On 27–29 May 2026, the 53rd ASECAP Days — one of Europe’s most influential gatherings for toll road operators, infrastructure leaders, and mobility professionals, gathered more than 380 participants from 28 countries. The event set the stage for high-level discussions on the future of European road infrastructure, under the theme “Investing to make road infrastructure resilient for Europe’s future mobility needs.” MATIS was there — and took the stage.

A flagship project, front and centre

On Thursday 28 May, MATIS presented during the session “Strategic vision and regulatory foundations for cooperative and automated mobility”, with a concrete focus on one of the project’s most emblematic deployments: the C-ITS / Smart road, on the A4 motorway between Turin and Milan, operated by partner SATAP.

The presentation highlighted the solutions deployed along this stretch: wrong-way driving detection cameras, hazardous materials identification, dynamic weighing for heavy goods vehicles (Weigh-in-Motion), and the EMERAS C-ITS platform, with its roadside units enabling real-time communication between connected vehicles and the infrastructure. Together, these innovations illustrate a comprehensive approach to safety and sustainability, placing infrastructure at the service of smarter, more responsible mobility.

It was a concrete illustration of what MATIS stands for: not just vision, but verified, operational infrastructure delivering results on the ground.

A summit that echoed MATIS’s core ambitions

The broader conference, opened by ASECAP President and ASFA Executive Director Christophe Boutin, addressed the exact challenges MATIS was built to tackle. Boutin underlined that much of Europe’s motorway network — built in the 1960s — now faces mounting pressure from climate change, aging infrastructure, and shifting mobility needs. He called for continued investment in maintenance, modernisation, and decarbonisation and highlighted road safety as a key priority, with the fourth European road safety campaign set to launch on June 24th, focusing on the personnel working in the field every day.

For MATIS, this context was more than familiar. From C-ITS deployment to dangerous goods detection, from dynamic weighing to cross-border traffic data management, the project brings operational answers to the strategic questions that defined this year’s agenda.

One year after its launch, MATIS 2 is already a reality on European roads. The project is steadily translating ambition into concrete infrastructure, with two pilot projects fully completed and dozens more underway.

First deployments: ITS technology live on real infrastructure 

Two projects have already reached 100% completion. In Spain, project SP13 transformed the Artxanda tunnel and its evacuation galleries (operated by Interbiak) into a showcase for intelligent transport systems: more than 180 ITS devices are now fully operational, including 16 smart cameras enhancing safety monitoring around the clock. 

In Italy, project IT03 brought cutting-edge traffic monitoring to the A4 motorway (operated by SATAP : 16 stations combining radar, infrared, and ultrasound sensors are now live, feeding real-time data to 16 Variable Message Signs to improve both traffic flow and driver information. 

A consortium in motion 

Beyond these two completed projects, the broader picture confirms that MATIS 2 has hit the ground running. Three milestones are already achieved with more than half of the planned pilot projects already underway: 15 out of 27 in WP2 (Safe Road), 10 out of 14 in WP3 (Sustainable Road), and 10 out of 18 in WP4 (Smart Road). Overall completion rates stand at 21%, 18% and 18% respectively. 

Accountability built in from the start 

All four 2025 annual reports were submitted on March 9th, on schedule. This early commitment to reporting reflects the governance standards the MATIS 2 consortium has set for itself. 

The road ahead 

With 2026 KPIs already in sight (27, 14, and 18 projects started per Work Package), MATIS 2 is on track. Year one has shown that the consortium has both the capacity and the drive to make European roads safer, greener, and smarter. 

As part of the latest MATIS Steering Committee meeting held in Portugal, partners had the opportunity to visit the Lusoponte Traffic Control Centre.

From strategy to operations

Stepping into Lusoponte’s Control Centre brought a new dimension to the project: seeing, in real time, how traffic management and emergency response work on the ground. From monitoring live traffic flows to coordinating rapid interventions, the level of precision, organisation and technology involved is simply impressive.
Witnessing these systems in action brings a whole new perspective. It is a powerful reminder of the critical role infrastructure operators play in ensuring safety, efficiency and resilience every single day.

The MATIS project extends its sincere thanks to the Lusoponte teams for their warm welcome and for sharing their expertise with the Steering Committee.

Two visits, one shared ambition

The Lusoponte visit was part of a broader programme of technical exchanges during this Portuguese Steering Committee. Partners also visited the Grupo Brisa Control Centre, where presentations on operations and innovation, followed by a tour of the control room, offered a complementary perspective on large-scale motorway management.

Together, these two visits illustrated the depth of operational expertise that Portuguese partners bring to MATIS.

On 16 April in Klagenfurt, MATIS contributed to the fifth X4ITS Steering Committee, sharing its evaluation approach as part of the European Corridor Coordination efforts.

A central topic of the day was the evaluation of ITS and C-ITS services: assessing implemented activities through the lens of road safety, network efficiency, and emissions reduction.

Christophe Boutin presented MATIS‘s activities and evaluation methodology, contributing to the cross-corridor alignment effort. MERIDIAN also shared its own evaluation approach, amendment process, and latest milestone achievements, enabling direct comparison between corridor projects.

Christophe Boutin’s presentation extended beyond the current project: he also covered the activities and evaluation methodology developed for MATIS 2, the follow-up project, illustrating the continuity of approach between the two phases of the programme.

 

The MATIS project Steering Committee visited the Grupo Brisa Control Centre in Portugal, exploring the systems behind large-scale motorway operations.

Three presentations on infrastructure management

The visit opened in the control centre’s auditorium with presentations by Ana Silvia Santos, Jorge Lopes and Helder Curado. They covered key topics such as operations, innovation and the challenges of managing a national motorway network.
Each session gave MATIS partners direct insight into how an operator of Brisa’s scale structures its decision-making, anticipates disruptions, and integrates new technologies into daily operations.

A control room at network scale

The centrepiece of the visit was the control room itself. The main screen notable for its size visualises live traffic data across the entire Brisa network, making the complexity of real-time coordination immediately tangible.

For MATIS partners, seeing this infrastructure in operation clarified what coordination at scale actually requires: not just technology, but the human organisation built around it.

Cooperation at the heart of innovation

This experience perfectly illustrates the power of European cooperation and knowledge-sharing in driving innovation within the transport sector. Through MATIS, these collaborative moments strengthen synergies between key players and help build mobility solutions that are smarter, more sustainable, and better connected.

For transport authorities and road operators across the TEN-T network, infrastructure investment decisions increasingly rely on measurable outcomes, documented methodologies, and replicable results. MATIS is now in a position to meet that demand. With more than 80 projects already launched, the project has moved well beyond concept. Three flagship cases illustrate what that means on the ground.

Safer tunnels through AI-powered incident detection

Tunnels concentrate risk. Reduced sight distances, limited escape routes, and the confined spread of smoke or toxic gases make incident response time a critical variable. Italian MATIS’ partner, CDT, has deployed AI-based software that detects incidents automatically and in real time, directly inside tunnel environments. The system identifies abnormal situations (stopped vehicles, pedestrians, smoke) within seconds, triggering alerts before operators would otherwise be aware.

The gain is twofold. Response times for both operators and emergency services are reduced. At the same time, false alarm rates decrease. This combination of faster detection and greater precision directly improves safety outcomes while reducing operational noise. The solution is documented as a best practice, making it assessable and adaptable for other operators managing tunnel infrastructure across the network.

Smoother traffic through ramp metering

Urban ring roads are among the most congestion-prone sections of the TEN-T network. Access points are where flow breaks down, where small variations in entry volume cascade into significant delays further along the corridor. French MATIS’s partner DIRO (part of the French Ministry of Transports) ramp metering system on the Rennes ring road addresses this directly: using real-time traffic data, the system regulates motorway access to smooth the flow before congestion builds.

The objectives are specific and quantified. MATIS 1 targets a 3% reduction in lost hours at strategic bottlenecks and a 3% reduction in CO₂ emissions at major congestion points. The Rennes deployment is a direct contribution to both. It also demonstrates a broader principle: that demand management at the point of entry, informed by live data, is a more effective intervention than reactive traffic control after congestion has already formed.

Smart parking management on cross-border area

Infrastructure managers are increasingly confronted with disruption scenarios that fall outside normal operating parameters. These situations overwhelm the network faster than standard traffic management protocols are designed to handle.

MATIS’ partner ASFA – Atlandes has developed an intelligent parking solution specifically engineered to optimise the use of HGV parking spaces. By combining real-time occupancy data with dynamic signage and routing, the system redirects heavy goods vehicles toward available parking areas before gridlock sets in on the mainline. The approach shifts the intervention upstream: informing drivers before they reach saturation points rather than managing consequences after the fact. For operators responsible for network resilience, this represents a concrete answer to a challenge that is growing in frequency and severity.

Three projects. One transferable methodology.

These cases are not isolated experiments. They belong to a 16,000 km real-life laboratory where advanced ITS and C-ITS technologies are deployed, tested, and evaluated at operational scale. Best practices issued from MATIS flagship projects are structured to capitalise on accumulated field experience, share documented methods, and create a cross-mentoring dynamic between network partners.

MATIS is expanding its scope with MATIS 2. After connecting four regions across France, Italy, and Spain in its first phase, it now covers seven, with the Basque Country representing the most significant new geographic addition. The objective: to strengthen cohesion between major European transport corridors and improve cross-border mobility along the entire southern arc of Europe.

Two new Basque partners have joined the consortium: Interbiak and the Diputación Foral de Bizkaia. This signals a deliberate northward extension of the Mediterranean-Atlantic arc. Their inclusion closes a geographic gap that left part of the Atlantic TEN-T corridor underequipped in MATIS 1, addressing cross-border sections and bottlenecks that had never previously been covered. The ambition is clear: build a truly continuous ITS spine from the Adriatic to the Atlantic.

At the crossroads of Franco-Spanish trade flows, the Basque area is a vital link between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. By integrating this territory, MATIS 2 strengthens the interoperability of transport systems and promotes the deployment of sustainable digital solutions across the entire southern arc of Europe.

With its expanded scope and reinforced partnership, MATIS 2 exemplifies the European commitment to building a more coherent, safer, and more sustainable transport network — contributing to smart mobility on a truly continental scale.

MATIS has deliberately embedded itself into the broader European ITS landscape — through formal partnerships and active participation in key cooperative mobility platforms. More than a network of contacts, this positioning reflects a structural choice: cooperative mobility challenges can only be addressed collectively.

A web of strategic partnerships

At the core of this approach lies a set of complementary relationships with peer European projects.

Among them, MATIS collaborates with MERIDIAN, which focuses on the Scandinavian–Mediterranean and North Sea–Baltic corridors – two major axes for transport and long distance mobility. These exchanges allow both projects to compare deployment contexts, share lessons learned and contribute to harmonising practices along these strategically critical routes.

MATIS also maintains active links with X4ITS, operating across central and eastern Europe, a region currently undergoing rapid ITS deployment. This cooperation promotes the exchange of technical and methodological solutions and helps avoid duplication of efforts between initiatives working in different but complementary contexts.

Anchored in Europe’s structuring frameworks

MATIS is grounded in two frameworks that define the cooperative future of ITS in Europe. Through its participation in the C-Roads Platform, MATIS contributes to the harmonised deployment of C-ITS – the backbone of communication between connected vehicles and road infrastructure at the continental scale. In parallel, NAPCORE, which coordinates National Access Points as the backbone of European mobility data exchange, provides MATIS with a broader frame of reference for reflecting on the governance and standardisation of transport data.

Governance as an integration lever

The project’s governance model itself is an asset in this integrated ecosystem. By reconciling European coordination imperatives with local operational realities, MATIS is designed to produce results that are both transferable and scalable — replicable across territories and contexts.
This approach embodies a central conviction: genuine progress in cooperative mobility requires not just technical solutions, but sustained cross-fertilisation between actors, projects and territories across Europe.

MATIS participated on 11 and 12 February 2026 in the C-Roads Platform Symposium in Frankfurt, a major European event dedicated to the deployment of Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS).

The C-Roads Platform: a key driver of European harmonisation

The C-Roads Platform brings together more than 20 European states and road operators around a shared objective: deploying secure, reliable and harmonised C-ITS services across the continent.

Its role goes beyond experience-sharing. By producing common specifications openly accessible to third parties, it accelerates innovation and strengthens cooperation between road operators and the automotive industry.

MATIS’s contribution to C-ITS deployment

The first day, on 11 February, set the stage for open exchange. On 12 February, the session dedicated to C-ITS deployment collaborations brought together several European corridors — Verkko, MERIDIAN EU Corridor, C-Roads Germany, C-Roads Austria, X4ITS and SCALE — alongside MATIS.

Alessandra Pipitone Federico, Director of Legal and International Affairs at MATIS, contributed to these exchanges by sharing concrete lessons drawn from the project’s implementation, covering cross-border cooperation and field experience.

C-ITS priorities towards 2035

The day also addressed future harmonisation needs, with contributions from Niels Andersen, Malika Seddi, Onno Tool and Sandro Berndt-Tolzmann on the priority areas for scaling C-ITS services across Europe.

The closing roundtable on C-ITS priorities for 2035, bringing together Geert Van Der Linden, Peter Meckel and Pedro Barradas, put European expectations into perspective across three angles — motorways, cities and the European Commission — with a particular focus on the role of C-ITS in supporting CCAM (Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility) implementation.

MATIS’s participation in this Symposium reflects the recognition of the work carried out by the project in advancing connected and cooperative mobility solutions across Europe.

Discover MATIS projects.

The MATIS project was featured at the Mobil’in Pulse 2026 Congress on 20–21 January 2026 in Paris. This event brings together all mobility stakeholders and facilitates meetings between public and private players in the ecosystem. It represents a unique opportunity in France to share knowledge, discover innovations, identify opportunities and future market trends.

Real-world innovation on European motorways

MATIS took part in the C-ITS conference alongside other key players in the field.

Alessandra Pipitone Federico set the stage with a comprehensive overview of the MATIS project, highlighting its vision and impact on C-ITS rollout across Europe.

Following this introduction, Gabriele Glorioso presented practices deployed by SATAP, a MATIS project partner, on the A4 Turin–Milan motorway in Italy. SATAP implemented a cutting-edge Weigh-In-Motion (WIM) system as well as ADR detection stations enabling the identification and tracking of vehicles carrying hazardous goods.

Strategic opportunity for the ITS community

Beyond technical presentations, the Mobil’in Pulse 2026 Congress offered MATIS a valuable opportunity to connect with mobility innovators and industry leaders across Europe, exchange insights on the future of intelligent transport systems, and strengthen partnerships driving real change on European roads.

The event was organized by Mobil’in Pulse (formerly known as ATEC ITS), a key player dedicated to supporting and promoting intelligent, sustainable, and innovative mobility solutions across Europe. The organization brings together mobility actors, fosters knowledge exchange, and accelerates the development of smarter transport ecosystems.

MATIS extends its sincere thanks to Mobil’in Pulse for selecting the project, and to all MATIS partners for their continued dedication to advancing intelligent mobility across Europe.