A proposal to decongest the logistics system of the North West that could infuriate the already most and enraged truck drivers. It is to establish areas "buffers", real operational check points from to be located "in the naturally hinterland areas (Basso Piedmont and Lower Lombardy) and function as collectors of goods in containers, welcoming them from factories and also sorting them into night, 24 hours a day, to the port terminals according to a logic of use of the network during the hours of less traffic and greater efficiency". The proposal was formulated by Rodolfo De Dominicis, CEO of Connect Engineering & Digitalization Srl company born as an offshoot of Uirnet and therefore as a derivation of the Italian logistics platform project, in on the occasion of the conference entitled "Port and logistics congestion? I'll make a buffer!" held this morning at the Liguria Region.

According to Connect, to address congestion of the motorway network, and consequently also of the a comprehensive approach is needed that involves also the neighbouring regions, territories and communities the entire economic system will not be able to develop and will be condemned to a recession. For Connect, "only interventions highly innovative content can, especially in the presence of the new Genoa dam, which will allow the port to accommodate ships with over 20,000 container capacity, avoid both frustrating the investments that the State is making and to construct a fluidification scheme of the traffic, especially trucks, functional to development".

For Connect, therefore, the large spaces available in the areas ports, including those of La Spezia, "should allow traffic to be rationalized with obvious effects on the efficiency of ports, on costs for industries, but also on the on pollution, and on road safety".

It remains to be seen what hauliers, to whom - it seems - this proposal seems to ask to stop and to take on the problem. A pause and burden oneself with the effects of the congestion that could mean a Further increase in costs and waiting times, two issues central to the protest actions that the category has conducted in the last decades.

Commenting on the proposal, in a communication the Deputy Minister Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Edoardo Rixi, noted that "A more orderly management is of particular importance and planned flows of heavy traffic also through innovative tools that make it possible to separate, rationalise and distribute volumes along the logistics chain".

The vision of the future of logistics in the North West of the President of the Liguria Region who recalled that "The investments we are carrying out do not concern not only the new dam, but the entire port system: the basins, the elevated port, the new operational areas and, above all, the connection with large terrestrial infrastructures such as the Third Valico, the six-fold increase in the Genoa junction, the quadrupling of the Voltri and the doubling of Finale-Andora». "Within a short period of five or six years - observed Marco Bucci - we will have to have a complete system and capable of supporting the flows of goods, data, people and culture. This system, however, - specified the president of the Liguria Region - must also be managed in a modern and intelligent: we must overcome the logic of controls and build processes that work well from from the beginning, reducing downtime and waste, as is the case in the more advanced production models". A reduction in downtime and waste that seems to contradict, in fact, with the establishment of areas where waiting times are created and produce costs. However, according to Bucci, "the buffer project goes in this direction: we must not get used to - he said - bottlenecks, but working to eliminate them progressively, stroke after stroke, with a real change of mentality and organization. The goal is to arrive between 2030 and 2032 to an efficient, competitive and integrated port logistics system at the European level. If we all work together," he concluded, "it is A goal within our reach".

The observation of the president of the Banking Authority is pragmatic Port System of the Western Ligurian Sea: «the buffers - admitted Matteo Paroli - should not exist, but today they are indispensable with attention paid to road transport". For the president of the Port System Authority of the Sea Ligure Orientale, Bruno Pisano, the buffers would constitute a "a decisive element for the efficiency of the port".

According to Connect, the first step of the buffer system "should materialize with the experimentation of a buffer prototype in the area of lower Piedmont, and then proceed with the design and creation of the logistics ecosystem of the North West, possibly through a public-private partnership in project financing, a "technical-scientific observatory" and then design a form of support for buffers similar to the Ferrobonus and Marebonus".

It is inevitable to wonder if a form of support similar to the Marebonus, the incentive for hauliers who use the maritime transport, will be able to prevent the buffer project from infuriates the already enraged truck drivers. Unlikely, at unless the incentive is very substantial and such as to make further and significantly increase the costs of the logistics system of the North West.

In his speech Fabrizio Palenzona, honorary president of Slala Foundation, defined "the Genoa integrated system, Inland areas, the real strategy for the future. We have need certain times for transport, having knowledge - has warned - that the Italian system depends on road transport". Exactly: we do everything to prevent hauliers from they are more embarrassed than they already are.

Bruno Bellio