Red Budget for New “Pedemontana Veneta” Highway in Northern Italy

The region forecasts a deficit of 113 million euros in 3 years. And the concessionaire asks for more money. The Year Zero of the Pedemontana Veneta is 2024, although it should have been 2020, but further delays meant that the toll freeway ended only in the spring of this year (with the connection to the A4). And it is now that availability fees are beginning to be paid in full to the concessionaire, the Dogliani brothers' “Sis” company, which built the 94-kilometer-long work and will operate it for 39 years.

The feared financial woes, already denounced by minorities in the Veneto Region, are now materializing in the form of a 113 million euros deficit projected from 2025 to 2027, compounded by other heavy unknowns. Sis has also asked to revise the fee upward by 45 million euros, and an arbitration table is underway on this game. Cars have begun to race through the provinces of Vicenza and Treviso, but the slot machine of the Sis deal is doing so even more frantically.

Governor Luca Zaia of Veneto has explained in the past that the new work will begin to break even in nine years and cited an elaboration that now dates back to 2017. In the meantime, the region is gearing up to deal with debts. There is a very recent study, confidential for the moment, prepared by the company Trasporti e Territorio srl, which came up with the most up-to-date traffic simulation model regarding the Pedemontana.

The results arrived in Venice on July 25th and took into account traffic data collected in November 2023, when the Pedemontana was not completed, updated to May 2024 when the link to the A4 at Montecchio Maggiore was opened. Presenting the 2025 - 27 forecast budget (it is being discussed by the budget committee), Zaia's junta writes, “With the most recent data, it was possible to verify the good correspondence of the same with the model forecasts in simulation.” In any case, right at the end of July the hypothesis (for the moment not materialized) of having Pedemontana Veneta's debts flow into the budgets of Anas and the state was also ventilated by Minister Matteo Salvini. In August, moreover, the region announced an increase in IRAP of some 50 million euros. And Pedemontana has come under fire.

The region must pay the fee to “Sis” every year for 39 years, up to a total of 12 billion euros (the work cost 2,5 billion, with 900 million from the state and region). He hopes to do this with motorists' money. In 2025 (the second year of operation) it will have to pay 164,5 million, in 2026 172 million, and in 2027 about 180 million. A total outlay of 517,5 million euros. The fees will always be increasing reaching a maximum in 38 years with 435 million euros. How much will the region collect from tolls?

The projected account is negative: 122 million in 2025, 134,7 million in 2026, and 147,2 million in 2028. In total it is 403,9 million euros. The difference is 114 million and will be covered “through the use of part of the regional free allocation revenues”. VAT must also be considered on all these figures. To this “red” must be added 23 million euros shown in the budget for 2024, when the forecast for 2025 - 2026 was 34 million in total. This comes to 137 million euros over four years.

It doesn't end there. Also on the table is the arbitration match with Sis, the construction company that has ended up in an investigation for Anas contracts by the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office, in which precisely two testers of the Pedemontana are under investigation. Sis explained in recent days, “The payments made to Mr. Stefano Liani and Mr. Eutimio Mucilli, classified by the press with an emphatic and defamatory term such as ‘bribes’, pertain to the remuneration of the same subjects for the activities carried out as testers of a lot of the Pedemontana Veneta expressway on behalf of the grantor Regione Veneto. Sis did not have and has no decision-making power, neither with regard to the identification of the name of the testers, nor with regard to the economic level of their compensation.” Cold relations with the Region to which Sis is now asking to revise upward by € 45 million the amount of the first fee of € 154 million for the Pedemontana, applying a revaluation from 2020.

The region disputes the calculation that would force it to shell out 45,6 million euros more in 2024 alone. The first fee would be 200 million, with devastating and growing effects for the following 39 years. In just four years, theoretically, the region would face an additional 170 million euros. While waiting for an arbitration panel to decide who is right, it has set aside 45.6 million euros for higher expenses for 2024 alone.

In June, after the opening of the tollway with the A4 Milan - Venice, Zaia had spoken of a 75 percent increase in flows. In August, Vice President Elisa De Berti had pointed out, “After only a few months from the full opening there is already a flow of more than 70 thousand vehicles per day.” But it depends on how you do the calculations.

Engineer Giuseppe Fasiol, director of infrastructure of the Veneto Region, tells ilfattoquotidiano.it: "The entry into operation has been for functional sections starting from June 2019, but only from May 4, 2024, the infrastructure is in its final arrangement. In two years, the Average Daily Traffic (TGM) has increased from 10,201 vehicles recorded in September 2022 to 20,781 recorded in September 2024, an increase of more than 100 percent (77 percent from January to September this year alone)." But how long does a vehicle remain in the Foothills? “The change in the detected value of the product between vehicles transited and their distance traveled increased, again in September, from 20,269,194 vehicles x km to 56,203,123 vehicles x km.” The average daily traffic of heavy vehicles is 6,104 vehicles, that of light vehicles is 14,676 vehicles. “The latter, although growing significantly, are lower than expected, which is why the Veneto Region is studying forms of incentives for commuters or users making short internal journeys.”