Existed: 1927 – present East end: Trieste Constructed 1927 | West end: Turin Length 517 km Highway system Autostrade of Italy | |
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Regions: Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia | ||
The Autostrada A4, or Serenissima, is a motorway which connects Turin and Trieste via Milan and Venice. The city of Venice (or rather, Mestre which is the "land" part of Venice) originally formed a bottleneck on the A4, but is now bypassed by the Passante di Mestre (the old route through Mestre was renumbered A57). The A4 passes through the city of Milan, where it is toll-free.
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Map of A4, Italy
Due to the different companies that manage the different parts of the motorway, it is often referred to as formed by five sections: Turin-Milan, Milan-Brescia, Brescia-Padua, Padua-Venice and Venice-Trieste. As it runs though the whole Pianura Padana, which is a densely populated and highly industrialized area, A4 is one of the most trafficked motorways of Italy.
A4 is a dual-carriageway, six-lane motorway for most of its length. The stretch between Milano Est tollgate and Bergamo is an eight-lane motorway since 30 September 2007. The stretch from Venice to Trieste is instead still a four-lane motorway, but it is planned to upgrade this stretch over motorway to six lanes.
Operators
Passante di Mestre
The passante di Mestre is a part of the A4 motorway, opened to traffic on 8 February 2009. The objective of the route is to reduce the volume of auto- and truck-based traffic passing through Mestre (a mainland frazione of Venice) to reach non-local destinations like Austria, Slovenia and other Eastern European countries.
The new includes three lanes plus one emergency lane, each lane measures 3.75 metres (12.3 ft) apart from the emergency lane which measures only 3 metres (9.8 ft), the new stretch of motorway totals 32.3 kilometres (20.1 mi).