A22, a modern infrastructure in the heart of the Alps

(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor)-Founded in 1959 by a group of local authorities (which today hold 84.75% of the capital) from Bolzano to Modena to answer the growing demand for mobility along the Brenner axis, Autostrada del Brennero has always had a clear mission: to offer a safe, efficient and sustainable motorway service, with a strong link to the territories it crosses. The area it crosses is multifaceted and complex: from the 1375 metres of the Brenner Pass it winds for 314 kilometres to the junction with the A1, in the heart of the Po Valley, passing over 142 bridges and viaducts and through 30 tunnels. Four regions are united by its route: Trentino Alto Adige, Veneto, Lombardy and Emilia Romagna.

According to the latest available figures, Autostrada del Brennero recorded sales revenue of EUR 405.5 million in 2024 and a net profit of EUR 97.92 million (+22.35% compared to 2023). Of the 50.6 million reserved for investments, 75% is dedicated to management innovation. And it is innovation that is one of the pillars of the Green Corridor project underpinning the proposal submitted and decreed feasible by the Ministry of Transport for the new concession. A proposal worth more than 9 billion investments, all self-financed, revolving around three macro-pillars: energy transition, intermodality and digitalisation.

While waiting for the investment plan to be grounded, the company has managed to cope optimally with the growing volumes of traffic. This is evident from the accident figures: despite the fact that the average number of vehicles per day has risen from 10,930 in the year the entire route was opened, 1974, to 45,984 in 2024, the accident rate is now at 15.97 points, almost half the national average, with a positive succession now stretching back 20 years. The reason? A rich recipe, made up of several ingredients: starting with the introduction of the overtaking ban for lorries in the 1990s, through the adoption of noise-absorbing asphalts and the high-performance Corten guardrail, to road management and infrastructure works: every year the company allocates an average of around 200.000 euro per kilometre for maintenance work, which is carried out according to a punctual schedule to have as little impact on traffic as possible and which is now supported by a very sophisticated sensor system on the structures. The icing on the cake is a robust security machine consisting of 82 auxiliaries and 182 workers, coordinated 24/7 by the Cau (User Assistance Centre), which operates with the help of 231 cameras. In 2024, the Traffic Auxiliaries carried out 16,509 interventions along the route, with an average time of 7 minutes from the call to the arrival on the scene of the emergency.

The intuition of investing in the railways that the company's directors had in the 1990s also favoured effective road management. As traffic increased, the company realised that it was necessary to progressively shift long-distance freight traffic to rail. Thus began a project that has today brought the Autobrennero Group to be, after Mercitalia, the second largest cross-border freight operator in Italy. Thanks to the companies InRail, Rtc and Lokomotion, the Group, led by Autostrada del Brennero, transfers around 1,500 trucks per day to rail, saving 300,000 tonnes of Co₂ per year. In this perspective, motorway and rail are not competitors but allies, conceived as a single, integrated system, where the railway is preparing to receive more and more goods and the motorway becomes more and more technological and equipped to guarantee services to zero-emission vehicles, thus contributing decisively to the goal of sustainability. Obviously this project goes hand in hand with the planned 'intelligent' upgrading of the artery, through the construction of the third lane from Verona to Modena and the dynamic third lane from Verona to Bolzano, and the overall digitalisation of the section.