Italy, the first European country to apply the use of toll motorways in the Twenties, has seen this network grow to its current length of 5724,4 km. The network, consisting of interurban motorways, city by-passes and mountain tunnels, is run by a group of 23 concessionaire companies.
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The prevailing principle at the core of toll motorway management in Italy is that of the "Concession", governed by a National Law made in 1929. The toll motorway network is assigned to concessionaires under a Convention that is stipulated between the Administration and the Concessionaire company.The Convention, of a contractual nature, establishes the terms of the concession, such as its purpose, validity, financial plan, and the obligations and rights of the Concessionaire and of the assigning authority. One of the aspects regulated by the Convention is the annual revision of toll charges, based on a complex "price-cap" mechanism.
In the beginning the Concessionaire companies were private, public and mixed. In the Nineties, the beginning of the privatisation process determined a progressive change in this state of affairs, to the point where today two thirds of the network are under the management of concessionaires mostly of a private nature. Some of these, namely the companies Autostrada Torino-Milano, Autostrade and Autostrade Meridionali, are listed on the Stock Exchange.
The design and expansion of the toll motorway network under concession has coincided with the period of peak growth in the Country's economy. By reducing to a minimum the need for public funding, the concession for the building and management of toll motorways has made it possible both to meet the economic demands for speedy and reliable connections, and the reaching of areas that for geographic or orographic reasons were remote or isolated.
In this way, the creation of toll motorways under concession became a determining factor in Italy's economic boom in the Fifties and Sixties, as well as in the modernisation of the Country's production system in its international growth in the following decades.
This capillary network today is the main artery of Italy's passenger and goods transport system. It is thus the indisputable starting point for the creation of a modern and efficient integrated and multimodal transport system, with a view to the reorganisation of logistic and communication chains. The extension of electronic toll systems (such as Telepass), today already widely used, the offer of new services, the optimisation of safety conditions, the achievement of sustainable growth in mobility are among the main objectives of the Italian Concessionaires.
The intelligent investments of the past in the optical fibre networks sector have eventually allowed Italian Concessionaires to play a leading role in the sector of mobile and fixed telecommunications. The integration between the world of transportation and that of telecommunications is the next objective, aimed at the creation of an integrated system and the achievement of interoperability between mobility systems, perfectly inserted in the European scenarios and in the framework of the Public-Private Partnership.
Click here to download the map of the Italian motorway network (situation as of 31 December 2023) - PDF format
Data at 31/12/2023 (source: 2024 Statistical Bulletin)
