Biella, “Viabilità: Prospettive per il Biellese”, le parole del CEO ANAS, Claudio Andrea Gemme

Thank you Gilberto for the introduction. So obviously Anas is an important topic, a national topic, a state-owned company. I am a public servant and therefore I try to spend the public funds assigned to us in the best way possible. Thanks also to Minister Pichetto Fratin, the project for montare is a national project. Let's start by saying it is a national project. A national project that fits into the 33,000 km of the Italian highway network we manage, with an important focus on 18,720 bridges — if you count the piers, they are 300,000 — so I'm giving you a sense of the important scale of management. 2,157 tunnels. The main thing, Mr. Mayor, Mr. President of the Province, is the daily dialogue that Anas has with 3,500 municipalities, because this 33,000 km network touches 3,500 municipalities. The real strength is this. Anas's strength is also in its continuous dialogue with municipalities. Then I cannot fail to thank the provinces, because the provinces are donors, meaning they spontaneously donate kilometers. So we collect real donations, in the sense that in recent years we have collected an additional 7,000 km. 7,000 km. I also greet Assessor Giavosi. Hi. Let's say that Anas can count on an additional 8 billion in funding compared to the previous program contract. We have within our portfolio 44 billion — important numbers — 37 billion in new works and 5 billion for programmed maintenance. If we want to talk about maintenance for a moment, one of the great themes of our country is obviously a country where after some years there are projects in the approval phase, 2 billion, there are a number of important interventions in our pipeline. And this is the overall dimension of Anas, within which we will discuss in a moment the Biella project.

Well, in Piemonte, if the various provincial presidents don't donate us other kilometers, we have arrived at 1... Are you ready? I'm collecting the list. We have a network that extends for 1,700 km, which is not little, right? When you think of the various highway companies that have 700-800 km, and I remind you that we have no tolls, and therefore we proceed with activities entirely with public funding. Investments in Piemonte total 2.2 billion euros for programmed maintenance. I help myself with notes because otherwise I can't remember — usually I remember everything by heart. In this case I need to focus on Piemonte because the national data are simpler, and also with Giavosi we are... he is also a tamer, so to speak — we are ready. We have obviously maintenance targeting 720 million euros. New works under construction or about to start total 1 billion, and we also have 442 million — Castellari, who is the person responsible for Piemonte at Anas, reminded me of this figure, because 442 million for design is not a small number. Then, the takeover of the latest kilometers happened in 2021. One of the great objectives we have pursued, obviously together with the regions and provinces, is to standardize the management of the entire network, because obviously it was not uniform. When you manage a standard, you can obviously standardize pavement, maintenance of facilities, and a whole series of activities that regard the possibility of innovating. Today technology gives us the ability to monitor these structures, to manage tunnels differently, and therefore in the new works we are building we are incorporating technology. It is true that monitoring 18,000 bridges, 2,172 tunnels requires a whole series of activities, but if we don't start with new works — and we will talk about the new work — we must absolutely incorporate everything that technology can help with to achieve the total life cycle of projects, the entire life of projects. We must absolutely see from today how to insert technological tools to be able to manage our network, tunnels in particular, and so on.

Well, first of all, the economic dimension is 302.8 million euros, the construction of a route, a roadbed extending 15 km, is a connection between the A4 in the section near Santa Vittoria di Gattinara, then the A26 — so if we want to represent it with a diagram, we have one perhaps — and so this is the dimension of the project. It will be an extra-urban main road, what we call Type B, composed of two carriageways separated by a central reservation, each with two lanes in each direction and a width of 22 meters. So it is absolutely very important. There will be four interchanges for connecting local roads to Masserano, Roasio, and Gattinara, and with the A26 in the municipality of Geminio — which is not me, because there's an 'H' — I see it now. Gemini is also a Gemini zodiac sign, right? So a fellow competitor. And then it reaches Alba. Thank you, Mr. President.