Following the publication by the French Government of a review, highlighting specific critical situations, of the conditions of the road infrastructure administered directly by the Ministry, the ad-hoc Senate Commission is conducting an in-depth analysis of France’s road bridges.
4 December 2018 – Further to the recent findings of a government report, the French Senate Commission has organised a fact-finding mission, which includes Genoa in its designated on-site inspections. The delegation met with the Mayor of Genoa, Marco Bucci, and the President of the Port Authority of the Western Ligurian Sea, Paolo Emilio Signorini, with the objective of collecting key data on how the city and the port responded to and managed the repercussions of the collapse of the Morandi Bridge. The discussions focused on emergency measures implemented to minimise the impact of the disruption of the motorway on city congestion and on specific policies adopted by the Port Authority in the crisis management.
The members of the Senate Commission were interested to receive details on the procedures used to open up in record-time the alternative route in the port for trucks, Via della Superba, connecting the area of the airport in the western part of the city eastwards with the Sampierdarena basin, thereby removing the bottlenecks which had been building up in certain parts of the city in the aftermath of the Morandi Bridge collapse and facilitating the movement of heavy goods vehicles across the port. Particular attention was also given to the Port of Genoa’s New Breakwater Plan, Italy’s biggest port infrastructure project in recent years, which is taking shape with the collaboration of Invitalia, the central procurement agency reporting to the Italian Ministry of Finance.
The delegation was led by Hervé Maurey, President of the Senate Commission, and included Patrick Chaize, Vice-President, and Senators Christine Lafranchi Dorgal, Jean-Michel Houllegate and Nadia Sollogoub. They were accompanied by the French Consul General in Milan, Cyrille Rogeau, Luc Penaud, Honorary Consul in Genoa, and Florent Moretti of the French Embassy in Rome.
