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A safe summer in A4 and in A31
12 June 2018

"Also for the summer of 2018 - says the General Manager of A4 Brescia Padova Bruno Chiari - A4 Holding and the dealership A4 Brescia Padova have further prepared and perfected the plan of interventions to better guarantee the functionality of its infrastructures, the fluidity circulation and above all safety for all travelers. The arteries in our concession are mainly used for commercial transit and therefore undergo a significant decrease in the level of traffic - especially heavy - in August, when most companies close for holidays. It is true, however, that especially on summer weekends, there have always been high peaks of outgoing traffic at the toll booths affected by the direct tourist flow both to Lake Garda and entertainment parks and to the Asiago and Folgaria plateau. Also for this reason, the company has already planned a strengthening of both the crews of the Traffic Auxiliaries, in charge of the management of road traffic, and of the collection staff, in order to guarantee greater fluidity when paying the toll, especially in favor of foreign tourists. The synergy and common projects developed in recent months between A4, Cav and Autovie are certainly an additional tool to allow us to face a complex period like the summer in the best, safest and most efficient way for travelers ".

 

CURRENT TRAFFIC DATA ON A4 AND A31

The 235 km of the A4 Brescia Padova and the A31 Valdastico, the motorway sections under A4 Holding's competence, recorded a total traffic in the first quarter of 2018 of approximately 35.5 million actual vehicles* (data that measures the number of all vehicles entered, exited or transited on the motorway, regardless of the amount of kilometers traveled), of which 33.4 million on the A4 Brescia Padova and about 9 million on the entire section of the A31. The growth rate compared to the same period of last year was 2.38%, increased in particular by the increase in the transit of heavy vehicles, which from January to April 2018 were more than 8 million in total on both routes. For the month of May further data are expected to increase by 2.5% - compared to the same survey in 2017 - on the entire section and in particular by 4% on the A31 Valdastico, which records a constant increase in transit.

 

CONSTRUCTION SITES, INTERVENTIONS AND OPERATING PROCEDURES

In A4 and A31 all construction sites will normally be suspended on the weekends of July and August (with the exception of urgent interventions) for the period between 1st July and 12th September 2018, and the activities of the road paving construction sites will be carried out only on external junctions and ring roads under management. The same suspension will concern the maintenance work on the pavements or signs in the service and rest areas. All weekends from 30 June to 19 August, in addition to Monday 30th and Tuesday 31st July and 1st and 15th August, will be considered a "red dot" on the motorways licensed to the A4 Bs-Pd. In order to stem and solve all the different problems on the routes in the period linked to the summer exodus, the A4 Holding fleet and rescue staff will be further strengthened: 20 vans of the Traffic Auxiliaries will normally be available for a total of 40 employees in the different day shifts and at night, 14 between vehicles and trolleys equipped with variable message panel for signaling queues, additional 10 maintenance workers, a workshop for light mechanical assistance located near the motorway toll booths, located on average every 10 km, and one for assistance to heavy vehicles, scheduled every 30 km, which will ensure rapid intervention of tow trucks. All supported by the indispensable prevention and intervention of the patrols of the Traffic Police, the Fire Brigade and Suem 118, which at the hospitals of Brescia, Verona and Padua have means of helicopter assistance. The entire activity will be coordinated by the Centro Operativo Viabilità (COV), the management center of the motorway network in the area under its jurisdiction and located in A4Holding. All the information of what will happen along the arteries will be collected by various types of equipment (from 236 cameras for the automatic detection of accidents to 29 traffic sensors, from 259 SOS columns - arranged every 2 km along the entire route both in A4 and in A31 - up to 24 weather detection systems) and transferred in real time to the monitoring and control systems of the VOC itself, where operators will process and interpret them, then implementing the most appropriate intervention procedures.

 

SUMMER 2018: TRAFFIC FOR LAKE AND MOUNTAIN

As is known in summer, A4 and A31 are used, as well as for the crossing in direction and intersection with other highways and state roads, also for the transit of tourists direct to Lake Garda and the Venetian and Trentino highlands. The toll booths of Sirmione and Desenzano in the Brescia area have historically recorded heavy traffic peaks at this time of year, especially on weekends. Taking into consideration the traffic volumes generated on the Sirmione exit on the weekends of July and August, light vehicles in transit towards the Lake increase by 90% compared to the annual daily average. The transits for this exit in the summer months is 34% more than the annual daily average: in the period that goes from June to September an average of 45 thousand vehicles per day pass through the toll booths of the lake.

To stem the objective criticalities that these traffic volumes entail, the toll booths of Sommacampagna, Peschiera, Sirmione, Desenzano and Brescia east will be enhanced on all weekends until September with collection staff in addition to the norm, while noting a very high percentage (over 60%) of payments made by Telepass. During the time of the upgrades at the toll booths different criteria will be adopted such as the opening of two manual tracks and the operation in manual collection mode of one / two automatic tracks at the Peschiera toll booth, the reversible track opening with manual collection at the toll booth of Sommacampagna and the operation in manual collection mode of some automatic tracks in the other toll booths.

As regards the A31 Valdastico in the direction of the highlands, Piovene Rocchette toll booth also recorded a strong increase in the transit of holidaymakers during summer. The data obtained confirms that the vehicles leaving the toll booth on the weekends of July and August increase on average by 140% compared to the annual daily average and that the average daily vehicles leaving Piovene Rocchette in the summer months are on average 46% more than annual daily average. Therefore, this toll booth will also be strengthened every weekend in the summer, as established by the practice over the years, with the opening of one or two reversible slopes with manual collection between 8.00 and 14.00.

 

(* The total of actual vehicles is not given by the sum of the volumes of the two sections, A4 Brescia Padova and A31, but by the actual count of the vehicles passing from one section to the other).