traffic management system
Solution for congested Brenner route: time window
With a digital traffic management system for freight traffic, Bavaria, Tyrol and South Tyrol want to solve the ongoing dispute over the chronically congested Brenner route. photo
© Peter Kneffel/dpa
Bavaria, Tyrol and South Tyrol have been arguing about the full Brenner route for a long time. Now a bookable motorway should relieve the route. But what exactly should that look like?
With a digital traffic management system for freight traffic, Bavaria, Tyrol and South Tyrol want to solve the ongoing dispute over the chronically congested Brenner route. In concrete terms, this should look like this: trucks must book certain time windows (slots) for the route over the important Alpine pass. On Wednesday, the Tyrolean Governor Anton Mattle, Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder and the South Tyrolean Governor Arno Kompatscher presented a corresponding joint declaration of intent at a meeting in Kufstein. “Solutions in the field of mobility can only be found together, only with partners,” said Mattle.
From a Bavarian point of view, the aim is also to end the regular traffic jams in block handling of trucks in Austria. However, it is still unclear when that will happen. The target is said to be a period of one to two years. Initially, further detailed studies on the implementation of the new system should be available by autumn.
The slot system should be such that trucks have to book certain times for passage to make traffic flow more smoothly. If slots are fully booked, the journey must take place at a different time or on a different day. The system could be established between Rosenheim in Bavaria and Trento in Italy. “It will be a kind of bookable motorway – free of charge, but binding,” said Söder. The legal basis should be an intergovernmental agreement between Italy, Austria and Germany, which is now to be promoted jointly.
With block handling at the German-Austrian border, Tyrol has been metering truck traffic on certain days for several years. As a result, there are long traffic jams in Bavaria. This had caused a lot of disputes between Bavaria and Tyrol in recent years, including repeated threats of lawsuits from Bavaria.