To complete the work and connect the centers of the Unions, a railway network is needed, which can also rely on the existing one. This is what makes both those who live here and those who come to visit this land self-sufficient: the tourist who lands in Brindisi and is currently stuck there must be able to arrive wherever they want without renting a car.
A piece of this already exists, but only in the summer. Salento in Bus connects the seaside towns and centers with dedicated routes during the season, and its limitations show what is missing: it only works for three months a year, it is designed for those who go to the beach and not for those who go to work or school, and it does not connect to train schedules. It serves the tourist, which is the right half of the reasoning; the other half, the person who lives here all year round, is left on foot from October.
However, it is a demonstration: the connection between different municipalities can be done, the means are there, the service works. What is missing is not the technique, but the decision to consider it a regular service instead of a seasonal initiative.
And there is a third way that we did not consider in 2009: the sea. Here we were talking about railways and roads, i.e. the two things that are built. But this is a peninsula with two coasts and a row of towns overlooking the sea: Otranto, Castro, Tricase Porto, Leuca, Gallipoli, Porto Cesareo, and the small ports in between, and the sea is the only road that does not need to be built, paved, or secured. The ports are already there: what is missing is not the work, but the line.
Today, sea excursions are made: a tourist ticket is paid, departure is at ten and return is in the afternoon. A connection is another thing: fixed schedules, short stops, and above all the same ticket as the minibus and bus. This is how it works where it works: in Copenhagen and Hamburg, ferries are managed by the same company as the metro and are included in the same subscription: nobody calls them a trip, they are public transport that passes over water. If instead a separate ticket is sold to tourists, the sea remains an excursion forever.
Two things must be said frankly, because it is the difference between a serious proposal and a postcard. The first: the sea is not reliable all year round, with wind and rough seas the route is skipped, and small ports have limited shelters and depths. So it's a seasonal and complementary line, which complements the land network in the months when the coastal road is blocked by traffic; whoever promises it as a daily service in winter is selling an illusion. The second: it is necessary to reach the ports. A pier where you can only go by car repeats exactly the mistake of aggregation areas: the port is a node like the stop, and is worth as much as the connection it has.
On the other hand, it has an advantage that no other part of this chapter possesses: it can be tried in a season. No expropriations, tunnels or decades are needed: a boat, three stops, a schedule and an agreement are needed so that the ticket is also valid on the bus. It is the fastest thing to experiment with in the entire plan, and the easiest to close if it doesn't work.
A network of public transport also addresses two issues that the plan openly mentions. The first is pollution. The second is the kids who die on the roads on Saturday night: if there is a public transport to get home, that trip stops being necessarily by car.
And there's one thing that can't wait for the other phases. Our provincial roads have become a place of countless accidents, many caused by road barriers and trees planted on the side. Making them safe is the action to be taken immediately, while everything else is being realized.
Once the program is completed, we reach the final step. In 2009, we wrote it as «elimination of provinces». Since then, part of it has already happened: in 2014, provinces were stripped of their powers and transformed into second-level entities, which citizens no longer elect. They have not been cancelled, but they are no longer what they were, and for the reason we mentioned here: when a territory organizes itself into unions, that level no longer manages anything that the Unions do not manage better.
The vision that comes: the road that speaks, and what passes inside it
2009 ended here. Today, the chapter has a sequel, and it starts from a coincidence that's worth a whole chapter: we've just said that provincial roads need to be made safe immediately. That's why it matters now.
The connected roads. Since 2018, Italy has had a decree on 'smart roads' that authorizes the experimentation of intelligent roads and autonomous vehicles (updated in 2020 for vehicles without a steering wheel or pedals), and ANAS has a program worth around one billion to bring technology to three thousand kilometers. But these are ANAS roads: our provincial roads are not part of that plan. And when a road is being worked on to replace the barriers, it's dug up only once: laying down the ducts, fiber, and sensors while the construction site is already open costs a fraction of doing it again later. The connected road is not an additional work to be requested: it's a decision to be made before resurfacing. If it's made afterwards, it costs twice as much.
Autonomous driving is not just about removing the steering wheel. It's about the cost of a trip no longer depending on the driver: it's the only reason why it becomes sustainable to serve a town of a thousand inhabitants at 10 pm, which is exactly the person this plan doesn't want to leave behind. It's not something that will happen tomorrow morning, and it's being tested in half of Europe, but it's the direction we were asking for in 2009.
Artificial intelligence is the piece that governs everything, and it's better understood by looking at the on-demand minibus from the previous phase: today it's a switchboard with an app. With AI, it becomes a network that learns: it combines calls that go in the same direction, realizes that on Tuesdays at 8:15, fifteen people ask for the same route, and puts in a fixed route, and removes it when they stop asking for it. In other words, the service rewrites itself based on actual demand, something that no planned route designed at a desk has ever been able to do, and the reason why bus schedules, in our country, seem to be written for nobody.
5G and 6G, in this chapter, have nothing to do with video speed. They matter for one thing only: response time. For two vehicles to talk to each other and to the road, the delay is measured in milliseconds. 5G already does it where there is coverage; 6G, whose calendar has been set for 2026 with specifications closed in 2029 and the first networks around 2030, is born with the ability of the network to recognize what's moving around it. For us, the acronym is secondary: what matters is that coverage in the countryside is the infrastructure for everything else, and today it's non-existent in our countryside. A territory that asks for connected roads must first ask for the signal.
Drones, finally, with an honest clarification: they don't solve mobility, they solve logistics. They don't carry people; they carry things that today force a person to travel forty kilometers by car: medicine when the village pharmacy is closed, the report, the sample to be delivered to the laboratory. In Italy, the framework is being formed now: the first regulated area for drone flights was born in the province of Chieti, and a medicine has already arrived from the hospital in Avezzano to the pharmacy of a town at nine hundred meters above sea level. There, the obstacle is the mountain, here it is dispersion, but the problem is the same, and every delivery that arrives alone is one less car on the provincial road.
And here the comparison with the world is merciless, but useful. In Shenzhen, drone deliveries are not an experiment: they are more than three hundred routes with almost five hundred landing points, and the main operator has obtained a license to fly twenty-four hours a day. In Italy, at the same time, every flight is authorized one by one. The gap is not technological (the drones are the same), it's about rules, and the rules are being written now: the European framework for low-altitude airspace is being built in these months.
**Which, for a territory like ours, means one thing and a very practical one: when those rules are written, there will be those who already have the routes mapped and those who will start thinking about it. Mapping the paths between hospitals, remaining pharmacies, and towns that don't have them doesn't cost almost anything, doesn't require permits, and can be done this year.
Where all this leads. In 2009, phase 3 ended with a question about the structure: who administers. Today, a technical one is added, and it has a real deadline: not "what means do we put" but "what should the road be made of". It's an answer that is given once, at the moment when the road reopens. Our provincial roads will reopen to be made safe. That's the opportunity, and it won't come back for thirty years.
Original text from 2009, revised and expanded in August 2026.
How we wrote it before
This chapter has been rewritten. The earlier text is kept below: reading it shows how the idea changed, and when.
2009 The 2009 text
Testo originale del piano, scritto nel 2009. La stesura del 2026 ne conserva tutti i concetti e ne rivede la forma.
Per completare l’opera, ed unire e collegare il Salento tutto, occorre creare una nuova rete ferroviaria, servendosi anche di quella pre-esitente, che colleghi tutti i centri delle unioni di comuni, per rendere confortevole ed autosufficiente, sia il cittadino salentino, che il turista che viene a visitare la nostra terra. La realizzazione di una rete di mezzi urbani pubblici contribuisce a facilitare il progetto ecologico e stagnare l’emorragia delle vittime del sabato sera.
Facendo presente che, le nostre strade provinciali, sono diventate luogo di innumerevoli incidenti stradali, molti a causa di barriere architettoniche ed alberi piantati sui cigli delle strade. Quindi, nel frattempo che il progetto si realizzi, azione primaria da compiere, è la messa in sicurezza delle stesse.
Ultimando il programma si potrà passare alla fase definitiva di eliminazione delle province.
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