Rail, road and air #transport? This is one of priority topics approached by the #EUSDR in order to improve the mobility and connectivity in the Danube Region. The #EUSDR’s priority area dealing with the improvement of mobility and multimodality on road, rail and air links addresses the challenges of transport, as an essential condition for development of business, science and tourism.

Each transport mode requires special conditions and there are development gaps between countries and regions. A safe and environment-friendly road, rail and air transportation is needed and it is also important for its contribution to full modal integration.

In order to get closer to these objectives, projects observing the #EUSDR main actions in the field have been financed in order to ensure common actions on regional level.

This week story presents you a project with clear added value to entire #Danube #macroregion, a project ensuring faster and safer road mobility in the Danube Region: the Karavanke (Karawanks) motorway tunnel. Financed by the two countries, it connects the A2 motorway in Slovenia and the A11 motorway in Austria and it is part of the TEN-T comprehensive network, connecting the Baltic-Adriatic and the Mediterranean Core Network Corridor. When built (in 2025) an important bottleneck on the TEN-T network will be removed, enabling road users to smoothly travel from Northern parts of the Danube macro-region (e.g. Stuttgart or Nürnberg) all the way to Eastern parts (e.g. Belgrade).

The current tunnel – single tube and two lanes of approximately 8 km in length – does not meet its traffic flow requirements, especially since it is an important transport connection between major economic areas. The current one-tube tunnel does not have escape routes or protective spaces for emergency situations, which is particularly relevant for heavy good vehicles. Moreover, the two-lanes section poses enormous hazard potential in the event of fires. Thus, the Karawanks motorway tunnel is a bottleneck and poses high risk to users. All these are dangerous for traffic participants, especially during the summer months peak traffic.

The main goals of the project are the improvement in capacity and increase traffic safety, as well as the reduction of environmental impacts on the adjacent areas. Therefore, the project will help people and business to benefit from its results: two state-of-the-art tunnel tubes with two lanes each guarantee maximum safety for all drivers: the construction of the second tunnel tube removes the bottleneck on the way from Western/ Northern Europe to the South-Eastern European countries and back again; smoother traffic flow due to the new speed limit (100km/h) applicable to all twin-tube tunnels.

There will be also gain in the number of users, decrease of accidents, shorter time to travel and reduce pollution.

Common efforts ensure better transportation conditions! Find more about the road, rail and air mobility in the Danube Region following the link: https://www.danube-transport.eu/