Sticker chaos

“It wasn’t just misuse, it was also dangerous”

Since 2024, private pickers have no longer been allowed to carry out pickers in the Salzburg Linien workshops.

(Bild: Markus Tschepp)

The sticker chaos for private cars in the Salzburg AG trolleybus depot was worse than feared. 17 cars should not have been issued with the sticker, as subsequent checks by the authorities revealed.

Gross inconsistencies in assessments for private cars in the trolleybus workshops were discovered during an inspection last year. As reported, numerous cars received their sticker there. As a result, two employees were "severely reprimanded". As a National Council inquiry by the Greens has now revealed: It was even worse than feared. For safety reasons, 17 cars should not have received the section 57a sticker at all. For Simon Heilig-Hofbauer (Greens), member of the state parliament, it is clear: "This was not only an abuse, but also dangerous if the cars had not been allowed to get a sticker at all."

Stickers were officially offset in the accounts
From 2017 until the buses were spun off from Salzburg AG to Salzburg Linien, a total of 478 cars received a sticker from the workshop. 85 of these were subsequently subjected to random checks by the authorities, with defects found in 17 cars. "According to the expert's assessment, the defects were not recognized or were incorrectly assessed by those who originally carried out the recurring inspections," it says in the response to the inquiry.

Incidentally, private appraisals are no longer allowed to be carried out in the Remise since the spin-off; the permit was withdrawn at the end of 2023. Employees received a "severe warning" last year. Heilig-Hofbauer doesn't want to let that stand like that either. "It turned out that all costs were officially invoiced via Salzburg AG. This means that those responsible must have known what had happened." Who is ultimately responsible for what happened?