The Regional Executive Board of Campania, on proposal by Regional Minister for Transport Sergio Vetrella, expressed its final consent to the project that designs an external solution for the town of Acerra along the route Naples-Cancello of the new high capacity rail line Naples-Bari.

The consent expressed by Regione, based on a technical and economic assessment made by Rfi (Italian Railway Network) belonging to the Ferrovie dello Stato Group, which compared the two designs of the route and revised the cost-benefit ratio, makes it possible to start procedures for the final project and the following works start for such a key strategic structure.

The measure, that will reduce costs, compared with the first project, was adopted by applying the so-called “Campania model”, that envisages the sharing with populations and Institutions concerning strategic infrastructure.

Through the same resolution, the Regional Executive Board also sets forth that Rfi, during the project activities, shall:

1.      Precisely give a time schedule, within the context of a time schedule for the project, for the release of the area concerned with the historical line railway inside the urban settlement of Acerra;

2.      Promote an agreement among Institutions and Authorities concerned with the implementation of this work to draft a recovery and urban upgrading of the released area, selecting new possible uses of public interest, to be managed also through public-private partnerships;

3.      Provide a clear statement about the possible rail service during the several phases of working.

Finally the Resolution set forth that the Regional Executive Board invites Rfi to discuss with all authorities responsible for contracting supervision in order to ensure completely legal expropriation procedures as well as works entrustment, in particular setting up any possible measure to fight potential criminal infiltrations.

President of Regione Campania Stefano Caldoro stated: “We have launched a new method, urged, demanded and supported, for a major work of national interest. A good practice, at the beginning not understood, but that everybody appreciates now”.

Regional Minister for Transport Sergio Vetrella explained: “We carry on sticking to the schedule set to speed up as much as possible procedures to start works along the Naples-Bari route. Last August, as first, we signed with the Government the development contract for this remarkable public work, that set forth details concerning parties’ duties, necessary and available resources and the intervention schedule. After that, today we have made another step forward that, based on real and updated technical documents, allowed us to choose the final track that is considered to be better and more efficient from the technical, economic and environmental point of view; moreover, it is also able to meet the needs of the local and regional territory.

To those who keep on talking today about our alleged delays, I repeat that we had to step in just to break through a long time established still situation, and the regional administration that came before us is the only one to be held accountable for it, since in 2006 until the Regional Executive Board led by Caldoro took office, they were able to implement only some preliminary projects. And in some cases, such projects became old after six years, such as that concerning the Acerra section and that, hence¸ needed to be revised. Moreover, we also had to ask the Government to concentrate resources, already available and that were in an unexplained way spread over all the sections of the work, on the first two in order to have them completely funded and, thus speeding up and ensuring their implementation”.