Following a European call for tender, ALiS (Autoroute de Liaison Seine Sarthe) was awarded the 62 year concession of the Rouen / Alençon A28 motorway in 2000; the concession starting as from 27th October 2005, the date of the opening of the motorway.
A concession holder is a legal entity delegated by the State, by the means of a concession contract, to finance, design, construct, operate and maintain a public infrastructure for a predetermined length of time.
On the date of expiry of the contract, ownership of and responsibility for the infrastructure reverts to the State. The advantage of the system, employed in many countries, is to have rapid growth in major public infrastructure projects whilst avoiding the cost of the project being singly borne by the State budget.
ALiS’ 80 employees are based at the head office located in Bosrobert, in the Eure Department, and at the Operations center in Chaumont (Orne Departement)
The operation of the Rouen-Alençon A28 is directly managed by ALiS since the 1st of May 2021. The Operations Department of ALiS has the ultimate responsibility for the monitoring of the network, the management of the flow of traffic, the roadworthiness during adverse meteorological conditions, the maintenance of the infrastructure and also the collection of tolls.
The supervision team answer calls from one of the 232 emergency call-out telephones located along the whole route of the motorway or from one of the intercoms that can be found at the toll barriers.
Five meteorological information gathering stations provide constant and up to the minute, information on climatic conditions over the route and triggers all carriageway treatment work, whether preventative or curative, when required and using the various vehicles (trucks, snows ploughs, gritters, etc.) based at the Chaumont Operations Centre (Les Haras rest and service area).
24h a day, 7 days a week, operating staff relay each other at the Chaumont Operations Centre to monitor traffic via roadside cameras and trigger emergency call outs by the motorway mobile intervention teams as and when they occur.