Summer exodus: 28 million Italians travelling and debut of the traffic monitoring room

Aspi's Traffic, Facilities and Infrastructure Monitoring Centre is launched, the control room, a new technological heart that remotely coordinates traffic and infrastructure status from the headquarters in Rome. The debut coincides with the start of the great summer exodus. Starting this weekend, in fact, the most intense phase of departures for the holidays of Italians will begin, Autostrade per l'Italia explains.

The largest movements are expected starting today, Friday 26 July and Saturday 27 July, leaving large urban centres and heading for the main routes leading from the North to the holiday resorts in the South, along the A1 Milan-Naples, the A14 Bologna-Taranto and the A30 Caserta-Salerno. The days marked by the highest traffic volumes will be Saturday 3 and Saturday 10 August. Overall, 28 million Italians are expected to travel along the network operated by Autostrade per l'Italia over the first two weekends of August. Traffic will still be heavy towards tourist resorts on the weekend following the August bank holiday. The returns to the big cities will instead be more diluted and will mainly concern the last three weekends of August.

To facilitate summer travel, as per ministerial decree, a ban on heavy goods vehicles is already in force for the entire weekend. Autostrade per l'Italia has also put in place a traffic management plan that provides, among other things, for the removal of the most impactful construction sites along the main motorway stretches, so that all lanes are available during the busiest periods. The measures adopted and the planned garrisons will in any case guarantee the availability of two lanes in the prevailing traffic direction. In addition, manpower and vehicles will be deployed at strategic points to ensure timely intervention in support of users. To ensure an even better travel experience, Aspi is once again focusing on technological innovation: this means digitisation, more connectivity, more efficiency and more safety.

The Traffic, Plant and Infrastructure Monitoring Centre is a unique and more advanced centre that monitors a complex network, both in terms of traffic volumes and the orographic characteristics of the territory it crosses, as well as the high number of bridges, viaducts and tunnels. The role of the control room is to link the images and information arriving in real time and 24 hours a day from the nine trunk directions located along the 3,000 km network, giving an overall view of the flows and guaranteeing capillary control of the facilities (toll booths, tunnels, cameras, etc.) and the infrastructure through advanced software connected with devices in the field using artificial intelligence, drones and Iot (Internet of things). The Centre was designed and built by Movyon, a leading company in the development and integration of mobility technologies and Aspi Group's centre of excellence for research and innovation.