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Tangenziale di Torino

The A55 motorway system that rings Turin on the west, north and south: opened between 1971 and 1973, carrying over 400,000 vehicles a day already in 2004, with the eastern side never built.

The Tangenziale di Torino is the motorway system that runs around the Piedmontese capital, designated A55 «Sistema Autostradale Tangenziale Torinese»[1]. Built between 1971 and 1973 with the opening of the southern ring road and the first stretch of the northern one, by 2004 it already carried more than four hundred thousand vehicles a day[2], and for half a century it has remained an open ring: the eastern side, towards the hills, has been discussed for more than forty years but has never been built[3]. Since 1 December 2024 it has been managed by the company Ivrea Torino Piacenza (ITP)[4], which took over from ATIVA[1].

The word itself describes the work: the Treccani dictionary defines a tangenziale as a «fast-flowing road, generally equipped with interchanges, link roads, elevated sections, etc., that skirts one side of a large city or crosses part of it, connecting important points without interfering with local traffic»[5]. In Turin three sides are skirted: west, north and south.

The origins: ATIVA and the works of the 1970s

The ring road was built by ATIVA, the Autostrada Torino Ivrea Valle d'Aosta company set up on 2 August 1954, which by 1961 had already opened the motorway from Turin to Quincinetto with the tollgates of Volpiano, San Giorgio and Ivrea[2]. In the boom years, as traffic from the car industry grew around Mirafiori and the factories of the industrial belt, the company committed itself to the ring-road system meant to take through-traffic off the city's boulevards.

The pace was fast. Between September and November 1971 the entire southern ring road was opened to traffic, between Santena and Rivoli, linking the Piacenza motorway with the Susa Valley; in November 1972 the link with the Torino-Savona motorway was completed at Moncalieri; in December 1973 the first stretch of the northern ring road was opened, from Rivoli-Bruere to corso Regina Margherita. By the end of 1973 the network managed by ATIVA around the city already comprised 43 kilometres of ring road[2].

An artery that fills up

Designed to relieve the urban streets, the ring road itself soon became one of the critical points of metropolitan mobility. In its own corporate history, ATIVA notes that in 1994 around three hundred thousand vehicles used it every day and that, at certain times, the situation came close to gridlock[2]:

«about 300,000 vehicles use the artery every day, and at certain hours of the day one comes close to paralysis»

ATIVA, «La storia», on 1994 traffic

Ten years later, in 2004, the daily vehicle count had risen to more than four hundred thousand[2]. The sharpest jump came in 2006: to coincide with the Winter Olympics, the completed motorway to Pinerolo came into service — its first stretch as far as None had been ready since 1992 — together with the new toll barrier at Beinasco; traffic grew by 18.2 per cent. By contrast, 2012, the year of the recession, saw a drop of 7.7 per cent[2].

Toll barriers and checks

Unlike the ring roads of many Italian cities, Turin's is tolled. The system is semi-closed: payment is made by passing through one of six toll stations, Bruere, Falchera, Settimo Torinese, Trofarello, Vadò and Beinasco[6]. For those who use it every day there is a flat-rate monthly subscription, reserved for cars and motorcycles with an electronic toll tag, which allows unlimited passage through the barriers for 28.70 euros a month, a figure unchanged since 1 January 2018[7].

In January 2020 ATIVA installed two fixed speed cameras on the ring road, operated by the traffic police: one on the southern ring road towards Piacenza, at the Stupinigi interchange in Nichelino, a short distance from the Stupinigi hunting lodge, the other on the northern ring road towards Milan, at the corso Regina Margherita exit[8]. They became operational on 17 February 2020, with the stated aim of reducing violations and increasing safety[9].

Maintenance is carried out with traffic still flowing, and so it weighs on the whole city: in July 2023 works on the southern ring road reduced the carriageway from three lanes to two between the corso Allamano interchange and the corso Orbassano exchange, with night-time closures of the entrances. During that period light vehicles fell by 3-4 per cent, attributed to remote working, while heavy vehicles rose by 2 per cent[10].

Corso Marche, the inner ring road

A second axis, inside the ring, has been planned for years along corso Marche, through the territory of Turin, Venaria, Collegno and Grugliasco. The multimodal corridor is meant to run for nine kilometres from the centre of Venaria to the Drosso interchange on the southern ring road, on three overlapping levels: a rail link connecting the Turin-Lyon line with the freight bypass and the Orbassano logistics hub, a motorway section linked to the existing ring road and, at surface level, an urban boulevard. The bodies involved signed a memorandum of understanding in 2005; in 2009 the redesign study was entrusted to the architect Augusto Cagnardi of Gregotti Associati International[11].

The missing side: the Eastern Ring Road

The most debated unfinished piece is the closing of the ring to the east, beyond the Po and the hills. It has been discussed for more than forty years, and a plan with a road section under the river was shelved[3]. In 2013 a 1.5-billion-euro proposal, with a tunnel under the Po, was tied to extending the concession for the ring road and the Torino-Piacenza motorway; it was later set aside by the administration of Chiara Appendino[12].

In June 2021 the regional council approved a motion, put forward by councillors Paolo Bongioanni, Davide Nicco and Maurizio Marrone, committing the Region «to press the government to complete the Turin Ring Road»[3]. The route envisaged would link the A21 towards Piacenza with the A4 towards Milan and the A5 between Pessione and Gassino, together with the Villastellone-Santena bypass, and could lead to the closure of the Trofarello tollgate[3].

At the end of 2022 the administration of Stefano Lo Russo proposed a reduced version: around thirty kilometres between Chivasso and Chieri to link the Torino-Milano motorway to the other motorways, discussed with the 34 mayors of the hill towns. The Metropolitan City funded the updating of the feasibility study with one hundred thousand euros, but without resources to open the building sites; the president of Coldiretti, Bruno Mecca Cicci, called the plan outdated and based on excessive land consumption[12].

Management today

On 1 December 2024 ATIVA ended its concession for the A55 and the Torino-Quincinetto motorway, which passed to the new concessionaire ITP; the historic company has been in liquidation since 3 February 2025[1][2]. ITP, with its operational headquarters in strada della Cebrosa, now manages as a single group the ring road, the A5 as far as Quincinetto, the A21 Torino-Alessandria-Piacenza, the Ivrea-Santhià link and the branch to Pinerolo[4]. For the overall picture of city mobility see Trasporti di Torino.

Pages linking here

Sources

  1. ATIVA
  2. ATIVA
  3. Mole24 — 16 June 2021
  4. ITP – Ivrea Torino Piacenza
  5. Treccani, Vocabolario
  6. ITP – Ivrea Torino Piacenza
  7. ITP – Ivrea Torino Piacenza
  8. Mole24 — 23 January 2020
  9. Mole24 — 17 February 2020
  10. Mole24 — 10 July 2023
  11. MuseoTorino
  12. Mole24 — 31 December 2022

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