CNAIR is testing, on Wednesday 21 October, the equipment and SCADA software at the Monitoring Centre inside the Curtea de Argeș maintenance compound. The statement comes from director-general Cristian Pistol, on Facebook. This is a test, not the opening of traffic on Section 4 Tigveni – Curtea de Argeș of the Sibiu – Pitești motorway (A1).

The centre will watch, in particular, the Momaia tunnel, 1,350 metres long. Inside there are more than 2,500 monitoring points — sensors and cameras, fixed and mobile. Pistol says they can spot incidents or objects on the carriageway and can order a lane, or the whole gallery, closed. That is the declared capacity, not an incident today.

The room has 14 monitors and 36 computers. Eleven specialists will work in shifts, 24 hours a day. After the equipment tests of this period, final tests with ISU and CNAIR are due at the end of November: fire simulations, extinguishing drills and traffic control. Without them, traffic cannot open. Those are European tunnel-safety requirements, not an inauguration.

The speed limit in the tunnel, if it comes to that, will be 80 km/h. Pistol says the road works on the 9.86 km are finished, with asphalt and barriers on 12 bridges, overpasses and viaducts, 2,620 metres in all. Finished road works are not an opening of traffic.

CNAIR schedules the opening for this year, ahead of the contract date of February 2027. That section would bring about 54 of the motorway’s 122 kilometres into use. The contract is 1.678 billion lei excluding VAT, from the Transport Programme 2021–2027. Those are the company’s figures, not a ribbon-cutting date.

Until the ISU tests in November, Section 4 stays in trials. Testing, not an opening.

Image: 130km.ro, A1 Sibiu bypass, 18 October 2011, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons; the A1 motorway, not the Momaia tunnel of October 2026.

Sources consulted: CNAIR is testing the monitoring systems of the Momaia tunnel - Mediafax; Tests at the Monitoring Centre for the Momaia tunnel on A1 - Infrapress / Cristian Pistol, 21 October 2026.