Easter is travel time, that’s how it was before the corona pandemic and that’s how the ADAC expects it for these days when the pandemic is not over, but hardly anyone is stopping anyone from continuing. After all, the Tyrolean state government is doing without block handling during the Easter holidays, with which it slows down heavy traffic on the Inntalautobahn on 21 days in the first half of 2022 alone, making life difficult for day-trippers, holidaymakers and, above all, the communities in the Bavarian border area. In any case, the mood on both sides of the border is not the best, especially when it comes to transport issues.
The Free Voters in the Rosenheim area, for example, wanted to counter the Tyrolean block handling with their own motorway blockade, so that the trucks not only backed up far into Bavaria and sometimes up to the A8, but also once in the other direction to Innsbruck. Because the authorities did not allow such a blockade, the Free Voters want to demonstrate directly in Innsbruck this Saturday. Because when the Inntal autobahn is closed, it not only puts a strain on truck drivers and supply chains, but also on the towns in the Bavarian Inn Valley, where alternative traffic then crowds. The municipal councils have long been discussing countermeasures and have ordered traffic reports to document the pollution.
The Tyrolean governor Günther Platter (ÖVP) argues with the regular congestion of roads and motorways and with it that then even rescue workers can no longer get through. At the same time, he does not hide the fact that he uses the block handling as a means of pressure on Bavaria and the federal government so that they push ahead with the construction of the new tracks to the Brenner base tunnel, which are now at least roughly planned. This is the only way to push the excessive transport of goods across the Alps to rail.
Problems with Salzburg too
Bavaria’s Economics Minister Huber Aiwanger (FW) recently met his Tyrolean counterpart Anton Mattle twice. If freight traffic continues to increase and many bridges on the Brenner route soon have to be renovated, you’ll drive “with your eyes wide open into the traffic chaos,” says Aiwanger. “Intelligent traffic control” is intended to provide relief, keeping trucks away from the border region in good time. Aiwanger is also demanding more loading capacity on the railway and an increase in the price of the Brenner route, which is unrivaled in comparison to other Alpine crossings – a line that Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) had previously swung to.
The state government has now also received a call for help from the border area to Salzburg. Since the neighbors blocked their main road between the Upper Austrian Innviertel and Salzburg for truck transit two years ago, heavy traffic has shifted to the German B 20 instead, complain the particularly affected cities of Burghausen and Laufen as well as several other municipalities and districts Berchtesgadener Land and Traunstein. The Salzburg Transport Provincial Councilor Stefan Schnöll (ÖVP) also flirts with block handling on the A8 according to the Tyrolean model, which fuels the fear of alternative traffic on the Bavarian side. And if the Tyrolean dosages also impeded inner-Austrian traffic via the “Große Deutsches Eck” on the A93 and the A8, all the more heavy traffic took the route via the so-called Kleines deutsches Eck near Bad Reichenhall.