Municipal Traffic Plan: Roundabout to Ease Congestion and Fund Allocation
A roundabout in place of the intersection. In the 2000 public works plan, the first phase for the implementation of the Municipal Urban Traffic Plan (Put) is listed. This involves building a roundabout at the intersections of the Gardesana state road, Croce provincial road, and the municipal roads via San Zeno and Borgo Cavour, the latter leading to the town center. The roundabout aims to ease traffic in a particularly congested area during the summer months due to the gathering of vehicles descending from the hilly area to access the SS 249 heading toward Gardone or Lazise.
Status of the project and related interventions
“The preliminary design has already been approved. We now need to obtain various permissions from Anas,” the technical office reports. “It is unlikely the work will be completed by 2000; it’s more realistic before next summer.” The project, estimated at around 200 million lire, involves, for space reasons, a partial smoothing of the northern end of the Aldo Moro parking lot facing the Cassa di Risparmio.
“The administration cares more about the roundabout than the creation of the ecological island in the Campazzi area, which is now illegal,” stated minority council member Pietro Mesoni in the municipal council. “To carry out the work to upgrade the landfill, a loan is being taken out, but bureaucratic delays in authorizing it delay the actual implementation, whereas the roundabout is funded through urbanization charges. It logically follows that the funding for these two projects should be inverted,” he explained.
“The decision to use urbanization charges for constructing the new intersection stems from the possibility of obtaining up to 40 percent of the costs from the Regione Lombardia,” responded the public works assessor Aristide Avanzini. “Therefore, the city’s share would be around 120 million lire, while the remaining 80 million would be paid by the Regione. Regarding the waste collection center, the land on which the landfill is situated is used under a gratuitous usufruct agreement.”
“The approval of the municipal budget now creates the conditions to proceed with the expropriation process for the involved area, hopefully aiming for a voluntary sale,” concluded Avanzini. “The Region would have contributed to the costs of building the intersection even if a loan had been contracted,” Meschi added.
“Unfortunately, the municipality’s sensitivity regarding environmental protection and the risks of groundwater pollution is practically nonexistent,” said Stefano Joppi.
