Strongest travel weekend of the summer expected
Traffic
In Bavaria, the holidays begin on Friday and the busiest travel weekend of the summer awaits Salzburg. The main travel wave is expected on Saturday night. The exit barriers along the Tauern Autobahn are intended to prevent traffic chaos.
According to the ÖAMTC, the beginning of the summer holidays in Germany’s largest federal state brought a total of 60 kilometers of traffic jams from Munich via Salzburg to the Karawanken Tunnel (Carinthia). The block clearance in front of the toll station in St. Michael (Lungau) could only be canceled on the night of Sunday.
“Holiday traffic belongs on the Autobahn”
In the communities along the A10, the volume of traffic was also high, but the roads were not completely congested thanks to the exit barriers, which were checked from 6 a.m. Hallein’s mayor Alexander Stangassinger (SPÖ) states that the strongest travel weekend of the summer can also be successfully staged this year.
“In the end, it’s only really worthwhile if it’s done seamlessly from the border. Because the vacationers then come on the municipal roads, the federal roads and the state roads. We don’t want the municipal roads to be so congested that emergency services can’t get through. I think block handling is the only real solution. Holiday travel traffic belongs on the autobahn,” says Stangassinger.
Return travel could also cause problems
The mayor of Pfarrwerfen (Pongau) Bernhard Weiß (ÖVP) says that the exit barriers are currently working well – but he fears return traffic from the end of August to the end of September. “It will certainly be necessary for the ASFINAG task force to control the exit from us,” says Weiß. This is the only way to effectively prevent evasive traffic.