24 May 2010

• The transportation of goods over the Alps has a very long history. It has been instrumental in shaping the development of Europe, always evolving hand in hand with economic expansion
• Opened in 1967, the San Bernardino tunnel is Switzerland's second most important lifeline for commercial and private traffic after the Gotthard pass, guaranteeing that the Val Mesolcina remains firmly connected to the rest of the canton all year round. Continuing on via Bellinzona and Lugano, the San Bernardino pass road represents an important link to northern Italy and the major city of Milan.
• A Mercedes-Benz customer from Chur deployed his trucks to transport a total of 280,000 tonnes of cement to the construction sites
• The tunnel underwent comprehensive renovation between 1991 and 2006 at a total cost of around 150 million euros, bringing it into line with modern-day needs
• Grisons, the canton of the 150 valleys, is a typical mountain and highland region with the highest-lying permanently inhabited village in Europe and an average altitude of 2100 m above sea level. Streams and rivers flow from Grisons into three oceans
• The Daimler event "Transalp Trucking 2010" demonstrates the vast and ever more environmentally friendly improvement which have been achieved in the efficiency of trucks employed for transporting goods. The process of reducing fuel consumption and emissions while at the same time raising ergonomic and safety standards has been a focus of development work at Mercedes-Benz Trucks for over 50 years now

The swiftly expanding EU internal market accompanied by the collapse of the socialist economic system in eastern Europe has seen a more than three-fold increase in the volume of freight transported across the Alps in the past 40 years. This calls for a differentiated approach when considering the traffic situation throughout the entire swathe of the Alps from southern France to Vienna and from north to south. A distinction requires to be made between the so-called "indigenous traffic" resulting from the inhabitants of the alpine regions themselves, "tourist traffic" comprising holiday-makers and day-trippers, and the actual "transit traffic" covering all goods transport crossing the Alps and national borders.

According to investigations by Werner Bδtzing, professor of cultural geography at the University of Erlangen and scientific advisor to the CIPRA international commission for the protection of the Alps, indigenous traffic makes up the overwhelming mass of traffic in the Alpine region (70 billion km p.a. for cars and 4-6 billion km p.a. for trucks). This barely conceivable accumulation of mileage results from daily trips between the alpine population's homes and places of work, trips to central towns and journeys to business associates in and outside of the alpine region. Truck traffic comprises inner-alpine transport and journeys to extra-alpine business associates (e.g. wood, milk, cattle transport or transportation of industrial goods produced in the Alps). Tourist traffic also clocks up a princely 15 to 25 billion km p.a. By comparison, the much maligned transit traffic involving trucks driving over the alpine passes, which often serves as a scapegoat for environmental and infrastructure problems, is decidedly modest in scale, at around 1.3 billion km p.a.

The economic and social dimensions of the topic of alpine transit traffic are important issues to Daimler AG, Stuttgart, as one of the world's most successful manufacturers of automobiles whose vehicles from its Mercedes-Benz Cars, Daimler Trucks, Mercedes-Benz Vans and Daimler Buses divisions are to be found in all the above-mentioned traffic segments. The "Transalp Trucking 2010" event at the San Bernardino pass is also to be seen in this context. This event featuring five historical Mercedes-Benz trucks spanning five decades and modern Actros long-haul trucks will demonstrate the positive changes which have taken place in the past decades with regard to the vehicles themselves and, in turn, in the area of alpine truck traffic in general. Together with the Julier pass, the San Bernardino pass over which the "Transalp Trucking 2010" convoy will proceed with five historical Mercedes-Benz trucks from five decades and modern Actros long-haul trucks is the most important north-west link in the Grisons canton. It connects the Rheinwald valleys on the north side of the Alps with Misox (Val Mesolcina) on the south side. The distance between the respective starting points of the pass – Hinterrhein (1620 m above sea level), where the San Bernardino tunnel begins, and Mesocco (790 m above sea level) – is only four kilometres as the crow flies, but the road journey is 12 km long. The tunnel can also be seen as the border between the German- and Italian-speaking alpine regions. The pass guarantees that the Italian-speaking southern valley region remains accessible to and from the rest of the Grisons canton throughout the year. Continuing on via Bellinzona and Lugano, the San Bernardino pass represents an important link for alpine transit traffic to the industrial regions of northern Italy and the major city of Milan. Today, around 165,000 trucks haul goods in the region of 3.5 million t over the pass every year.

A disadvantage for alpine transit traffic is the fact that it is restricted above all for technical reasons to a small number of passes which are also heavily frequented by tourist traffic (Gotthard, Brenner, Mont Blanc, etc.), making busy roads the order of the day. Conflicting interests are inevitable here, with options such as allowing batches of vehicles through in alternating directions, temporary traffic bans and other measures to control traffic flows providing only partial solutions.