Thousands of residents shut down Austria’s Brenner motorway on Saturday, a vital north-south corridor through the Alps between Germany and Italy, in protest at trucks and tourists perennially clogging up their roads.
The protest was led by Karl Muehlsteiger, mayor of Gries am Brenner, one of the towns in the shadow of the artery that snakes through the narrow, steep-sided Wipp Valley on giant concrete stilts.
The issue of excess traffic and pollution in the valley, which leads to the Brenner Pass, has for decades been a source of tension between Austria and Germany. Local authorities in the Austrian state of Tyrol have introduced various measures to stem the flow, often prompting howls of protest across the border.
“You are making history!” Austrian news agency APA quoted Muehlsteiger as telling a crowd of around 3,000 protesters who gathered on the motorway at 1 p.m. to block it symbolically, hours after police cordoned off both ends of the corridor. Cars arriving there turned around and drove away.