Tav, a new station on Lake Garda? Bulldozers at work

14 November 2023

The first machines are about to arrive on the ground, so it's getting serious: the 'intermediate' station of the Tav between Brescia and Verona, conceived so as not to completely exclude Lake Garda from the new fast railway corridor, is no longer just a hypothesis, a wish or a polemical cue. In fact, letters have arrived to the owners of the areas concerned, at San Martino della Battaglia in the Desenzano area, announcing the start of core drilling and possible clearance of war devices, which is always the first operational phase of all land infrastructure works.


An intermediate stop
The area concerned is in the border area between Desenzano and Pozzolengo, near the A4 'Sirmione' motorway exit at San Martino della Battaglia. For those familiar with the area, it is the area between the headquarters of the Grana Padano Consortium, the A4 motorway itself on the southbound carriageway, the Armea farmhouse and Cascina Morone, in San Martino. The operations announced are a 'geognostic investigation', a first, or rather very first action on the ground, aimed at drawing up the preliminary project: a long, long time is to be expected before the first train can get on the first train at that future stopover, but the fact that machinery is arriving is certainly news, after years of discussion.


The 'rumours' of 2017
Also because, when in July 2017 the CIPE approved the final project of the Brescia-Verona Tav, there was no trace of an intermediate station: there was only, among the final prescriptions and recommendations, the request for a feasibility study for a "possible" and future High Speed train station on the Garda, not included in the general project, which for years was believed to have ended up in oblivion. This was not the case, and we have documented proof of this in these days.


The next steps
With this operation, the depths of any aquifers will be probed, piezometers will be planted and, at the same time, the absence of war remnants or other surprises will be ascertained, which the station design would then obviously have to take into account. If only for the purpose of recording it and consigning it to the 'annals', here is the content of the message announcing the turning point in the affair. The sender of the letters received in recent days is the company Cam Perforazioni Spa of Pesaro, the same company that had carried out identical operations on the rest of the route of the new railway under construction, also this time on behalf of FS, Rfi and Italferr.


Geognostic surveys
"The missive addressed to the owners of the land reads, "The undersigned company Cam, entrusted with the services of carrying out geognostic surveys, in situ tests and sampling for the definition of the geotechnical characteristics of the land involved in the 'New Av Basso Garda Station' project on behalf of Italferr Spa, hereby requests authorisation to carry out geognostic surveys on the areas of your property. Continuous core drilling will be carried out at depths of 30 and 40 metres, diameter 101 millimetres, with soil samples taken. The duration of the construction site, barring unforeseen circumstances, will be two to three days'. This is known for now, regarding the state of affairs for the technical part.
On the other hand, from a political, economic and also transport-related point of view, it should be remembered that the request for a Tav stop-over in this area stems from the need not to leave Lake Garda, Italy's second tourist district, out of the future strategic railway corridor: the Brescia-Verona operating model, in fact, envisaged the substantial elimination of long-distance trains from the historic railway from 2026, leaving the Desenzano and Peschiera stops with only three daily pairs of 'Frecce' (express trains). Definitely a slap in the face for an area that receives 23 million tourist presences a year.


Read the full article on: https://www.larena.it/territorio-veronese/garda-baldo/stazione-tav-sul-garda-in-arrivo-le-prime-ruspe-sul-terreno-1.10392376