As part of the EU project NXTLVL Parking, the municipalities of Prettau, Sand in Taufers and Bruneck in January 2025 successfully completed the ParkPAD Audit. Together with representatives from politics, administration and associations, existing parking policies were analyzed and new ideas and concepts to improve the actual situations were found.
The discussions in Prettau exposed the following challenges:
- Illegal parking is a problem: Visitors park wherever they can find space, even if there is no dedicated car park.
- The dilemma with enforcing parking regulations: Prettau has no dedicated policeman, so the revenue from parking offences done by external police officers cannot go directly to the municipality but is transferred to the Ministry of Finance in Rome.
- In Prettau / Kasern there are overall too many tourists – advertise less, if possible.
- Shifting the journey by private car to public transport only works to a limited extent. Prettau is confronted with too many guests (over-tourism). At times when the last day visitors leave the municipality in the late afternoon, bus capacities are too low. Many guests and locals then must wait for the next bus. There is already a bus every 15 minutes from Bruneck to Prettau.
- Day tourists are taken to Prettau / Kasern in organized buses. There are not enough parking spaces for these buses.
The following priorities for action were identified:
- Better organization of mobility for day tourists
- Making the Kasern district car-free
- Improving public transport at peak times
It has been decided that the pilot actions during the project will focus on the problem of illegal parking and on infrastructure for bicycles starting with multiple bike-racks.
The discussions in Sand in Taufers exposed the following challenges:
- The underground car parks are rarely used, and people prefer to look for parking spaces above ground, even though the first 3 hours in the car park are free. This results in considerable (and unnecessary) traffic searching for parking spaces in the town center.
- The biggest problem is parking around the waterfalls in the Nature Park. The approx. 80 parking spaces are constantly full in the high season and there is also ‘wild’ parking along the access road. This causes problems, especially for local and agricultural traffic, to be able to use the road due to the narrowing of the cross-section caused by the illegally parked cars.
- The new car park close to the school, including the shuttle service to the waterfalls, has not worked. Although the car park is used by commuters, it does not solve the parking problem at the waterfalls.
- Parking problems at Taufers Castle (the country’s N°4 attraction): Visitors drive up to the car park on the upper castle grounds, which causes problems on the narrow access road to the castle
- Idea: connecting the waterfall and the castle via an attractive footpath, including an information and guidance system, so that tourists can also walk through the town center and contribute to value creation there.
- Existing areas around the fire station and sportsgrounds could be developed as a car park for visitors to the waterfalls and the existing car parks directly in the Nature Park could be reduced.
The following priorities for action were identified:
- Parking in the waterfall / nature park area
- Parking situation in the town center: on-street parking search traffic
- Parking around Taufers Castle
Bruneck has a very new SUMP that is currently being implemented. The town is still very car-oriented and characterized by car traffic. The short distances in the town are well suited to walking. Underground car parks will be further increased in the near and medium term.
The discussions in Bruneck exposed the following challenges:
- Short-stay parking zones are to be increasingly used for efficient parking space management.
- One strategy is to reduce surface car parks and compensate for this with underground parking facilities.
- The planned “Schlosswiese” car park is not proving to be the ideal solution.
- There is an obvious lack of parking spaces around the music school. The entrance and exit to the music school also has some problems, especially for pedestrians, due to the narrowness of the street.
- There are (as yet) no short-stay car parks for ‘pick-ups’.
- Little attention has been paid to bicycle parking spaces in the SUMP. These should be implemented as soon as possible.
- Bicycle parking spaces should be chosen and realized in a way that is gentle on bicycles and safe, protected from the weather and sophisticated in terms of design.
The following priorities for action were identified:
- Bicycle parking in the city center
- Solutions to the problem of parking around the music school
The discussions in all 3 Parkpad audits were very active. The participants were well informed about the mobility and parking related problems and were very motivated to find solutions in the Audit workshop. The municipality of Bruneck already has a SUMP where the bike-parking can be integrated nicely. The municipalities of Prettau and Sand in Taufers do not yet have a SUMP but are starting the elaboration of the latter in summer 2025. The discussed topics and ideas will likely find a place in the new SUMP.