Mega-cycle path suspended on Lake Garda: the approved project estimated costs of 64 million in 2016, now the completion is estimated, conservatively downward, at 1 billion and 222 million. Nineteen times more than expected

Item: The mega-cycle path suspended on Lake Garda: it cost 64 million, it will need a billion | Corriere.it

It started in 2016, recalls the then minister Graziano Delrio, as “a beautiful and good thing intended for those who love peaceful and sustainable tourism”. Yes, bye. The costs immediately revealed themselves to be less sustainable: 64 million euros for 161 kilometres: 397 thousand per kilometre, double that of a normal cycle path. In February 2021 the Technical-Economic Feasibility Project already rose to 292 million, in November 2022 it soared to 344 but “based on the executive and definitive measures adopted so far which demonstrate an average cost of 8.5 million euros per kilometre”, he accuses the Coordination that unites all the environmentalists from Italia Nostra to the WWF to Legambiente who meet today for a demonstration in Riva del Garda, «the projection of the average costs over the entire ring leads to a prudential downward estimate of one billion and 222 million» . Nineteen times more than expected

Hmm…because these words sound very current to me:

«It will be one of the cycle paths perhaps the most spectacular in the world», was the enthusiastic headline of a local newspaper in 2017. And then applause for the “dream of two-wheel lovers” and “eco-sustainable development” and the hymn to “food and wine traditions” and so on blablablando…

With the result, for example, that the president of the province of Trento Maurizio Fugatti and his associates, so terrified by the bears guilty of having killed a runner in the last century that they are reluctant to kill them in order “not to run the slightest risk” are reassuring on a cycle path clinging to the sheer walls of an area at high hydrogeological risk due to landslides, landslides, landslides.