Flipping Book | 110 years of future | Salini Impregilo Library

69 68 tuted the train as the primary means of passen- ger transport (and trucks had done the same for haulage). Another Italian pioneer, Piero Puricelli, had launched the world’s first toll-road project, the highway connecting Milan with the Varese and Maggiore Lakes (hence the Milano-Laghi name) that was completed in record time in September 1925, after hardly 30 months of work. The A1 superior quality of the pavement and the low num- ber of bends allowed cars to attain much higher speed than on normal roads. While the project was not a financial triumph, it accompanied the almost tripling of the automotive market (from 85,000 units in 1924, to 222,000 in 1929). And yet in 1928, when the Autonomous State Agency for Roads (AASS) was created, the exten- sion of the so-called “state roads” was still roughly equivalent to that of “national roads” in 1861. The Great Depression obliged AASS to bail out Puricelli and in 1933 the kernel of what was to become one of the world’s largest highway oper- ators, Autostrade, was born. Before World War II most of the Turin-Milan-Venice-Trieste multi- and dual-single-lane route was completed. The infrastructure that changed Italy in depth was the “Autostrada del Sole,” a much more evocative brand name than the official “A1” one. In 1955 Law no. 463 heralded the start of a new phase of massive public investment in highways — one hundred billion Italian lire to connect Milan and Naples, facilitating both domestic and foreign trade and allowing millions of Southern migrants in Northern Italy, as well as Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, to return home for the summer holidays. A1 was a great project that counted im- mensely for the emergence of a true national iden- tity, together with the massification of consumer durables ownership — the car, the TV set and the refrigerator. It also helped Italian producers of ce- ment, autos, tires, and petrol to grow in size and compete on an equal basis with European rivals. The 1960s were indeed the heyday of Italian transport engineering. In Rome Fiumicino airport was opened in January 1961, with two runways, replacing the smaller Ciampino airport. Later in the decade, Alitalia invested heavily to build hangars and maintenance centers, and a third runway was added. The Eternal City had already acquired a short Metro line — which for some strange reason carried the letter B — in February 1955, but it was the 1964 inauguration of the Milan subway that became an iconic symbol of modernity (it subsequently took five more years to open the second line and a further 21 for the yel- low line …). While not as difficult to build as other public works in Italy, the Milan Metro architectural project, by Franco Albini, Franca Helg and Bob Noorda, received a Compasso d’Oro, the most prestigious award for global design. This was also a period of tunnel-building. The 5.8-km Great St. Bernard Tunnel was opened to traffic in 1964, having been under construction since 1958. Its record as the longest road tunnel in the world lasted one year only, overtaken by the 11.6-km Mont Blanc Tunnel linking Chamonix in France with Courmayeur. It was completed in eight years and inaugurated by Presidents De Gaulle and Saragat in 1965. By reducing the route from France to Milan by 100 km, it New Auditorium, Rome, Italy, 2000