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E. Pucher, A. Kampfer:
"The Austrian Ecopoint System";
in: "Examples of Air quality measures within Europe", issued by: Rijkswaterstaat, The Netherlands; Rijkswaterstaat/DWW/IM Productgroep Geluid, Bodem & Lucht (GBL), Delft, The Netherlands, 2005, (invited), ISBN: 90-369-5591-2, 19 - 32.

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 various reasons very sensitive to pollution. The mostly effected region is the Brenner route, where a high share of all transit traffic through Austria passes.
In addition to noise, emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) have become a major concern. Although 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 environmental 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.

Project Head Ernst Pucher:
CEDR Luftqualitäts-Forschungsprojekt