Safety advice

The primary objective of all company activity is to provide the best possible service to customers in terms of assistance and mobility.

To achieve this, toll collection and Traffic Assistance personnel are on duty 24 hours a day, the latter ensuring the safety of motorists along the route. The headquarters facility in Rondissone hosts the Operations Center (O.C.), the heart of the system, essential for collecting information, via computerized and radio-TV instruments, on what is happening on the motorway and at the toll plazas and then dispatches announcements and instructions to operators and customers based on decisions taken in compliance with established procedures.

For this purpose, the Operations Center receives the following information:

• radio communications from motorway operators;
• calls for mechanical, medical and fire-fighting assistance;
• the status of active worksites;
• traffic monitoring;
• environmental conditions;

and provides and supervises the following activities:

• reports to and requests the intervention of the Traffic Police and its own assistance vehicles (Traffic and Safety Service) or external vehicles;
• coordinates operational actions and assistance;
• informs the traffic information dispatching centers;
• responds to telephone calls from customers for information on traffic and environmental conditions.

The Company conducts its motorway operation and management activities with other organizations, each of which is responsible for its own sector:

• the Traffic Police permanently assigned to the motorway;
• the oil and foodservice companies, which provide fuel and food & drink in the service areas;
• the Fire Department;
• ACI (Automobile Club) and VAI EUROP ASSISTANCE for mechanical assistance;
• 118, the number for emergency medical services.

Information Services

In addition to CCISS - Onda verde - RAI service, Autostratda Torino-Alessandria-Piacenza S.p.A. has conventions with GRP - Radiotraffic (Piemonte:FM 99,300 and 96,100;Lombardy FM 103,700), the Autotraffic organization and AGR and CNR press agencies for the broadcast of real-time traffic information.
Motorists can also find useful information prior to departure:

• the website
• the Televideo page;
• by calling 011 918.32.83 or 011 918.39.44 ()24 hours a day);
• the variable message panels located along the motorway;
• the customer Service Centers (Punti Blu) located along the motorway (Rondissone, Novara Est, Milan Ghisolfa).

Maintenance

Maintenance is the key activity for keeping the motorway infrastructure in efficient operating condition. The areas requiring maintenance are the road surface, in terms of prevention and correction of potholes and slick areas, the road markings and signs, including the repair and cleaning of signs, bridges and overpasses, the structures and roofing of the tollbooths, the service areas, the lighting systems at interchanges and toll plazas, and the guardrails, as well as maintenance of water management systems and the timely repair of damage caused by accidents.
The key areas, however, are:

Road surfacing

The maintenance generally consists of two distinct phases:

• monitoring and controlling the functional and structural characteristics of the roadway;
• maintenance work (preventive and corrective) to restore the roadway structures and surface.

In the first phase, the systematic checks focus on three principal characteristics of the roadway:
- load capacity, which measures the ability of the road surface to sustain the weight of the vehicles;
- traction, which measures the surface characteristic that enables vehicles to maintain grip on curves and when braking under adverse weather conditions;
- planarity, which measures the comfort perceived by vehicle occupants in terms of vibrations caused by road surface geometry.

The results of these analyses determine the programming of routine maintenance activity, which consistd of restoring surface conditions, if the traction and comfort indexes are low, or deeper repairs if the load-bearing indexes are substandard.

Other areas of particular importance are drainage and noise absorption, which make the motorway intrinsically safer, make driving more comfortable due to the reduction of vehicle spray, and lower environmental impact due to lower noise generation caused by tire-road interaction. This low-noise surface, currently in use on a few short stretches, will be extended to the entire route in the future, as the motorway is modernized.

Winter Maintenance
The company provides adequate winter maintenance service to ensure proper safety and driving conditions in the event of snow and sub-freezing temperatures.
The formation of ice is prevented through the spreading of melting compounds like sale by specialized service providers suitably staffed and equipped.
These compounds, as well as the equipment for spreading them, are stored near the maintenance centers at the toll plazas of Rondissone, Cigliano, Balocco, Biandrate and Boffalora, where snowplows are also stationed when required. A new maintenance center is also in operation at the Greggio toll plaza.

Road Markings and Signs
Signs and marking are essential to traffic safety. During the year, special equipment is used to check the reflective characteristics of road markings, and when these parameters decline they are restored by proper retouching.

Equal care is devoted to the maintenance of signage and the reflective elements installed along the edges of the roadway to mark the limits. The vertical signs and road boundary markers are constantly checked to ensure that they remain legible and visible.

Lighting
All entrance and exit ramps, interchanges with regular roadways and the toll barriers and plazas are equipped with lighting installations that provide sufficient visibility under all conditions at points where traffic from various directions flows together. The lighting installations at these points are constantly powered and maintained to ensure continuing visibility.