In order to further strengthen and expand our bilateral cooperation on February 17th 2011 HUKA paid visit to the Austrian concessionaire ASFINAG. Its member of Management Board, Klaus Schierhackl and his colleague Julia Huber organised once again an excellent and fruitful visit. In the Croatian delegation there were HUKA’s President Miro Škrgatić, Vice-President Aleksandar Čaklović and Deputy Coordinator Diana Benković. From Autocesta Rijeka-Zagreb visit was attended by Ante Pribanić, Director of Operation and Maintenance Branch and his colleague Zrinka Drozdek from traffic control and management unit.

Update of the existing 25 years old tunnels

Meeting point was the Maintenance Center Bruck located in Styria, at the confluence of the Mur and Mu?rz, about 50 km from Graz. ASFINAG delegates presented the Tunnel control Center Bruck which currently monitors 15 tunnel facilities, combined length of 42,5 km and also some fast roads, including associated emergency telephones, ice warning system and winter service. Most tunnels in this monitoring area are between 25 and 30 years old. The majority of them have been renovated and updated with state-of-the-art technical installations and three tunnel facilities are currently under renovation and will benefit from the same technical installations in 1 to 2 years.

Video wall control of tunnels

The control Center is equipped with a video wall consisting of approximately 480 camera pictures, not all of which can be over plugged, and presents an overview of all tunnels and the current traffic situation. For all cameras without a gyroscopic or tilt function an automatic alarm is set off if a slow-moving or stationary vehicle, a wrong-way driver or smoke is detected in the area covered. The control station is operated by two men working in a three-shift rhythm, 8 hours each, from Monday to Friday, and in a two-shift rhythm, 12 hours each on weekends who deal with everything from minor breakdowns to major incidents, fully in accordance with alarm and action plans. As of May this year an additional monitoring station will be integrated: The Gleinalm Tunnel, (8,3 km and twoway traffic) and the Schartnerkogel Tunnel (1 ,2 km). All operators on duty are specially qualified, regularly trained and are required to undergo an exam every two years.

Further on we made an on-site visit to Tunnel Gleinalm and tolling station Gleinalm where the staff presented their traffic and financial data.

Latest safety innovations - project AKUT

ASFINAG places a great deal of importance on research and development activities that make a great contribution to reaching ASFINAG’s goal of ranking among leading motorway operators in Europe in road availability, information and safety. One of the novelties that were presented to us was the operation and construction project AKUT (acoustic tunnel monitoring) focused on the development of a system to detect critical incidents in tunnels by automatically monitoring unusual sounds, such as collisions, loads falling from trucks, etc.

Platform for cleaning of snow and ice from trucks

Another, very interesting novelty from ASFINAG was a newly designed and constructed platform installed at lay-by just before entering the tunnel. The platform enables the drivers of heavy vehicles to climb at the top of the vehicle and clean the remaining of ice and snow. The statistic showed that 1 to 2 death accidents per year occurred for the reason of falling ice and snow from the top of heavy vehicles in tunnels. To increase safety and diminish death accidents, the platform was designed and installed and showed great results regarding use and acceptance from drivers. In future, the plan is to install these platforms before entering the tunnels on the whole network, wherever that will be possible due to infrastructure.

The next day was reserved for the visit of Graz Raaba headquarters where we had another opportunity to get better insight into the ASFINAG network and organizational structure after which we paid a last visit to traffic control place Strass where we came just in time for police inspection of heavy vehicles overload and continued our way back to Zagreb.

We thank our friends from ASFINAG for the great organization and welcome and are looking forward to future collaborations.