Autostrada A3 (Italy)

Infobox Italian Motorway
number=A3
name=Autostrada Napoli-Reggio Calabria
logo=Autostrada A3 Italia.svg
inauguration=1974
start=Naples
finish=Reggio Calabria
length=494.9
regions=Campania Basilicata Calabria
notes=

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The Autostrada A3 Napoli-Reggio Calabria is a motorway in the south of Italy, which runs from Naples to Reggio Calabria via Salerno. It runs through three regions: Campania (171 km), Basilicata (30 km) and Calabria (293,9 km)

The entire road is more or less a substandard freeway. The section of the road from the interchange with the A1 motorway in Napoli to the Pompeii exit was built during the 1920's as a local turnpike and later retrofitted to motorway standard. The motorway is currently undergoing some slight modernisation attempts at some segments and junctions. Many of the junctions along the route have very tight corners and extremely limited de-acceleration fields; this is especially bad on the Napoli - Salerno section, where at some junctions there are stop-signs for traffic entering the motorway. Hard shoulders are virtually non-existent along almost the entire route, apart from occasional emergency bays at infrequent locations. Generally speaking, most of the route is often terribly congested.

The southern segment (Salerno-Reggio Calabria) is toll-free and is maintained by ANAS, the state agency for public routes. Located in a mountainous area, it's famous for being prone to very high levels of traffic (especially at the start and at the end of vacation periods) and its bad state of maintenance compared to other Italian motorways. ANAS has been slowly upgrading this segment for the better part of the last three decades.

Route

ee also

*Autostrada
*List of motorways in Italy

External links

* [http://autostrade-meridionali.autostrade.it/ SAM SpA]
* [http://www.stradeanas.it/ ANAS SpA]