BUSTO ARSIZIO – “At least six red lights to pass the traffic light. Every morning it’s like this.” This is the complaint of one of the many drivers forced to wait in line at the snail-paced traffic light on Via dei Mille, which leads to Via Magenta. A real daily chaos, now a habit that requires anticipating travel times from home to work in order to navigate the unbearable rush hour traffic.
Daily chaos
The line reaches Via Guerrazzi
“An unbearable situation,” continues the complaint. The route is the east-west axis of the city, which regularly gets stuck at the traffic light on Via dei Mille. The queues systematically extend to Piazza Plebiscito and beyond, along Via Guerrazzi. There are no alternatives, because even the parallel roads Via Mazzini (which leads to the Piazza Manzoni-Via Magenta axis where traffic moves at a snail’s pace) and Viale Alfieri/Pirandello are no better in terms of traffic, so there is no choice but to face the morning congestion. A hopeless situation.
Solutions? In the long term
The only hopes for the future are, on one hand, the highly anticipated roundabout on Via Magenta/Marco Polo – which has already been delayed in the past – which appears to be crucial in relieving one of the most difficult bottlenecks in the city’s traffic, and on the other hand, the unlocking of the thirty-year stagnation of the Nord area, which has been practically at a standstill since the burying of the tracks. A reorganization of the road network is finally expected, which can make traffic flow more smoothly on both the east-west axes and from one side of the railway to the other, between the city center and Sant’Edoardo. However, it will still take years to complete these works, and in the meantime, drivers do not want to resign themselves to the daily queue.
