Traffic noise triumph

80 km/h on the A2 near Wiener Neudorf is now fixed

Mayor Janschka's wish: 80 km/h on the south highway near Wiener Neudorf.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/ZVG Privat/Doris Seebacher)

Wiener Neudorf's mayor Herbert Janschka has been fighting for years for the 80 km/h speed limit on the A2 in Lower Austria. It has finally been in place since December - to the delight of hundreds of residents who have been exposed to traffic noise and pollution from daily traffic to and from Vienna for decades. 

The racer's sorrow, the neighbor's joy. In December, the permitted speed limit on the A2 in Wiener Neudorf was reduced to 80 km/h - thanks to the tenacity of Mayor Herbert Janschka, who has been fighting for this for decades.

Austria's highest noise barrier brought little
Why? "For 30 years, hundreds of families have been living there above the legal limit in terms of noise and pollutant emissions," says Janschka. A thirteen-metre-high noise barrier was built - the highest in Austria, by the way. "After that, we were still above the permitted limit," says Janschka. "And I already knew back then that it wouldn't do much good. Nowhere else in Austria is it as loud as here". And so he fought on.

Leonore Gewessler put the eighty at
With the Green Minister Leonore Gewessler, his wish finally came true. "We invested a lot of money and work in investigations and in updating all the documents," says Janschka.

And he is convinced: "Everyone will benefit from this, because everyone suffers from the daily traffic jams outside Vienna's city limits." And he is also aware that the night-time speeders are not happy about it.