Press
Congested motorways and long waiting times at the Brenner Pass are causing frustration among holidaymakers. Traffic experts fear that this could become the norm in the future.
Bolzano – Frustration and resignation were the dominant feelings of many people who recently set off for the south. Travelers to Italy had to endure up to two and a half hours of stop-and-go traffic on the congested Brenner motorways. The reason for the enormous traffic jam at the border between Austria and Italy was the controls reintroduced by the Italian authorities.
Fritz Gurgiser, the head of the Alpine civil rights organisation “Transitforum Austria”which advocates for tolerable conditions on transit routes, believes that holidaymakers, locals and long-distance drivers alike will adapt to the Image of seemingly endless metal avalanches have to get used to.
Busy route over the Brenner Pass is dilapidated – “We have to accept it”
Gurgiser, among other things a former member of the Tyrolean state parliament, has been campaigning for years for the protection of air and noise in the heavily trafficked region. “The jug is full,” he recently told the South Tyrolean daily newspaper.
“If we look at it soberly, we have to accept that the roads and bridges from Innsbruck to Bolzano will all have to be renovated in the next ten years,” explained Gurgiser in an exclusive interview with the South Tyrolean news portal. The consequence: traffic jams around the Brenner Pass, especially from the direction of Austria.
“They say there will be restrictions. Whether we are looking at the Lueg or Europa Bridge or, on the South Tyrolean side, the never-ending construction sites on the Brenner Pass. Transit traffic will then no longer be able to operate as usual,” warns the committed citizen and traffic expert.
Traffic chaos at Brenner: Chamber of Commerce calls for lifting of night driving ban
The Brenner dispute between the Alpine countries has been raging for years. With the exception of the Corona years 2020 and 2021, more than 25 million vehicles have consistently rolled over the transit highway for over a decade, as the Bolzano Chamber of Commerce reports, citing the Economic Forum (WIFO).
According to the South Tyrol News The region recorded a record in car traffic in 2023. Experts have therefore long been warning of a traffic collapse, especially on the A22. Local media report that urgent action is needed. The situation is likely to worsen from 2025, when the route is reduced to one lane due to construction work on the Lueg Bridge, which is in need of renovation.
![The view of the Lueg Bridge in Tyrol, which is in need of renovation, from below (as of February 16, 2024).](https://www.merkur.de/assets/images/34/917/34917395-brenner-autobahn-grenze-tirol-suedtirol-verkehr-luegbruecke-sanierung-1QzAJyZdOVBG.jpg)
The Bolzano Chamber of Commerce expects the restrictions to last at least two and a half years. It is therefore in favour of lifting the night-time driving ban for heavy goods vehicles. “By abolishing the night-time driving ban, transit traffic would not be limited to the daytime hours, when many cars also travel on the motorway,” said Chamber of Commerce President Michl Ebner.
Transport expert sees logistics as responsible for defusing Brenner situation
Gurgiser is not at all in favor of this proposal. He blames the haulage companies for the dilapidated state of the Brenner Pass. “They managed to ruin the roads early on by overloading them,” he criticizes truck traffic, although it decreased slightly in 2023. In an information sheet, he writes that “around 90 to 95 percent of road damage is caused by heavy trucks.”
“These bridges and motorways, both north and south of the Brenner Pass, were built in the 1960s and 1970s. They were never designed to handle a frequency of 2.5 million trucks.” He believes it is inevitable that most logistics will switch to rail and that the routes will be renovated in the foreseeable future. The current situation already shows that “as soon as there is the slightest obstruction, a traffic jam stretching for kilometres occurs – that is not normal.”
For him, it is not an option to divert heavy traffic onto the normal road in order to ease the situation. “This alternative does not exist,” said Gurgiser on South Tyrolean daily newspaperRecently, however, there has been criticism from Brussels of Austria’s approach to the Brenner dispute.
#Traffic #collapse #Brenner #Pass #Experts #argue #measures #restrictions