Austria’s Land Tirol will also apply HGV metering along the A12 motorway and in August 2026 announced the calendar of days affected in the first three months of 2027 on the A12 motorway. As usual, metering will take place at Kufstein Nord, the border crossing with Germany on the corridor that continues towards Innsbruck and the Brenner. The calendar lists 11 days between 7 January and 15 March and provides for police intervention from 5.00 in the morning, with traffic flow adjusted according to conditions detected in real time. As in previous years, this will be a flexible regulation system that slows the inflow of HGVs, with a predetermined numerical threshold for the number of units admitted each hour. The police will end the measure as soon as traffic returns to normal.
The first date is set for Thursday 7 January, immediately after Epiphany. The remaining ten dates fall on Mondays: 11, 18 and 25 January, 1, 8, 15 and 22 February, and 1, 8 and 15 March. Ten of the 11 metering days will therefore be concentrated on Mondays following weekends affected by winter transit bans for HGVs, a combination that creates a concentrated rebound in demand in the early morning. The assessment model used for the calendar combines two reference parameters: the volume of HGVs entering at Kufstein and overall traffic recorded on the A12 and A13 in the Ampass area. The “extreme” level is exceeded by an hourly peak of 483 category 4+ HGVs at Kufstein, while the maximum threshold for general traffic at Ampass is set at 3,775 vehicles per hour. On 19 January this year, between 5.00 and 6.00 in the morning, 673 category 4+ vehicles were counted at Kufstein, well above that threshold.
The calendar covers only the first quarter: the dates for the second quarter of 2027 will be announced only after the definition of the ban days linked to the Luegbrücke, the A13 viaduct currently being rebuilt. Since 1 January 2025, the structure has been operating with one lane in each direction for static safety reasons. Reconstruction work, which began at the end of March that year, is expected to complete the first new deck by the end of 2027 and the entire project by 2030.
The use of metering began in 2018, when 27 days were affected, rising to 35 in 2019, then to 41 in 2021, 43 in 2022, 44 in 2023, 50 in 2024 and 57 in 2025. In the first half of 2026 alone, 15 days were planned, with a further 14 extraordinary interventions added because of traffic conditions not provided for in the calendar. Land Tirol says the measure is needed to prevent congestion and dangerous situations at junctions in the Innsbruck area, where freight traffic coincides with tourist traffic during critical periods. In the first half of 2026, overall traffic recorded at Ampass fell by 3.3% compared with the same period in 2024, while HGVs of more than 3.5 tonnes entering at Kufstein increased by 2.5% compared with the first half of 2025.
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