Ponale Road Classification Decided as Trail, Not Reconstruction
And so, on the Ponale road, the most classic of tombstones has been laid. On Tuesday, at the end of a technical meeting between the Cis committee (which had been advocating for pedestrian and cycle tourism use of the old disused vehicle route for a dozen years) and provincial councilors Berasi and Casagranda, it was decided, as explicitly stated in a note from the Giunta’s Press Office, that “the only possibility at this point, unless the road is truly and definitively closed — is to classify the old Ponale road as a trail, accessible to anyone, as if it were a mountain trail, without a specific function.”
Previous reports and decisions
Reaching this conclusion took a geological report and a couple of years of much talk. But we had already arrived at the same result, armed only with logic, on June 15, 1999, when we literally wrote in this newspaper: “No geologist will ever endorse the safety of the Ponale (for cyclists and pedestrians) unless after prescribing a whole series of works and interventions which are exactly the same as those previously implemented — at their prohibitively high cost — that led to the decision to build the tunnel and the new road to the Ledro Valley.”
And we also wrote: “The committees have only three things to do. First: insist that the road be literally erased and transformed into a public land of any kind; where it’s obvious that one can venture, but at one’s own risk and peril. Second: cleverly request safety measures for the Gardesana Occidentale (which would consequently become measures to protect the territory, no longer as a road, but as a territory above). Third: invite tourism associations (which quietly already promote the Ponale as if it were a real cycle path) to form a special company for the routine maintenance not of the road (which, as we have seen, should disappear from maps), but of the territory, turned into a kind of no-man’s land…”
Current situation and prospects
To pursue the first of the three suggestions (which was based on a blatantly obvious point), two unnecessary years were wasted. For the second, it’s hopeful that the project for a new tunnel in Gardesana — which would render the suggestion unnecessary — will not be taken too seriously in terms of timing (experience teaches that in the realm of ‘big roadworks,’ there’s at least twenty years between talk and action…). As for the third, it involves rolling up sleeves in Riva, without thinking (as often happens) that everything, absolutely everything, is the responsibility of “mamma Provincia.”