A Smart Road Application: The A2 Mediterranean Highway Project in Italy

Today technological innovation and digital transformation represent a concrete challenge for the transport sector, toward high quality and sustainable infrastructures and services. Within this issue, road mobility is undergoing a digital transformation based on both automation and connectivity, which promises to improve road safety, energy consumption and driving comfort, through vehicles to vehicles and vehicles to infrastructure communication and interaction (devices). The process of digital transformation for road infrastructures (and services) involves many aspects which concerns not only technological problems but also regulatory and legal aspects, both for the construction of new infrastructures (or their revamping) and for the management. Starting from these considerations, the aim of the paper was twofold: i) critically analyze the current state of practice of the Italian smart roads legislation; ii) describe the first smart road pilot project in south of Italy, the A2 Mediterranean Highway, in term of both smart technologies considered and corresponding investment costs