Innsbruck (OTS) – In 2024, important directions for Tyrolean transport policy could be readjusted, if not completely reset. If the EU elections in June and the National Council elections in the fall were not just around the corner.
One thing is already apparent before the turn of the year: 2023 is unlikely to be a record year. At least not when it comes to truck transit traffic across the Brenner Pass. That is the good news. The bad news: The level will only remain slightly below the 2.5 million trip limit. For years, Tyrol has been trying to press the stop button on cross-border heavy traffic. So far in vain. Nevertheless, as the year 2024 approaches, there is a small glimmer of hope that the required reversal will be initiated.
The system of a bookable motorway for trucks (slot), the revision of the EU air quality directive, the implementation of the EU travel costs directive: If everything goes according to plan, important decisions for (or against) Tyrol’s transport policy will be made in 2024. Depending on how the dice fall. None of this would be an easy undertaking without national and European ballots. With the EU elections in June and the National Council elections in the fall, Governor Anton Mattle (VP) and State Transport Councilor René Zumtobel (SP) are faced with a Herculean task.
How much the “Kufstein Declaration” is worth – i.e. the basic agreement between Tyrol, Bavaria and South Tyrol on a slot system in the sense of a digital traffic management and thus a successor system to the previous truck block handling – will become clear in the coming months The now completed detailed project is to be negotiated between the three countries. You don’t need to be a clairvoyant to predict that business and freight associations from Munich to Bozen will torpedo Slot for all it’s worth.
Tightening the EU Air Quality Directive will be similarly difficult. The proposal on the table to gradually reduce the limit values to the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) is ambitious. And therefore there is a great risk of being burned in the heat of the EU election campaign. Not only the Luft-100 in Tyrol is based on the Immission Control Act-Luft, but also large parts of the truck driving ban package. Legally, Austria could anticipate the EU and tighten the air reins itself. Whether this will be successful in the run-up to the autumn National Council election is, of course, a different piece of paper. In the aftermath, Tyrol could be threatened with a blue traffic miracle (again).
It is therefore not a begging or even a defensive letter that Mattle and Zumtobel have now sent to Brussels. Rather, Tyrol wants to take a position – before others (again) take a stand against Tyrol in the slipstream of the elections. National and European transport policy has already taken wrong turns too often.
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