Return to the past



Sul dashboard of the car of the time the date indicates 23 May 1981, hours 9.30 a.m. I come down and within in a room of the Warehouses of the Cotton of Genoa where the assembly carries out itself anniversary of the Association Mediating Raccomandatari Agents Marine Agents Airplane - Genoa (Assagenti). Topic of the encounter is the "Third Railway Pass. The actions to undertake until the realization of a fundamental work for from Liguria portualità".

The project of the Third Pass previews the realization of a railway line to high speed/high ability that connects the port of Genoa to the Po plain. Draft of a main draft of about 53 kilometers mostly in gallery more the interconnections is in Liguria that in Piemonte. The previewed expense is very 12.000 billion Liras (figure that in 2011 will correspond to about 6,2 billion euros).

Assagenti has charged the society TLS Europe to examine the project and to light estimate of the effectiveness of the current and future situation of the markets and the state of infrastructures. Such activity is introduced by the president and managing director of TLS, Carlo Camisetti, and from the president of Assagenti, Giovanni Cerruti. In the address book "Forum of the Shipping and the Logistics" we publish the relation of Cerruti to the assembly of Assagenti.

They are here today because it interests to know me what is the Third Pass and to what it will serve in the years to come until 2011, that is the year from which they have left. The dissertation of Camisetti long and is detailed, but it is above all a conclusive phrase to clarify the usefullness of the work: "the Third Pass - it has explained - would not be necessary if the port of Genoa remained only a regional and not European port". Because in fact, as it motivates the study, the development of the railway traffic from and for the port of the capital of Liguria is possible taking advantage of to full load the potentialities of the existing line. Therefore the Third Pass is essential fundamentalally in order to make of Genoa an European port. "The objective - the topic of the encounter to the journalists has confirmed Cerruti introducing - is to increase the borders of the port of Genoa to the heart of Europe".

Data friendly Camisetti have demonstrated that between thirty years, in 2011, this scene will be still valid (and I, as traveller of the time, can confirm the fondatezza of the thesis). The study of TLS Europe emphasizes that in 2007, before still that the previewed economic crisis with infallible certainty around 2009 happens, against an ability to the railway lines between Genoa and the Po plain pairs to 470 trains to the day 73% of saturation of the net will reach, with 342 circulating every day trains, of which 204 goods and 138 passengers. "Saturating the line to 90% " it has found - there would be space for 81 freight trains in more to the day". Camisetti has specified, therefore, than already in 2010, when the port of Genoa would have to enliven beyond 1,7 million container teu, almost 60% of this traffic (about a million teu) "could be moved on track". "With the Third Pass - it has clarified - the ability will be able to go up to 750 trains to the day".

To conclusion of the presentation of the study the Century has been carried out a round table moderated from assistant manager de "XIX, Luigi Leone, to which people have participated who between thirty years will cover important institutional roles. Between these: Roberto Castelli, than in 2011 will be vice minister to Infrastructures and Transports, Claudio Burlando, president of the Liguria Region, Alessandro Repetto, president of the Province of Genoa, Paolo Pissarello, vice mayor of Genoa, and Luigi Merlo, president of the Harbour Authority of Genoa. That the argument has not been interesting, but they are topics that you readers of 2011 already know and that therefore you saving.

An only annotation on the proposal of reduction of the number of the advanced Harbour Authorities from some taken part. The difficulties and the reluctances are emphasized to put into effect an initiative of this type. According to vice minister Castelli it will be the European Economic Community (than in future it will become European Community and successively European Union) to impose a concentration to us of the Harbour Authorities when it decides to select the ports of European importance on the base of the minimal volume of enlivened traffic. In that moment Italy will have to decide if to have a single port of European caratura or if, accorpando various harbour agencies, will be able to introduce in European center some primary national harbour nuclei that they move a considerable volume of traffic.

The encounter has concluded in a climate of general concord and confidence. We are hardly at the beginning of the boom of years ‘80 and today the relatori have almost convinced also a mistrustful one as me: the Third Pass seems to be indispensable and it will be made. By little years the era of the container is begun. Already numerous ships in a position to transporting various hundreds of these full large chests of goods furrow the seas. Genoa has left with the just foot. At the beginning of the slid decade, winning some resistance, its marine-harbour community has had a premonition that the containerizzazione would not have been an ephemeral phenomenon. In 1981 - to testimony that the phenomenon is in arrestable rise - the Hapag-LLoyd German has taken in delivery the new Frankfurt Express that, with an ability to 3.430 teu, is the portacontainer larger of the world. Ships in a position to transporting 6,000 teu are already planned.

It is a revolution that gives the water is going up to earth. These largees box run already on the railroads that the prairies, the deserts and the city areas of the America North cross from coast to coast. Also in Europe it is being equipped here us. Genoa has comprised also these new developments and has put again hand to a devised project at the beginning of the ‘900. A railway pass, exactly. The idea is simple: to realize a new line that exceeds Apennines connecting the harbour docks to the plain.

The project is retabled today by Assagenti and has provoked enthusiasm. "There is a climate - Camisetti has confirmed - many proactive". The initiative ignites new hopes in a moment in which the deindustrializzazione and the sunset of the state shareholding enterprises they are putting Genoa in knee.

The traveller of the time knows as the things will go. I that I have seen the half-deserted port and the empty factories and offices do not have the courage to break the spell. Who would have now the liver to say the genoese shipping agents who between thirty years will be to try still there to convince more who it is unknown that the Third Pass is an essential work for the genoese portualità and the economy of the Italy north?

Who would have never said, moreover, that in order to record made and opinions, rather than to project to me in the future one as from logic, I have had to ripiombare in the past?

I exit from the room and I relight the car of the time in order to return on . The same sun, today and then, heats the capital of Liguria. Analogous also the reflections and the deductions. Also now the Third Pass is almost a truth or remains still a chimera.

To wander in the time allows to look the life with separation and to become account that if to our eyes the project of God is inscrutable, is incomprehensible also the human history. Of it we find only the uncertainties and we record repeated disappointments.

The courage lacks me to rehappen crononauta and to go back on board of my means in order to risk to discover that probably this 23 article must be dated May 2041.

Bruno Bellio