One freight train between Munich and Salzburg accounts for 40 trucks less on the motorway. How to avoid several thousands of trucks in the Austrian Alpine valley, the Inntal by transporting them on rail instead of road is the kind of the calculationKarl Fischer from the LKZ specializes in.

Fischer has beenmanaging aninternational forwarding agency as chair man since 1987 and acting as director of the LKZ since 2000 where he is lobbying for theconsequent displacement of freight flowsto rail in the whole alpine space.

One of the projects realizedby he LKZ in the last years was the AdriaTrain, which transports containers from the ports of Trieste to Munich and the Salzburg region. The freight train is 550 meters long and transports more goods than 40 trucks on road. At the moment there are 3 trains per week, Fischer says this number will increase to 5 per week soon.

Another important project initiated by the LKZ is the Alpine Freight Railway „AlpFRail“ (under UE Alpine Space Programme) with innovative approaches regarding for example the Tauern-Axis in Austria. In close cooperation with the AustrianFederal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology, the Regional authorities ofSalzburg and Kärnten and other stakeholder capacities for 9 additional trains in each direction per day were elaborated (”Aktionsplan Tauernbahn”). The offer was accepted by the market and within one year 4 trains in each direction per day started, which corresponds to a modal shift of approximately 40,000 trucks per year.

Fischer and the LKZ are also involved in the EU-project transitects, which concentrates not only on road and rail traffic and transport but also on goods transported by sea.

According to Fischer,restrictions such as sectoral traffic bans on heavy vehicles as in the Austrian Inntal are an important step in the process of shifting traffic and transport from road to rail.

Source:

OberbayerischeVolksblatt, 14.08.2010

http://www.ovb-online.de/chiemgau/strasse-878161.html