They are ready 60 billion in investments in next fifteen for modernize the motorway network Italian. This was announced by president di Aiscat, Diego Cattoni, during the 56th assembly of the members of the association which brings together the concessionaires of motorways and tunnels. A demanding announcement, accompanied by an equally pressing alarm addressed to the government, represented on the occasion by the minister of infrastructure Matteo Salvini: the rain of billions risks remaining largely unused if the authorizations are not released.
Two objectives: economic recovery and improvement of mobility
The investment objective is to participate in the economic recovery of the country need improve mobility looking at digitization and ecological transition.
For the President of Aiscat, digitization will also help reduce accidents “autonomous and connected driving – he explains Cattoni – will allow us not only to increase the capacity of the arteries without the use of additional land and to make travel faster, but above all to radically reduce the accident rate today mostly linked to the human factor”.
The spread of electric vehiclesInstead, it will drastically reduce the Polluting emissions. The interventions will concern the ordinary maintenance , construction of third and fourth lanes. Are provided new infrastructure works and the improvement of the current ones.
Bureaucratic problems, the procurement code, the Pnrr
During the meeting, i problems who have plagued the Italian motorway sector over the last few years. Bureaucratic and functional problems among the various ministerial structures that make the approval process of the works still complicated.
Compared to a few years ago, however, at least the dialogue with the Ministry of the Environment which has often put a brake on the creation of new works. The main problem remains the relationship with Superintendencies since the prescriptions they require when they block an intervention have no time and spending limits.
La recent procurement reform should streamline the approval process for new works.
“We had to intervene with the Aid Quater decree before Christmas to avoid that projects lapse of important works and allow them to be validated by the Superior Council of Public Works,” he said Edward Rixi, Undersecretary of State to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport of Italy. “If you don't intervene on the existing infrastructures in 20 years there will be similar situations to those of the Morandi Bridge, Public works must be plan with 10 years in advance, but today it's complex to work on an obsolete infrastructure, because you can't tear down what's already there and redo it and the existing constraints are complex”, explained Rixi.
Roberto Tommaso, CEO of Autostrade per l'Italia, Italian motorway infrastructure they are remarkably behind France and Germany which in recent years have invested twice as much as in Italy. It is "since 1975 that no new infrastructure has been planned". In other words: interventions are possible abroad, not in Italy.
A hot potato for Matteo Salvini because the memory of the tragedy of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa is still fresh and vivid. Salvini intervened explaining the reason for the exclusion of the motorway network from the PNRR, “a myopia” of the Government “that we are trying to recalibrate, grounding some budget items in a useful way”.
The main unfinished works
In addition to the planned improvements and the construction of new works there are still some infrastructure essential for the country's economy, without which the Italian production system would stop.
Among main unfinished to be implemented there are:
- Il passerby of Bologna which provides for the upgrading of the A14 and the ring road with the enlargement of 8 meters on each side of the current roadway
- La Genoa eaves, infrastructural work relating to the construction of a new motorway north of the Ligurian capital
- THElast lot of Asti-Cuneo in the stretch of motorway between Verduno and Cherasco which recently obtained the go-ahead from the Ministry of the Environment
