Exceptional and out-of-gauge cargo transport from the port of Genoa – particularly plant engineering equipment – risks being wiped out due to critical issues on the highway network and widespread inattention towards this type of operation. This is stated in a note by TrasportoUnito, which denounces what it describes as an “unsustainable situation for road transport companies, for those handling shipments, for port terminals” and which it believes is “the result of an inattention with now lethal consequences.”
The finger is pointed particularly at highway construction sites, “almost never communicated in a timely manner.”
“It often happens – denounces Salvatore De Caro, president of TrasportoUnito Genova – that the go-ahead for the transport company is communicated at the last minute; then, when the vehicle is about to set off to utilize the transit windows imposed by the highways (from 11:30 PM to 4 AM) a highway construction site suddenly materializes on the route that does not allow passage, even though it was authorized with pre-communicated measures.”
The consequences, easily predictable, are costs for vehicle downtime, scheduled escorts, booked cranes, and missed shipments with exorbitant costs and a total loss of reliability for companies unable to keep their commitments, as well as the resulting congestion of service areas, paralyzed by the parking of exceptional loads. The more distant risk feared is a “forced diversion of this type of high-value-added cargo” to Northern European ports.
Hence the appeal for the establishment of a control room “that coordinates all the entities that must issue permits” preventing “what has now become a ritual, namely the blocking of the vehicle when it has already departed.” Otherwise, TrasportoUnito fears, “the Ligurian highway network and in particular the Genoa hub may definitively say goodbye to exceptional and out-of-gauge transport.”
“Without a turnaround – emphasizes De Caro – the sector is collapsing and in the absence of a single control room that coordinates the various entities, and to which construction sites blocking the network must be communicated and pre-scheduled, the damage to industry could also prove disastrous.”
