six months of work.
Project and Timeline
This means that by fall-winter of the coming year, the much-desired “Comai-bis” (which has been the subject of heated verbal disputes between the Rivana administration and former provincial councilor Nerio Giovanazzi) will become a reality. Engineer Gobbi Frattini’s new project does not differ significantly from the initial plan drawn up two years ago.
After receiving approval from the Tutela Paesaggio, the Provincial Mobility Office authorized the project with the condition of installing a roundabout at the intersection of the Statale della Val di Ledro and Viale dei Tigli. This would regulate traffic flows more effectively than a standard intersection in all four directions. The project delegation and work entrusted to the Municipality by the Province allowed for accelerated timelines.
Engineer Gobbi Frattini designed, in agreement with the municipal administration, a new “elongated roundabout,” an elliptical shape with an average radius of 13.50 meters, and a carriageway width of 7.5 meters divided into two lanes of 3.75 meters each. An impassable ring of one and a half meters will also be created between the traffic lanes and the central island.
To this end, a partial cover of the Albola stream will also be constructed via a reinforced concrete slab. The new road starting from Viale dei Tigli will be a single carriageway, two-way with two lanes; in the initial and final stretches, two sidewalks connecting with existing ones of 2.20 meters wide will be added. At the junctions with Viale dei Tigli and Viale Trento, the roadway will be widened to accommodate a central lane.
On the north side, between the new road and the banks of the Albola stream, a sidewalk-bike lane of 2.5 meters width will be built. The roadway will be built at the foot of the Albola stream bank, roughly at ground level; conversely, the bike lane will be elevated above the roadway to enhance pedestrian and cyclist safety and improve environmental integration.
A stone-lined retaining wall will delineate the separation between the road axis and the pedestrian-bicycle path. An important aspect is the “temporary” exit to Viale Trento: while awaiting the final extension and connection with the San Giorgio provincial road— which will require the construction of another roundabout on Viale Trento—the exit will be regulated by an “intelligent traffic light,” capable of modulating phase durations based on the number of vehicles passing through.
From a bureaucratic perspective, once approval from Tutela-Paesaggio is granted, the project will go to the Province’s transportation and mountain basin offices, then to the construction commission, after which expropriation procedures involving Riva Sport Center (and therefore Tretter), Telecom, and Atesina can commence.
“The compatibility between the PRG (General Town Plan) and the PUC (Urban Planning Scheme) allows for the immediate initiation of expropriations,” states Councilor Matteotti. “If the Tretter family objects, a decree from the president of the provincial executive will have to be issued.”
