To prepare road users (truck drivers, motorists) for the situation on the Brenner motorway, Asfinag, the competent Austrian infrastructure operator, will launch a European-wide communication campaign.
Businesses on alert
The news of the work on the Lueg bridge has alarmed many, especially in Italy. Anita (Confindustria logistics companies) explains: «During the renovation works on the Austrian bridge, traffic will be reduced to one lane in each direction and this will inevitably lead to a bottleneck for heavy and light traffic. In the absence of valid alternative solutions, the queues of heavy vehicles will increase in both directions with waste of time and incalculable costs, not only for transporters but for all Italian importing and exporting companies. There is a real risk that the Scandinavian-Mediterranean corridor will no longer be able to satisfy the current trade between Italy, Central Europe and Northern Europe, which is worth 170 billion euros a year.”
Paolo Uggè, president of Unatras (the Union of national freight road transport associations), confirms: «Combining the traffic stoppage for the renovation works on the Lueg bridge (in Austrian territory, a stone’s throw from the border with Italy) and the bans past, present and additions of Austria to our goods on trucks, we get the perfect storm: it will be the total blockade of the Brenner Pass. For goods, of course, but also for tourism. With incalculable damage to the entire Italian economy. A problem that seems to have been underestimated so far. To date, the Austrian authorities have not put forward any valid proposal to avoid the total blockade of the crossing, and it is a very serious fact, even if we consider the consequences of the probable traffic jam on an environmental level, which seems to be so important to Austria when it comes to reduce the transit of our trucks”.
Abolish the bans
It is urgent to take action. What can we do to avoid the worst? Thomas Baumgartner, Anita’s delegate for the Brenner issue, says: «If the bans on night-time traffic and those on Saturday mornings and other only Austrian public holidays were lifted for trucks, as well as the double night-time motorway toll on the Austrian A13 in Tyrol (Brenner-Innsbruck), the heavy traffic would be distributed over the entire 24-hour day and over several days a year and we would certainly not have problems. Suffice it to say that even on the Italian side of the A22 there are continuous construction sites with narrowings to one lane without major problems. The problem for tourist car traffic, however, is more difficult to resolve, as it is concentrated on a few periods a year and especially on weekends”.
On the same wavelength, the president of Fai Conftrasporto Trentino-Alto Adige Andrea Pellegrini: «The transit bans for heavy vehicles in Austria, already in force, will worsen the situation caused by the closure of the Lueg bridge. The only solution to mitigate the impact of this closure is to obtain a night transit permit for heavy vehicles.” The question is open. Now the ball is in the political court.