Brescia Garda Tunnel Proposal to Ease Traffic and Protect Landscape
A tunnel from Tormini to Garda Trentino, even reaching Rovereto, with three or four exits leading to the towns along the Brescia shore of Lake Garda. This is the solution many envision as an answer to the ongoing issues of inadequacy and danger on the Gardesana.
A true tunnel, which according to experts would also have the merit of not harming the valued landscape and natural features of the Alto Garda Park, and would guarantee safe and practical connections between the villages along the Brescia coastline. In terms of grandeur, costs, and technical difficulty, the project might simply be a dream, a pipe dream like many others, especially in Italy, where it takes a decade to open a road stretch already built, such as the new 45 bis at Villanuova.
Institutional Discussion and Future Projects
Yet, for some time now, discussions about it have been intensifying—not in casual conversations but within institutional venues, where decisions are made. At the initiative of the mayor of Toscolano Maderno, ing. Paolo Elena, a meeting was recently held among the mayors of the Park’s municipalities to begin a constructive discussion about an alternative to the Statale 45bis, a project considered essential for the future socio-economic development of the area.
The old “Meandro” (as Gabriele D’Annunzio named it) is now inadequate for the volume of traffic from modern tourism, and landslides in recent years have revealed all its limitations. The debate on an alternative Gardesana has been ongoing for years, but the possibility of building a tunnel has not been considered due to the astronomical costs involved, although such a solution would probably be the most respectful of the natural heritage of the Park.
Regarding costs, they appear hardly sustainable for public funds, and during the meeting, a private-sector solution was proposed. In Europe, companies build these structures (bridges, viaducts, tunnels) and then manage them for a certain number of years, collecting tolls. Rumor has it that initial contact has already been made with one such company, and promising work hypotheses have emerged from that.
For now, Toscolano’s mayor, ing. Elena, remains tight-lipped, though she admits that her colleagues in Alta Garda have agreed to further explore the issue. Essentially, this involves preparing a feasibility study. Well-informed sources confirm that contacts with specialized companies in the sector to verify costs, and based on those, develop funding or reimbursement plans for the investment, are not absent.
“Now,” Elena simply says, “we are about to involve the Provincia and Regione.” With the tunnel solution, the municipalities’ authority would, in a sense, be “bypassed,” and the binding opinion of Provincia and Regione would then be required. At a depth of thirty meters, the area is no longer municipal but state-owned land.
The basic idea of the Alto Garda tunnel involves constructing, beyond this depth, two multi-lane tunnels—one for each direction—from the Tormini exit (a crossroads between Brescia city, the tourist part of Garda, and the productive Valle Sabbia) to Rovereto, a Trento province town where the Brenner Motorway’s exit to Lake Garda is located.
The proponents also point out that for Brescia Garda, such a tunnel would serve as a real lifeline connecting it more directly to Europe, making it even closer. Additionally, the flow of tourists coming from Bavaria (the Garda’s largest tourist reservoir) could reach their weekend and summer holiday destinations more quickly and practically.