After the A2 shutdown, a motion calls for a transit toll

An accident on Saturday evening in the Mezzovico area led to the closure of the A2 and to queues that blocked much of the Sottoceneri for hours. Two days later the Avanti con Ticino&Lavoro group, with deputy Giovanni Albertini as first signatory, filed a question to the State Council. The Lega had moved before them.

For the signatories, what happened on 8 August cannot be filed away as one more difficult day on Ticino’s roads. The motorway closure produced a domino effect. A volume of vehicles the text calls unsustainable poured onto cantonal and municipal roads and into residential neighbourhoods. The accident was exceptional, the deputies note, but the fragility of the road network in the face of such episodes can no longer be treated as such.

The core of the question is economic. «Il Ticino non può essere ostaggio del traffico di transito» (Ticino cannot be held hostage by transit traffic), the signatories argue, calling for a border-to-border transit toll. The reasoning is that pure through traffic must contribute more substantially to the costs and disruption it generates. Alongside the toll, the text asks for other measures capable of reducing pressure on the A2 to be examined, including rail transport of cars on the Gotthard axis.

Eight questions to the government

The first asks how often, over the past five years, queues longer than ten, fifteen and twenty kilometres have formed, and what the main causes were. The second concerns changes made to emergency management after earlier critical situations. The third asks what measures are planned against parasitic traffic, in particular the traffic that navigation systems divert into inhabited neighbourhoods.

Next come guarantees for residents’ mobility, for the functioning of public transport and for the passage of emergency vehicles when the A2 remains paralysed for a long time. The deputies then ask the government to explain the opposition it expressed in 2023 to a transit toll, in the light of the federal Parliament’s approval of motion 25.3744. They also ask for a reassessment of the feasibility of shuttle trains for cars through the Gotthard and for a study quantifying how much traffic could realistically leave the motorway thanks to a combination of measures.

The final question concerns the State Council’s willingness to champion a «Piano Gottardo» (Gotthard Plan) bringing together transit traffic, protection of local roads and alternative solutions, beyond emergency management alone. In the text the deputies recall that after years of questions, studies and discussions, a single accident still paralyses dozens of kilometres of territory. It remains unclear how much a transit toll would raise, what collecting it would cost, and what share of vehicles would actually move onto other routes.