Trucks locked out: Austria temporarily closes Tauern motorway to freight traffic
Extended driving bans at weekends and spontaneous all-day closures for trucks on weekdays: In the next two years, truck drivers will have to prepare for enormous obstructions on the Tauern motorway from Salzburg to Villach. Transit traffic is likely to be the main victim of the tunnel work.
Since mid-September, construction work has been underway on the A10 Tauern motorway at the Ofenauer, Hiefler and Werfen tunnels. These are scheduled to last until June 2025. The construction phase will be interrupted from July 2024 to September 2024 to allow holiday traffic to travel freely.
In order to reduce congestion, the Salzburg Transport Association has expanded its public transport services, added more Park & Ride spaces with a direct bus connection, as well as 10 new bus connections from Lungau and Pongau towards Salzburg. This is intended to reduce commuter traffic.
However, after a meeting between Climate Protection Minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens) and the board of directors of the Austrian infrastructure company ASFINAG, which is responsible for the Austrian motorway network, as well as other Salzburg politicians, it is clear that it is mainly the truck drivers who will suffer from the construction work.
In future, the general ban on HGV driving at weekends will not start at 3 p.m., but already at 7 a.m.. There will also be individual weekdays on which the motorway will be completely closed to trucks. Minister Gewessler said. "On days with heavy traffic [] a ban on lorries will be imposed at certain points. ASFINAG is already preparing corresponding traffic analyses for this." Salzburg's traffic officer Stefan Schnöll (ÖVP) also sees the solution in locking out the trucks: "The most important thing, of course, is to get the truck traffic off the Tauern motorway as best we can." The measures are now to be analysed in autumn and early winter to see whether even further bans are necessary.
The Tauern motorway (A10) is an enormously important north-south axis for travellers, but also for freight traffic. It runs from the Salzburg junction to the Villach junction, thus extending almost completely from the German-Austrian to the Austrian-Italian/Slovenian border.
After disputes about weekend and night driving bans and the sectoral driving ban in Austria, Friday's decision is sure to cause a stir in the logistics industry and in neighbouring countries. Once again, freight transport in particular will have to plan for driving bans and long detours and bear the associated costs - and that until the summer of 2025.