MATREI AM BRENNER, Austria, May 30 (Reuters) – Thousands of local 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.
The eight-hour shutdown from 11 a.m. did not cause the chaos many had feared as drivers largely heeded warnings to stay away, even during what in some German states, including neighbouring Bavaria, was a school holiday.
Trains passing along the same route were crowded, local media reported.
The provincial road that runs from town to town alongside the motorway was also closed to all but locals and local traffic.
In Italy, a suspected arson attack on electrical control units overnight disrupted rail traffic between Peri and Dolce, near Verona, on the Verona Porta Nuova–Brenner line.
Investigators were looking into possible links to radical environmentalist or anarcho-insurrectionist groups.
(Reporting by Christian Mang and Francois Murphy; Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer in Rome; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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