Before talking about which ones transport infrastructure are needed and how to do them, we need to be clear about what kind of country we want to be, where we are today and where we want to go. This is the fundamental premise on which all the speakers called to discuss the book A future to invent. Sustainable transport infrastructures promoted by Astrid and edited by Paolo Costa expert in the sector and for many years president of the transport committee of the European Parliament, found themselves in full agreement starting from Franco Bassanini who is Astrid's driving force and who chaired the conference.
Even the Deputy Minister of Transport, Edward Rixi, right arm of Matteo Salvini, he said that infrastructures must not be occupied by politics, that they are neither right nor left, and that we need greater planning to accept the challenges of the future, otherwise we will be cut off from other countries that are moving faster than us. We must all make an effort together – Rixi said – to change culture, to overcome the tendency of public opinion to be against construction sites for a quiet life, only to then happily benefit from the finished works.” In short, we must overcome the political obstacle that comes from the fact that public works lead to a loss of consensus in the short term to be recovered in the long term when a large work can be completed (bureaucracy and the judiciary permitting). Excellent intentions. Let's just hope that Rixi also tells this to his minister who seems desperately seeking immediate consensus!
By dint of seeking short-term consensus we have lost the profound sense of what it means to build a modern country, in step with the times, as the president of the Democratic Party deputies said Clare Braga.
Salini: We need to understand where the country wants to go
Concepts summarized with exemplary clarity by Pietro Salini, Ad of Webuild, who said that before even designing large transport infrastructures, we need to understand where we are starting from and where we want to go. In other words, we need to understand what we want. We want to focus on tourism and so we need to build airports and connection structures, and then support the industry for the sale of objects to these visitors, and also the hotel industry which in Italy is dominated by foreign chains Et cetera. We want more manufacturing industry, and then we need to build infrastructure that allows goods to reach customers in Europe and around the world, and then we need a plan that leads to an alignment of the price of energy to that of our competitors, while today we pay almost double. And finally, but it would be the most important thing, we need to reform the school to have technicians trained to enter factories and construction sites.
Once the strategy has been outlined – Salini said – then we need to move on to the planning and execution of the work. In Italy it takes a certain number of years to reach a political decision and planning. Then it takes an average of 15 years to complete the planned work. So it is clear that consensus is not created in the short term. After all, there has always been resistance to large-scale projects. When the Autostrada del Sole was conceived in the 50s, it received an avalanche of criticism. What's the point – they said – there is no traffic. And then there are other priorities. Whataboutism is rampant in our country.
The lack of a strategic vision and the tendency to focus on the short term has gradually reduced the country's potential for growth. All the speakers, almost inadvertently, recalled the records we have lost in the last thirty or forty years, a loss that is the real reason for our asphyxiated growth, low salaries, and the many young people who go abroad because here we offer only low-level employment and poor career prospects.
Paolo Costa: Italy must rediscover the desire for development
Paolo Costa recalled that our heritage of transport infrastructure is now obsolete. Rixi himself said that we have “killed” many of the companies that carried out major works. Salini remains, and that is a good thing, but many other companies also need to grow in size. In the 70s, we were the first European country in terms of motorway mileage. Then we stopped and the primacy passed to others. Salini also recalled that it is fine to complain today about the high cost of energy, but that it would be right to ask ourselves why we have “killed” nuclear power, the only ones in the world to refuse a technology where at the time we could boast a cutting-edge position. Now, after fifty years, we will have to resume the discussion. Let us hope that our ruling class finds the courage to make choices now that will bear fruit in about ten years.
In short, for large transport infrastructures, as for many other issues, a cultural leap is really needed. As Paolo Costa said, we need to trigger a reaction to stagnation in the country and a desire for development, openness to innovation and new ideas.
to rediscover the desire for development, the country should be reformed and take inspiration from a historical period that is perhaps unrepeatable, that of the post-war period up to the 60s. History is useful for this. Up until the 60s, then, with the crazy and useless regionalism, the decline began