Hacker News Reader

Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

I have traveled all around Europe by car and the autostrada del sole is an unmatched engineering marvel in the old continent.

Italian geography is complex. There's a reason the allied forces took way longer from Naples to Milan than from Normandy to Berlin despite heavily outnumbering the Germans.

I was always super proud of the quality and maintenance of Italian highways. Somewhere around the turn of the century I stopped feeling as proud because maintenance started lacking and other countries that I visited (eastern Europe) has also built some very good roads.

One thing to notice though is that the highways are expensive.

From Rome to Milan in a small car you're paying around 60€s in tolls.

That's not a small price, especially as it is way higher than 15 day passes for all highways in some other central European countries.

View on HN

Depends. We just had a bridge collapse and kill 42 people with it. So it depends. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows

I did point out that from 20 years there seems not to be the same maintenance that we had.

Anyway the ponte Morandi is not part of the autostrada del sole.

Are you referring to the bridge collapse in Genoa a few years back?

Speaking as a Canadian, that's not bad. Our toll bypass for Toronto is about $.50/km, so traveling from one end of the city to the other (~70km) costs about $40-50 depending on the time of day. So it's not great, but it could be a lot worse.

A big part of it is that the 407 is highly privatized and owned by offshore corporations, pension funds, investors, etc.

https://www.407etr.com/en/trip-calculator

From Rome North to Milan South you're paying ~45€. With 60€ you can go from Naples North to Milan South.

That's a 200km difference.

Source: https://www.autostrade.it/en/pedaggio

I didn't fact check the exact numbers but I trust what's there.

But I know for sure there's something oddish with the calculator as I've spent around 80 euros in june between Monteporzio (south of Rome) to the Slovenian border whereas that calculator says I would've spent 51 euros.

Yeah, the Italian highways were a high engineering project. Even the asphalt quality that still used today has the ability to absorb water pretty quickly and don’t leave dangerous patches of water on the road with heavy rains.

The problem is that all the highway projects, despite being government financed, are now mostly in the hand of large private companies and rich families (Benetton) which made the price usage skyrocket. Traveling by car in Italy is now expensive for residents, and the alternative roads are slow and dangerous. In Switzerland the annual highway subscription is ~€40

> Traveling by car in Italy is now expensive for residents, and the alternative roads are slow and dangerous.

This is quite the generalisation. Slow? Yes for obvious reasons. The speed limit is a lot lower compared to highways. Dangerous? That's silly. Not sure why driving 70kmh on a country road is more dangerous than going 130kmh on a highway.

It all depends where you're going. Some roads are plain bad, others are excellent.

> Not sure why driving 70kmh on a country road is more dangerous than going 130kmh on a highway.

If you hit the edge of the highway, you'll likely bounce off the barrier and survive.

If you go over the edge of a national road at 70kmh you'll likely end up in a ditch/roll the car, dangerous at any speed.

If you hit the edge of the highway at 130kmh you'll likely bounce back onto incoming traffic that's also going 130kmh.

Highways are less dangerous in general simply because of the way you drive on them because there are no crossroads or roundabouts or stop lights and the traffic is a lot more predictable.

But I'd not call other roads "dangerous".

Motorways have safety barriers between opposing traffic. They're quite good at stopping cars. Trucks, not so much unless they're concrete, or newer steel barriers of higher class.

Yes but motorways are always multilane so there is traffic going in the same direction. And if I'm hitting a barrier at 130km with 3 other lanes of cars going at 130kmh in the same direction chances are someone's going to hit me.

Europe doesn't have many places with 4 lanes (I'd say only at junctions for 1km or such) and I hope it never gets either.

3 + emergency aren’t that uncommon here in northern Italy.

Speed limit is 90kmh on most European roads.

But that's not the important factor. On the motorway you just turn on cruise control, set it to 120/130kmh, and the car essentially drives itself. There are no crossings, curves are gentle, and everyone is driving more or less at the same speed.

On the roads you do have to watch out for a lot of things, there might be traffic lights, roundabouts, zebra crossings, the speed limit constantly changes from when you cross a town or crossroads, slow vehicles like tractors or even cyclists... So you have to pay constant attention for longer, it is tiring and a tired driver means the chances for an accident are higher.

> So you have to pay constant attention for longer, it is tiring and a tired driver means the chances for an accident are higher.

Don't disagree with that but do disagree with your line of reasoning. Driving the same speed, for hours, on cruise, makes zoning out way more easy. And at 130kmh+ things happen way faster and so you have to be extra engaged to void potentially deadly crashes.

As I said in another comment, they're less dangerous because of the way the traffic works but if you look at the numbers, the fatalities to crashes ratio isn't all that different between highways and country roads.

Volume is obviously different, but there's also fewer people driving on highways than regular roads.

Still, I'd not say that driving on highways is safe while driving on country roads is dangerous. They're both dangerous, just for different reasons.

Highways are now public infrastructure again after buying them back from benetton. 8 billions euro. they got them for free. we just gifted 8 billion to one of the richest families. wow.

they have always been "public infrastructure", private entities have been delegated to "run" it (concessione), so nobody got it for free. The Benetton family had a (very lucrative) contracts to run many highways: yes, many contracts are now back to the public sector

This is false.

do i need to link the news or can you find it on your own?

The Swiss vignette doesn't come close to covering the actual cost of the motorways.

10 million vignettes sold, 40 CHF each, ~400M CHF gross revenue.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/what-you-need-to-know-...

12 billion CHF over 3 years, 4 billion a year, improving current roads and building new roads.

https://lenews.ch/2022/01/28/swiss-government-forecasts-12-b...

Of course this includes all public roads, not just motorways, but the point stands: the motorways are not privatized and funded by tolls, the tolls just help a bit. And of course it gets tourists to pay too.

To be fair, Italy is about 7 times the size of Switzerland. Italy has the Alps too, although that doesn't explain the ridiculous prices of using the motorway in the Po valley... the only place that I know of which is more expensive is Portugal, which doesn't even have that many motorways, but for the average salary driving there is a luxury.

In Portugal it is indeed very expensive, but one we have to deal with. There are no free alternatives to some routes.

For example, one of the most common route in and out of Portugal (if not the most common), A25/E80, has no free alternative.

Expensive as it should be

Care to explain why? Vast majority of highways in Italy are owned by the state. And we already pay taxes.

They are owned by the state, but they are not managed by the state but Autostrade per L'Italia SPA.

Yes. And Holding Reti Autostradali S.p.A. owns the 88% of that SPA. And CDP S.p.A[0] owns 51% of that Holding. And the Ministry of Economy and Finance owns 83% of the CDP. So it's just a convoluted way to say that the state owns the majority of it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassa_Depositi_e_Prestiti

You probably also pay that much for gas. It's about 650 km: 5 liters per 100 km at 120 km/h (a little less than the speed limit), it's a little more than 30 liters, which is about 60 Euro. If you travel alone train is probably cheaper and faster. If you travel with friends, car is cheaper but slower.

That "car is slower than train" really only works when everybody happens to live near train station A and when the group of friends plans to take its vacation near train station B.

By plane it can be even worse : time to go to the airport + buffer of one or two hours to not miss the plane + landing and waiting for luggage and then time to go from the airport to your destination.

For our usual vacation, car takes 8 hours (950 kilometers) while plane takes 6h30... Still a win but then you're left with no car or having to rent a car: renting the car is another 30 minutes. So 7 hours vs 8 hours and you re stuck with a car inevitably (for me) shittier than yours.

Train isn't even close to competing time wise in our case. But I have fond memories back when, as a kid, we d put the car on the train and then take the same train.

I have nothing against rail and it s great it s developing in the EU. But on many cases it's simply not a time saver compared to car.

The primary time-saver of a train is you can work on the train.

Or even just read and relax instead of being tense for 6 hours, especially as Italy has some terrible drivers.

> as Italy has some terrible drivers.

Just like any country. IMHO drivers from Switzerland are more terrible than those from Italy.

If you can work with no internet…

During my time in Italy I've found that the answer to this question is actually quite complex.

Options available are:

-Train

-Car on the highway

-Car through back roads, as in Italy there's always such a route going parallel to the highway - sometimes it's even an old highway that was since demoted.

For destinations within a 150km circle around Bologna a one person ticket, fuel and highway toll costs are roughly the same - ~€10 at maximum. In terms of time train takes approximately 20min less, but you have to get to/from the train station. On the other end, the back roads take an additional hour or so.

Overall the cost table per number of people is like this:

  No. of people        |  1 |  2 |  3 |
   70min Train         | 10 | 20 | 30 |
   90min Car highway   | 20 | 20 | 20 |
  150min Car back roads| 10 | 10 | 10 |

There's also Frecciarossa, which takes 60m or even less, but costs €30, so it's left out of the table.

I've actually picked every option from the table at least once because there are additional considerations beyond that few EUR difference, like being able to head back after 10pm, when you'd be hard-pressed to find a train connection or expensive parking like in Venice.

> From Rome to Milan in a small car you're paying around 60€s in tolls.

Woah. I mean at that price it's not even noteworthy that the road is excellent - you just expect it.

It would be noteworthy if it was a bad road!

>I mean at that price it's not even noteworthy that the road is excellent - you just expect it.

...if only the world was such a simple place...

> One thing to notice though is that the highways are expensive.

Had to privatize in 1999, because you know, capitalism == good for the consumer, good for the environment, good for all...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com