Intelligent Road in A1

The A1 motorway, the country’s main transport artery, is used every day by light and heavy vehicles travelling from north to south, making it essential to adopt innovative solutions to make traffic smoother and safer. The challenge was to identify sustainable technologies capable of modernising the infrastructure and optimising its overall efficiency.

Through the progressive digitalisation plan launched on the A1 and intended to be extended across the entire national network, Autostrade per l’Italia set out to create a mobility ecosystem focused on safety, traffic management and environmental impact control. The aim was to develop connected infrastructure capable of providing more efficient and safer mobility.

With the support of Movyon, the Group’s technology operator, the first Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) services were activated on the 24 km Florence North–Florence South section and on the 26 km Bologna urban node, for a total of 52 km of “Smart Roads”. The solution enables two-way communication between vehicles and infrastructure through Roadside Unit (RSU) antennas installed along the carriageways.

The system collects data from vehicles in transit – position, direction, speed and information relating to heavy goods transport – and sends messages back to the vehicles, warning them of critical situations such as queues or accidents. Movyon’s platform processes, validates and centralises the information, sending it to Autostrade per l’Italia’s Traffic Control Center and to vehicles, supporting both the operator in traffic management and users in journey planning.

Thanks to this approach, traffic becomes smoother, safety increases and pollutant emissions are reduced. Every day, the system generates more than 200,000 Cooperative Awareness Messages, supports around 500 monitored vehicles and uses 34 ITS-G5 RSUs, ensuring high standards of reliability and operational continuity.