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E. Pucher, A. Kampfer:
"CEDR Air Quality Report - Zwischenbericht";
Report for Conférence Européenne des Directeurs des Routes, BM VIT; 2004.

As a result of the growth of freight transport mostly on roads, problems linked to alpine transit routes have increased during the last two decades. Those regions are for different reasons very sensitive to pollution. The region mostly effected is the Brenner route, where 80% of all transit traffic through Austria passes.
In addition to noise, emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) have become a major concern. Al-though a number of technical improvements in vehicle technology have been made, NOx emissions from heavy duty vehicles have not been reduced enough to compensate for the increased number of vehicles. Therefore the negative impacts on the environment continue to increase, although it was assumed that technical improvements would also bring environ-mental improvements.
For this reason the Austrian ecopoint regulation was set in 1993 with the target of reducing NOx emissions to 60% of the 1992 value within the next ten years.
This report shows the time trend of NOx levels in the Brenner region, the influences of the ecopoint system had on that situation and the effects of transit traffic that can be seen in this area. It also shows that the target of 60% NOx emissions reduction have not been reached in the last 10 Years.

Project Head Ernst Pucher:
CEDR Luftqualitäts-Forschungsprojekt