The mystery cables that keep half of a street in southern Rome closed

If via Nairobi to EUR has been reduced to a single lane between Largo Sri Lanka and Piazzale Umanesimo for seven and a half years, it is not just the fault of bureaucracy, of the funds added and removed, of Covid and of the changes in administration. Now they also put mysterious cables, which no one knows anything about and whose ownership it is not possible to discover.

The novelty emerges during the last mobility and public works commission of the 9th municipality, convened by the president Giulio Corrente (Green Europe) to find out the state of the art of the works also on via Bonn al Torrino Nord. In recent months all the underground service agencies that have their cables inside the tunnel beneath the road surface have been identified and contacted. In total there are 25 and as Corrente says “on June 9th there will be an operational meeting with all of them to schedule the move”.

Eur, the jerseys of via Nairobi celebrate five years: “The funds are there, the tender is missing”

With all except three, because three are cables without a master. We don’t know what goes through them and who they belong to. “We have done every type of check – continues Corrente – but it was not possible to find useful information. On the 9th we will also decide how to act. Simply put, we could try to cut one and see what happens, since we know that they are not services (electricity, water, gas , fibre) having already identified them all. But the situation is delicate.”

Delicate because nearby there is a criminal police headquarters, a few kilometers away is the Cecchignola military district. “And then who knows what other offices we know nothing about – adds the majority councilor – so we have to pay attention”. In short, the project to make via Nairobi safe – after the structural failure of the underground tunnel in 2015 – would be ready and financed. Even the archaeological surveys never done and which had caused one of the many postponements have been finalized. But there are three unknown cables that make the work currently impossible, until someone takes it upon themselves to cut them.