“Lombardy Region has blown the Programme Agreement for Sacred Mountain”

The table that blew everything in the words of the Regional Minister for Transport Claudia Terzi, is dated October 23, but as Andrea Civati himself said “it took a while to process it”.

But in the end it came out: the fact that the Lombardy Region has closed every door to the Program Agreement for accessibility to the Sacred Mountain already in place and partially funded, has become the “cover story” of the fifth issue of the new Varese house magazine of the PD, “La Finestra“, presented this morning at the headquarters of the PD in Viale Monterosa, attended by the municipal secretary Luca Carignola.

“It was December eight years ago when the Municipality of Varese, the Province, the Lombardy Region and the Campo dei Fiori Park reached an agreement focused in particular on ‘improving the accessibility’ of the Sacred Mountain, as reported in the main subtitle of the Agreement,” explains Civati. “It is a pity that eight years later, the Region decided to put the brakes on. Or rather, they put the brakes on abruptly. Palazzo Lombardia took a very serious decision, also because, in the past, it had never happened that a Program Agreement was broken by a single authority; in these cases, people generally work unanimously”.

“That Program Agreement had been signed when it was still planned to create a municipal parking lot at the first chapel. It had been allocated for its planning and its realization as well as the implementation of public transports 2,970,000 euro intended generally for accessibility to the Sacred Mountain: 1,455,000 would come from the Region, 297,000 from the Province 1,188,000 from the Municipality of Varese and 29,700 from the Park”.

Since the establishment of the new Council, however “We put straight a point: of the notorious ‘parking at the First Chape’” nothing would be done,” Civati continued, “so much that we have paid the project made by an architect during the end of the junta Fontana, nearly 3,000 thousands euros and then we left it there”

The junta of Galimberti to revitalize the Sacred Mountain had other ideas, like for example: “realizing a multi-storey car park, but at the stadium: in this way it would be served also to a substantial part of the city in addition to the Sacred  Mountain. Then its realisation would go hand in hand by revising and a strengthening of public transport, also through a system of electric shuttle required by traders of the town.”

Now, however “La Region, and especially the Lega which expresses by the way the councilor Claudia Terzi, has come off, without listening even possible proposal of mediate more cheaply like a temporary experimentation of the parking of the stadium already existing and of the shuttle connected to it. Obviously for the Lega ‘the accessibility at the Sacred Mountain’ meant only ‘parking at the First Chapel.’ We, meanwhile, moved independently: implementing the bus C route, are increasing the rides of the funicular railway, with obvious results: from 20,000 people transported in 2016, in 2018 were already 52,000.”