Skip to main content

Call for truck tolls on Austria’s rural highways

The Austrian Traffic Club (VCÖ) which is the principal organisation in the country working for environmentally sustainable, socially just, and economically efficient mobility, has called for the introduction of truck tolls for rural highways. The organisation says that trucks wear down roads 35,000 times more than cars and also claims that in 2010 truck transport caused road infrastructure-related costs of US$4.78 billion but it paid only $3.46 via tolls and taxes.
April 18, 2012 Read time: 1 min
RSSThe Austrian Traffic Club (VCÖ) which is the principal organisation in the country working for environmentally sustainable, socially just, and economically efficient mobility, has called for the introduction of truck tolls for rural highways. The organisation says that trucks wear down roads 35,000 times more than cars and also claims that in 2010 truck transport caused road infrastructure-related costs of US$4.78 billion but it paid only $3.46 via tolls and taxes.

Between 2002 and 2010, the freight transport volume on Austrian roads increased from 404 to 479 million tonnes. VCÖ estimates that the volume will go up by another 40 per cent unless additional measures are taken.

Related Content

  • Car traffic in London is down but congestion is up, says new study
    May 18, 2016
    London Congestion Trends, an in-depth study of the causes of traffic congestion in London between 2012 and 2015 published by Inrix, indicates that congestion in London is increasing, with journey times in Central London growing by 12 per cent annually. Inrix says this is consistent with data that shows that the London economy and population are growing, which normally results in an increase in gridlock. Further, unemployment and fuel prices are down, both of which usually mean a rise in traffic. Despite thi
  • Robust enforcement strategy needed for free flow toll roads
    January 10, 2012
    Timidity has no place in effective enforcement operations on free-flow toll roads, says the NRA's Cathal Masteron. What's needed is a robust strategy which starts big and reduces in size over time, rather than starts small and gains a reputation for being easy to avoid
  • Include ITS in policy decisions from the start, not as an afterthought
    February 1, 2012
    DG TREN's Fotis Karamitsos, on why the European Commission's new ITS Action Plan is looking to the past for future direction. The European Commission's (EC's) new Action Plan for the Deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems in Europe, which was announced as 2008 drew to a close, intends that transport and travel become 'cleaner; more efficient, including energy efficient; and safer and more secure'. At first sight, that wording might be interpreted as marking a significant policy shift within Europe, wit
  • Slow moving US road user charging programme
    July 18, 2012
    Bern Grush recently attended the Mileage-Based User Fee Conference in Austin Texas where the fledgling American landscape for Road User Charging is beginning to take shape. When I was a kid I liked to poke sticks into the ants' nests in sidewalk cracks. Ants would scatter in every conceivable direction. They ran in circles, they ran over and through each other. They screamed without logic. I was fascinated.