Transit traffic on the rise
The specialist institute Planoptimo for traffic surveys and infrastructure analyses has carried out a current evaluation of weekday truck traffic on the A12 Inntal motorway on behalf of the Austrian federal state of Tyrol. The survey of more than 5,000 truck drivers conducted in September and October 2024 for the mobility planning department of the Tyrolean provincial government shows that vehicle volumes there have continued to increase.
According to personal interviews conducted at the Radfeld and Kundl checkpoints and subsequent extrapolation using toll data from motorway operator Asfinag, around 57 per cent of truck traffic on the 153-kilometre stretch is transit traffic. The previous analysis in 2021 had already revealed the same transit share; in the entire province of Tyrol, the share of pure transit traffic is as high as 63 per cent. The remaining 43 per cent of truck journeys are divided between Austrian domestic traffic and transport with a starting point or destination in Austria.
The largest share of transit journeys, at 38 per cent, are made between Germany and Italy; 30 per cent of these are carried out by trucks from Polish companies, with a further 13 per cent of vehicles coming from both Lithuania and Italy; German and Romanian trucks each account for 9 per cent of transit vehicles. The interviews also showed that vehicles on transit journeys are around 1 tonne heavier than the average for all vehicles, with an average load of 14.2 tonnes; according to this, purely domestic transport only achieves an average load weight of 10 tonnes, while source/destination transport has an average load of 13.1 tonnes.
The transport of goods between Austria and Germany, and further afield to Italy, still relies heavily on the Brenner axis. However, the repair of the Lueg Bridge threatens further bottlenecks. And even the major route alternatives across the Alps, such as the Gotthard route through Switzerland, do not always offer 100 per cent capacity. So what can be done? Hope in politics, strengthen rail as an alternative to road transport or use new technologies to circumvent driving bans? And what building blocks are needed to support the shift to combined transport, which is so important for decarbonisation? DVZ and VNL want to discuss this together with their guests. (rok)
The Alps Remain a Bottleneck: Shaping Next-Generation Freight Transport Between Austria and Germany with Fresh Ideas, Thursday, 10 a.m. – 11 a.m., A3.240
