Italian Roads in the 20th Century from RUPTA to High-Quality Road and Mobility Manager: A Century-Long Process.

One hundred years of road construction in Italy represented a long process coming from a remote past. Firstly, the origins of the Roman roads are outlined, with etymology, and words used in many European countries. The first Italian (and European) road was called "rupta" - broken - in Latin language - (route, rue, road, ruta). Then a jump is made to the early 20th c.- when PIARC was established - to find out that roads were not much different than in Roman age, to get to the 1920s, when the motorways was invented. Soon after, the road system was organised in Italy by AASS, established in 1926, then ANAS, that would manage the successive road development process. After WWII, the second generation of motorways introduced the pay-toll system. This enabled the construction of thousands of miles of modern roads. The Autostrada del sole or Autosole (Sun Motorway) pioneered this new approach, supplemented by maintenance science or Terotechncology which involved the concept of quality Management with performance indicators. These ones are at the grounds of global services also. Another innovation generator is the great deal of care devoted to environment with specific technical solutions to reduce noise. Euphonic pavements are the most advancedbreakthrough. The state of the art is represented by air pollutant reduction techniques. The development process of the road system is now evolvingtowards mobility management. This is the last challenge because roads in the future have to be safe, comfortable, with advanced services, environmental-friendly, and predictable for travel time. For the covering abstract see ITRD E139491.