Transport

The Alps lie at the heart of Europe and are crossed by many major international transport corridors. This includes road corridors that are used by more than 10 million heavy goods vehicles, millions of tourists, and Alpine inhabitants themselves every year. Due to the specific topography of valleys, the environmental and health impacts of transport are higher in mountain areas than elsewhere. Therefore, a major objective of the Alpine Convention is to promote more sustainable means of transport; in particular, a transition of freight and passenger traffic from road to rail. The construction of further motorways or similar large capacity roads for trans-Alpine transport should be avoided, and economic well-being must be decoupled from growing traffic.

According to Article 2, 2j of the Framework Convention, the Contracting Parties commit to taking measures to “reduce the volume and dangers of inter-Alpine and trans-Alpine traffic to a level which is not harmful to humans, animals and plants and their habitats.”

The Transport Working Group of the Alpine Convention has been very active for more than 20 years in carrying out research, facing the most pressing challenges, and proposing measures and recommendations to achieve these objectives.

Protocols and Declarations

• Transport Protocol

Thematic Working Bodies

• Transport Working Group

• Ad-hoc Working Group for the preparation of RSA8

Selected Documents and Publications

• Report on the Eurovignette Directive (2022)

• Climate neutral Alpine mobility (2022)

• Potential analysis of existing and new technologies for the promotion of a sustainable passenger transport in the Alpine region (2022)

• Daily mobility in the Alps after Covid crisis recovery (2022)

• Towards a modal shift of transalpine freight transit (2020)

• Reduction of mobility demand and shift to environmentally sustainable modes: strategies and measures in the Alps (2020)

• Air quality – measures on sustainable mobility in the Alpine towns & cities (2020)

• ASTUS Project Results: Reduce CO2 emissions linked to daily mobility (2019)

• Innovation in Rail Freight: an important contribution to more competitiveness of rail transport (2019)

• Assessment of external costs induced by noise in mountainous areas (2018)

• Deployment of Alternative Fuels Infrastructure - Implementing the EU Directive 2014/94/EU on the Alpine territory (2018)

• Multi-Annual Work Programme of the Alpine Conference 2017-2022 (2017)

• Analysis of innovative logistics solutions such as rolling highways or solutions for other sustainable modes of long-distance Alpine crossing transport (2016)

• Bibliographical review on traffic-related external environmental costs (2016)

• Synthesis of questionnaire on application of Directive Eurovignette (2016)

• Study regarding the use of motor vehicles in the Alps (2011) - available in German, French, Italian, and Slovenian

• 1^st Report on the State of the Alps: Transport and mobility in the Alps (2007)

Projects

• "MoVe the Alps" Conference (22 April 2021)

• LinkingAlps (Alpine Space Programme): Innovative tools and strategies for linking mobility information services in a decarbonised Alpine Space (2019-2022)

• Youth Alpine Interrail – project for encouragement of sustainable Alpine travel for youth (since 2018)

• ASTUS (Alpine Space Programme) – Alpine Smart Transport and Urbanism Strategies (2016-2019)

• We are Alps Tour (since 2014)

• AlpInfoNet (Alpine Space Programme) – portal with information on sustainable mobility network in the Alpine area (2012-2015)

• TRANSALPIN game (2010)