These vehicle access regulations can be one of the most effective levers to achieve goals such as climate neutrality, the reduction of traffic jams or the improvement of air quality, public transport or the quality of life in Austria.

According to Urban Access Regulations, UVARs are measures to regulate the access of vehicles to infrastructure. This means that access to certain areas is restricted by defined zones. The most frequently defined areas are:

• Environmental areas (e.g. IG-L)
• City toll
• Access and passage restrictions (e.g. motorway exit ban in Tyrol)
• Short-term parking zones
• Pedestrian precinct

Further regulations can be achieved e.g. via fees. Vehicles then have to pay to enter a certain area or to travel within a certain area. These can be e.g. parking fees or road tolls.

Digitize UVARs

Currently, UVARs are not yet consistently defined or applied worldwide. Moreover, data on UVARs is rarely available in digital form. For an outsider - tourists, for example - it is often difficult to know local parking regulations and take them into account. For this reason, digitally available information on the currently valid UVARs is needed. Ideally, this data could be recognized and output by any standard navigation device so that road users can behave in a UVAR-compliant manner.

"UVARs open up new possibilities for mobility control by allowing access to polluted areas to be dynamically regulated. It is important that the restrictions are published widely - in addition to traffic signs and publication in newspapers, digitalisation enables better distribution e.g. in navigation and route planning systems. Since road users need reliable information about these regulations, UVARs should be made available to everyone in digital form using European standards," explains Martin Böhm, Business Unit Manager at AustriaTech.