November 2001 - President of Alpine Initiative requests Alpine Crossing Exchange

Situation at the Gotthard – and what will happen after the disaster?
Explanations by national councillor Fabio Pedrina, President of the Alpine Initiative

Situation at the Gotthard – how do we continue after the disaster?

Statement by National Councillor Fabio Pedrina, President of the Alpine Initiative
Zurich, 30.11.2001 

The main reasons for the Gotthard tunnel disaster
The Gotthard disaster was caused by an exploited driver and an unsafe vehicle, i.e. the ideal preconditions for cheap transport. 

Heavy goods traffic: too much and too dangerous, because it’s too cheap
Too much: Heavy goods vehicles represent over 20% of all traffic through the Gotthard tunnel
Too dangerous: A lot of goods are potentially dangerous – many more than are considered as such by international legislation (in the Mont Blanc tunnel it was margarine and flour, while in the Gotthard tunnel it was car tyres)
Too cheap: Because too many costs are borne by others (externalised), i.e. by 

• the lorry drivers (starvation wages and excessive working hours)
• car drivers (continually hassled, uncertain and endangered)
• the people who live along the transit routes, whose health is being damaged by noise and air pollution
• nature (long-term impact on climate, forests and landscape)
• the state coffers, i.e. the tax-payers once again, who have to bear all the costs not covered by the haulage contractors’ personal liability insurance (hundreds of millions of euros)

Lessons learned
These facts confirm what the Alpine Initiative has been saying for years: 

• Alpine tunnels are unsuitable for so much HGV traffic
• there is a risk of the Alpine road crossings physically collapsing (as soon as snow or the next big disaster arrives), which cannot be in the EU’s best interests
• the health of the population along the transit routes is in danger
• HGV traffic causes too many injuries and deaths on the roads

Opportunities offered by the disasters
The safety argument and the ridiculous levels of freight traffic must provide the impetus to implement a transport policy that is both environmentally-friendly and people-friendly, i.e. we must finally stop publishing white papers and start taking appropriate action! 

Accepting that the Alps can only bear a limited load means restricting HGV traffic 
If we want to ensure that the Alpine crossings don’t collapse, we have to set a specific number of lorry trips for each crossing, based primarily on safety and health factors. The Alpine Initiative suggests an immediate halving of transit trips on all routes as a benchmark (from about 6.5 million crossings per year to about 3.5 million, i.e. a daily average of 13,000 lorry crossings instead of 25,000). The huge unused rail capacity in the Alps should finally be mobilised, not primarily to transport lorries, but to transfer freight from road to rail (unaccompanied transport).
The limit thus set should be distributed according to the peculiarities and safety standards of the individual road crossings. In order not to jeopardize the freedom from discrimination we suggest that the number of crossings (slots) thus limited is auctioned by means of an Alpine Crossing Exchange. This respects the market-based spirit of the land transport agreement between the EU and Switzerland, while also adding important factors that have so far been neglected: safety, reliability and health. 
That’s the least that politicians owe to all those who have died in the Mont Blanc, Tauern and Gotthard disasters.

A reorientation of EU transport policy thanks to the main instruments of the kilometre-based HGV charge and measures to promote rail will benefit EVERYONE, not just those in the Alpine regions!

People living in the Alps and those living in cities need to fight together for their quality of life: the Alps are a living space, a recreational area and a water reservoir for US ALL.