The Brenner Motorway is a section of the TEN-T Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor and is destined to remain, at least over the medium term, the only infrastructure capable of ensuring the connection between Central Europe and Central Italy. For this reason, it is expected to welcome most of the traffic transiting in the North-South direction.
Up until 2007, the volumes of traffic increased constantly, then, with the economic crisis that hit the country, this trend became negative.
The trend has finally reversed to positive in recent years and the volume of traffic, especially heavy vehicle traffic, has increased again with the increase in foreign trade. 2018 has been the year with the highest volumes of traffic on the A22 motorway.
Traffic flows on the Brenner Motorway also increase significantly on holidays and on weekends.
The response to these phenomena is the upgrading of the road infrastructure, that due to its current geometric features generates traffic jams in some periods of the year due to the traffic flow exceeding its maximum capacity.
Within this context, the creation of a third lane on the Brenner Motorway between Verona and the intersection with the A1 motorway at Modena is indispensable and urgent in order to adequately respond to the increase in traffic – especially that of tourists – so as to ensure greater levels of safety and traffic fluidity and meet the higher demand for travel expressed by the territory according to the various forecast analyses.
The project, that will concern the section from chainage 223 km to chainage 313 km, over a total distance of 90 km, consists in providing each carriageway with three lanes plus an emergency lane using, where present, the current central herbaceous reservation and by widening the current section of the bridges over the Fissero-Tartaro canal and the Mincio and Po rivers.
The project also envisages the reconfiguration of the intersection with the A1 motorway.
The goals of the project, that has been designed based on the minimization of environmental impact and on a careful analysis of the technical and economic elements, are to increase safety, respond better to the increase in freight traffic, and offer a high level of service. Among the actions aimed at increasing safety there are the creation of an emergency lane 3.5 m wide, the widening of 33 acceleration/deceleration lanes for a total length of 9,300 m, the construction of 309 new laybys geometrically much larger than those required by law, the installation of 384 km of new safety barriers patented by Autostrada del Brennero S.p.A., having very high impact energy absorption capacity, and the implementation of a central and lateral anti-fog system. The actions in favour of minimizing the impact on the environment include the installation of 117 sound barriers covering an overall distance of about 63.7 km, the laying of approx. 1,100,000 m2 of water-draining and sound-absorbing pavement, and the creation of a surface water collection, routing and draining network.
