Inaugration of Rome’s Ringroad – the Grande Raccordo Anulare (GRA)
On August 7th 1951 the first section of the Grande Raccordo Anulare (GRA), between the Aurelia and Appia roads, with only two lanes, was inaugurated and opened to traffic.
An artery of critical importance for the city’s road network, it has an average of 160,000 daily crossings and is often in first place, in the last ten years, among the Italian motorways and ring roads for accident rates.
Life around the Grande Raccordo Anulare is the subject of the film “Holy GRA” (2013), which won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the 70th Venice Film Festival.
The Grande Raccordo Anulare was inaugurated in 1951 and is free of charge. The Aurelia exit is number 1 while the remaining exits depart clockwise from this which are numbered but which are usually called by the name of the intersected road.
Unfortunately, given the volume of traffic, the Grande Raccordo Anulare is subject to traffic jams and traffic, this is clearly not only due to the number of vehicles but also to the low inflow and outflow capacity on the most used junctions and to the presence of short, if not very short, entrances. , distance from the exits (remember that along the route there are overpasses to perform the U-turn).
The maintenance carried out on the Grande Raccordo Anulare of Romeat the moment it is estimated at 11 million euros and new works are expected in the future for example the construction of a new junction for via Portuense, new coplanars for the local road network with the aim of lightening traffic and improving the Ardeatina junction.
