Autobahns of Austria
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Austrian autobahns are controlled-access highways in Austria. They are officially called Bundesstraßen A (Bundesautobahnen) under the authority of the Federal Government according to the Austrian Federal Road Act (Bundesstraßengesetz), not to be confused with the former Bundesstraßen highways maintained by the Austrian states since 2002. The allowed topspeed is 130 km/h for cars up to 3500 kg.
Network map
History
Ideas to build up a limited-access road network with grade separated interchanges had been developed already in the 1920s, including a "Nibelungen" highway along the Donau (Danube) river from Passau to Wien (Vienna) and further on towards Budapest. Those plans however had never been carried out due to the lasting economic crisis that hit the country after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918, exacerbated by the Great Depression.
The first autobahn on Austrian territory was the West Autobahn from Salzburg to Vienna. Building started immediately after the Austrian Anschluss in 1938 the annexation of Austria on order of Adolf Hitler as extension of the German Reichsautobahn-Strecke 26 from München (Munich) (the present-day Bundesautobahn 8). However, only 16.8 km (10.4 mi) including the branch-off of the planned Tauern Autobahn had been finished on 13 September 1941. Construction works discontinued the next year due to World War II. After the war delaying resistance by the Soviet occupation forces as well as claims raised by West Germany to the former Reichsautobahn assets obstructed the resumption until 1954.
Construction started in the US-occupied zone of Salzburg and Upper Austria, partly relying on the pre-war planning, and were extended after the country gained full sovereignty by the 1955 Austrian State Treaty.
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This entry incorporates text from “Autobahns of Austria” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.