In the ongoing dispute with the Austrian state of Tyrol over its ongoing truck block handling on the Inntal autobahn, Bavaria’s Transport Minister Christian Bernreiter (CSU) is calling for European infringement proceedings. “If we can’t see any change, then the only thing that will help is taking legal action through the EU.” “Finally something has to move” at the burner.
According to a letter from Bernreiter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (CDU), local residents and truck drivers have been suffering from traffic pollution for far too long. Because when Tyrol only gradually lets trucks into the country several times a year, there are always long traffic jams on the A 93 and in the villages in the Bavarian Inn Valley. However, Tyrol also argues that the Inntal and Brenner autobahns are overloaded and is demanding more effort from the German side to shift freight traffic to rail. Bernreiter describes the block handling and the various truck driving bans of the Tyroleans as “disproportionate and unacceptable”.
Bavaria is looking for a terminal for truck loading by train in the Rosenheim area and has spoken out in favor of increasing the truck toll for the Brenner transit on the German part of the Munich-Verona route as well. On the part of the federal government, however, “too few steps have been taken to solve the problem”.
The green transport politician Markus Büchler assesses the situation differently. Bavaria is by no means a victim of Tyrolean transport policy, quite the opposite. For decades, CSU ministers have delayed the expansion of the northern access to the Brenner Pass and kept the truck toll low, while Austria has expanded the railway line to the Brenner in an exemplary manner. Bernreiter only distracts “from the complete failure of his CSU in terms of transport policy”.