Skip to main content

Italian highway investments

The Italian island of Sicily is to benefit from major investment in its road network, in a move designed to help boost its economy.
March 5, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
The Italian island of Sicily is to benefit from major investment in its road network, in a move designed to help boost its economy. Sicily is one of the most economically-challenged areas of Italy and revitalising its economy has been seen as crucial to the long term future of the country as a whole.

As part of the economic plan devised for the island, Italy's public highway concessionary 1184 ANAS will invest over €7 billion in Sicily's road network. This includes over €2 billion in ongoing work and more than €4.1 billion in scheduled activity.

Featuring some 20% of Italy's major road network, Sicily represents a major investment goal for ANAS in terms of both maintenance and new construction. ANAS has already invested approximately €1 billion in Sicily between 2006 and the start of 2011.

Meanwhile Autostrade per l´ Italia (APSI) and Italian motorway group Gavio will handle a €150 million contract with Italy's public motorway concessionary ANAS. The deal involves setting up Italy's first free-flow highway toll system along 800km of road. When construction is finished, ownership of the system will revert to ANAS. In addition, APSI is also part of a consortium that has a €2 billion tolling contract from the French Government. This deal is to implement and manage a satellite system to track heavy-goods vehicles over almost 15,000km of road. And in the north of the country, a tunnel looks to be the most likely solution to the need for a new road link the Mortirolo Pass. This new tunnel would connect the Italian provinces of Brescia and Sonrio. The project would require the construction of a 7km tunnel and would be likely to cost in the region of €350 million to build. The plan to improve the road link between the provinces follows an earlier co-operation agreement aimed at helping promote economic development through investments in transport infrastructure.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • 1st IRF Europe & Central Asia Regional Congress held on in Turkey
    November 18, 2015
    The International Road Federation (IRF) organised its first Regional Congress & Exhibition in Istanbul, Turkey on 15–18 September, 2015 The IRF is a non-governmental, not-for-profit membership organisation founded in Washington, DC in 1948 with the mission to encourage and promote development and maintenance of better, safer and more sustainable roads and road networks around the world.
  • Julián Núñez, head of ASECAP offers a little Spanish enlightenment
    May 1, 2018
    Julián Núñez, president of ASECAP, gets his teeth into the vision of a European strategy for toll roads. David Arminas reports from Madrid Getting European politicians to agree to a long-term cross-border highway infrastructure programme for toll roads is extremely difficult. It’s a bit like pulling teeth. People want to avoid the pain. This is perhaps a bad analogy to use in the case of Julián Núñez, president of ASECAP - European Association of Operators of Toll Road Infrastructures. Núñez had just sat
  • Widening works: road user’s nightmare or operator’s challenge?
    March 14, 2017
    Early - and continuous planning - is essential for successful road widening projects. By Nina Sacagiu, project manager, and Laurent Charles-Nicolas, project director, at Egis. Keeping goods and people moving safely is the primary objective of any transport authority across the world. Delivering this objective on motorways and making the most out of network capacity requires all the resources, skills and ingenuity of those in charge of managing the infrastructure. When the network can no longer cope wit
  • All change: get ready to rethink everything
    November 10, 2022
    How can we make our infrastructure ready for new sustainability challenges? What kind of investments are needed? And who will finance them? Tolling association Asecap has some thoughts. Geoff Hadwick reports from Lisbon