Tolls, works and regulations
With the new tariff system launched by the Art (Transport Regulatory Authority), the message has passed that compared to the old one the tolls will increase little or will decrease. Difficult to reconcile with the fact that now much more is spent on maintenance and that, contrary to before, it is financed with tariff increases: after the collapses and judicial investigations, Mims has issued guidelines that actually set new standards. We thus fall back into the evolutionary maintenance, admitted by the Art in the tariff on 14 October 2020. It is expensive: for example, Aspi has allocated 1.2 billion on the structural and fire-fighting adaptation of the tunnels (terms expired in April 2019) and 2.4 on the modernization of safety and noise reduction (on 3,100 kilometers after the previous management had eluded it).
All of this also has a regulatory front. The most recent is that of the ministerial guidelines on viaducts and tunnels, on which there are scientific and interpretative doubts and the managers demand a transitional regime to avoid sudden closures. The situation is complicated by the fact that sometimes the inspections carried out according to the guidelines highlight pieces of structures that have never been checked in twenty years or give alarms due only to the instrumentation used by the managers themselves.
The basic technical legislation on barriers has existed since 1992, but there are still problems: for example, static testing of the barriers after assembly is still not widespread and everything is entrusted to a certification of the manufacturer (so much so that there is a the only independent company that has the quality certification for the verification of correct assembly, Inco Engineering).
The new technologies
Technological developments should also be included in the income statement, with systems that integrate various functions: from monitoring structural stability to weighing trucks in motion to suppress overloading and detecting other infringements, up to the connections with vehicles necessary for driving in the future. autonomous.
For now, only the first two functions are visible, useful for avoiding collapses and wear due to overload and to really enforce the weight limits imposed by Mims on some viaducts at risk. It is happening on the A3 from Nocera Sud to Salerno, where the dynamic weighbridge of Movyon (Aspi technology company) has just made its debut, approved to detect infringements without requiring a static weighing, allowing the Police to immediately leave the motorway who does not is in good standing. Aspi has also restored, after a period of neglect, the previous dynamic scales, which require the intervention of agents to take the offenders to a static scale that will have to confirm the detection.