4 schemes in 4 cities. Every figure comes from an official source and is re-checked.
Austria has 4 driving restrictions that we have checked against an official source, in 4 cities. All are low emission zones.
Beyond the cities, Austria has 1 requirement that apply on the country's roads, not inside a single zone: Vignette für Kraftfahrzeuge bis 3,5 t. Vignette für Kraftfahrzeuge bis 3,5 t is priced at €106.80. They are set out below with their sources.
The sources for this country were read on 2026-09-18, from the authorities' own pages. Each check is repeated on a schedule, and a rule we can no longer confirm comes down instead of staying up.
Für die Benützung von Autobahnen und Schnellstraßen ist grundsätzlich für alle Fahrzeuge mit einer technisch zulässigen Gesamtmasse (tzGm) bis 3,5 t (z.B. Motorräder, Pkw) eine Vignette erforderlich.
Price: EUR 106.8
Austria enters this corpus not on a city centre but on a motorway, because that is where the country's air-quality driving bans actually are. The Landeshauptmann of Tyrol has declared a stretch of the A 12 Inntal Autobahn a Sanierungsgebiet under the Immissionsschutzgesetz-Luft, and three separate Verordnungen restrict heavy traffic along it.
All three are stated on the issuing administration's own page, with their LGBl numbers and the date each step took effect.
The first is an emission ban and it is the reason this record is filed as a low emission zone: since 1 January 2021 a lorry, an articulated vehicle or a self-propelled work machine over 7.5 tonnes of Euro class 0, I, II, III, IV or V — anything emitting more than 0.4 g NOx per kWh — may not drive between Straßenkilometer 6.35 in Langkampfen and Straßenkilometer 90.00 in Zirl, in either direction, at any hour (Verordnung vom 18.
Mai 2016, LGBl. Nr. 43/2016, last amended by LGBl.
Nr. 141/2021). The second is a night ban over the same stretch (LGBl.
Nr. 64/2010, last amended by LGBl. Nr.
141/2021): the same weight classes may not drive at night, and the clock changes with the season.
The third is the sectoral ban, the one that has been to the Court of Justice of the European Union: on the shorter stretch from km 6.35 to km 72.00 in Ampass, thirteen named groups of goods — waste, stones, earth and excavated material, round timber and cork, other motor vehicles, ores, steel, marble and travertine, ceramic tiles, and since 1 January 2020 paper and cardboard, liquid mineral-oil products, cement, lime and burnt gypsum, pipes and hollow sections, and cereals — may not be carried by a vehicle over 7.5 tonnes at all (LGBl.
Nr. 44/2016, amended by LGBl. Nr.
115/2016 and LGBl. Nr. 48/2023).
None of the three asks what fuel the engine burns and none of them touches a car: the lightest vehicle any of them reaches weighs more than 7.5 tonnes, so a driver in a car or a van crosses all 90 kilometres unaffected. What a car driver does meet on the same road is a speed limit rather than a ban — a permanent 100 km/h, verordnet on 17 November 2014 (LGBl. Nr.
145/2014), running year-round over about 90 km of the A 12 from the German border to the western boundary of Zirl and about 12 km of the A 13 Brenner Autobahn between Innsbruck and Schönberg im Stubaital, signposted rather than left to be looked up.
The way out of the two heavy-vehicle emission bans is the same document in both: the Euro class has to be proved by the Abgasklassen-Kennzeichnungsplakette required since 1 May 2017 under § 14a IG-L and the IG-L-Abgasklassen-Kennzeichnungsverordnung, and a vehicle that meets the class but cannot show the marking is treated as though it did not.
One thing this record does not have is the text of any of the three Verordnungen. Tyrol's authentic Landesgesetzblatt has been published electronically through the federal RIS since 2014, and RIS answers us with a Myra Security bot check that will not even hand over its robots.txt (B-057); the Land's own copies stop at 2014.
So every fact here comes from the administration that issued the bans describing its own rules, plus its own explanatory notes and its own map of the sectoral stretch, all of them on a host that lets us read them.
Upper Austria is the fourth Austrian Land in this corpus, and like Tyrol it enters on a motorway rather than a city centre, because that is where the emission ban is.
The Landeshauptmann of Upper Austria has declared a stretch of the A1 West Autobahn south of Linz a Sanierungsgebiet under the Immissionsschutzgesetz-Luft, and one of the Verordnungen made for it is an emission-dependent driving ban for lorries — the Land itself calls it the LKW-Fahrverbotsverordnung.
The Land's own explanation of it is one sentence long and it is the sentence this record is built on: "Auf der A1 in Oberösterreich zwischen Haid und Enns trat daher ein Fahrverbot für schwere LKW mit Baujahren älter als 2000 mit Juli 2016 in Kraft." So the ban is on the A1 between Haid and Enns, it reaches heavy lorries built before 2000, and it has been in force since July 2016.
The Bezirkshauptmannschaft Linz-Land, the district authority that prosecutes it, writes the same rule as Euro classes instead of build years: its Tatbestandskatalog für Anonymverfügungen lists "Missachtung des Fahrverbotes Sanierungsgebiet A1 West Autobahn Enns-Steyr Haid für Euro 0, 1 und 2", and separately a Kennzeichnungspflicht for Euro 3, 4, 5 and 6 in the same Sanierungsgebiet — meaning a newer lorry may drive there but has to be able to show which class it is.
Why this matters to a driver crossing Austria: the A1 is the country's main west-east transit motorway, Salzburg and Germany at one end, Vienna at the other, and the restricted section sits on it immediately south of Linz. Two things this record deliberately does not do. It does not print a tonnage.
The Verordnung is written for Lastkraftfahrzeuge and the Land's own word for them is "schwere LKW", but no source we can read states a weight threshold, and Austria has already shown that the threshold is the Land's decision and not the country's: Tyrol's A 12 bans start above 7.5 tonnes, while Lower Austria's ban is written for lorries "ALLER Gewichtsklassen".
Carrying 7.5 tonnes over from Tyrol would be inventing the one number a van driver would most want. And it does not claim hours. The Land's own explanation rejects a night ban for this stretch as ineffective and describes this measure as a ban on old lorries instead, so it is not a night restriction — but no operating hours are stated for it either, so none are encoded.
The reason all of this comes from the administration describing its own rules, rather than from the Verordnung, is the same wall the three other Austrian records hit: Upper Austria's authentic Landesgesetzblatt is published through the federal RIS, and RIS answers this project with a Myra Security bot check that will not hand over even its robots.txt (B-057).
The Land links the Verordnung to RIS and names it; we read the Land, not the Gesetzblatt. What a car driver meets on the same stretch is not a ban but a speed limit, and a switched one: since 2008 the A1 between Linz and Enns carries an immissionsabhängige, flexibly switched 100 km/h under the IG-L, evaluated by the Land every year.
A separate Verordnung, which this record does not cover, exists to stop lorry traffic diverting off the motorway onto the Bundesstraße or through residential areas.
This is Austria's second emission-based driving ban in this corpus, and it is built the opposite way round from the first. On the Tyrolean A 12 every ban starts at 7.5 tonnes, so no car and no van is ever inside it.
Here the Land of Lower Austria states its ban with no tonnage at all: "Das derzeit geltende LKW-Fahrverbot gilt für Lkw und Sattelzugfahrzeuge ALLER Gewichtsklassen mit einem Euro-1-Motor, und mit Euro 2-Motor im Wiener Umland." Lorries and articulated vehicles of every weight class — the emphasis on ALLER is the publisher's own — with a Euro 1 engine may not drive, and in the Wiener Umland a Euro 2 engine is barred as well.
The page's own subtitle widens it at the other end: "Fahrverbot für LKW der Euroklasse 0 bis 2 in NÖ", so a vehicle with no Euro class at all is inside it too. The rule comes from the NÖ Sanierungsgebiets- und Maßnahmenverordnung Feinstaub (PM 10), made after repeated exceedances of the PM10 limits; besides grit-spreading and agriculture it contains provisions for traffic.
Schwechat is the anchor because it is named in the Sanierungsgebiet Wiener Umland, in the Bezirk Bruck an der Leitha group, which means both halves of the sentence reach it — a Euro 1 lorry and a Euro 2 lorry are equally barred here, where elsewhere in the Land only the Euro 1 half is stated. A driver in a car is outside this rule: it is written for Lkw and Sattelzugfahrzeuge, not for passenger cars.
A driver in a van should read it more carefully than the Tyrolean one, because "all weight classes" is the publisher's phrase and a light commercial vehicle registered in Austria as an Lkw falls inside that wording rather than under a tonnage threshold that would exclude it.
Vehicles from Euro class 3 upwards, which may still be used, have had to carry an Abgasplakette since 2015, obtained from a garage for a fee the page does not name. What this record does not have is the operative text.
The Verordnung and the federal Immissionsschutzgesetz-Luft behind it are both published through RIS, the federal legal information system, which answers this project with a Myra Security bot check and will not release even its robots.txt (B-057), and we do not work around bot protection.
So the hours, the exemptions, the commencement dates and the fine are all absent here and named as absent, and everything that is stated comes from the issuing administration describing its own rule on its own host.
Vienna bans old lorries from the whole of itself. The City states it in one sentence — "Betroffen ist in Wien das gesamte Stadtgebiet, inklusive Autobahnen." — and that sentence is what makes this record unusual in the corpus: there is no perimeter to find, no signposted ring and no inner and outer zone.
If the vehicle is inside the city limits it is inside the ban, and the motorways that cross Vienna are inside it too, which is the part a driver passing through on the A 23 or the A 22 would otherwise assume they had escaped. The rule came in two dated steps and the City states both.
A ban on lorries first registered before 1992 took effect in 2008; then a Novelle of the IG-L-Maßnahmenkatalog 2005 in December 2013 extended the existing ban on Lastkraftwagen and Sattelzugfahrzeuge of Abgasklasse "Euro 0" — which the City defines as those first registered before 1 January 1992 — to Lastkraftwagen, Sattelkraftfahrzeuge and Sattelzugfahrzeuge of Abgasklasse "Euro 1" and "Euro 2".
So three classes are barred and Euro 3 is the first that is not. The instrument is a Verordnung of the Landeshauptmann of Vienna under the federal Immissionsschutzgesetz-Luft, made to reduce PM10 and NO2, which puts this record in the same family as the Tyrolean A 12 bans and the Lower Austrian one: one federal act, three Länder, three different answers.
Vienna's answer is the widest in area and the narrowest in vehicle — it reaches every street and motorway in the city, and it reaches lorries. A driver in a car is not in it.
A driver in a van should look closer than that, because the City describes its exemption for Werkverkehr as available to operators whose fleet is at most four Lkw of class N1 or N2, and an exemption written for N1 would have nothing to do if N1 were not caught.
Exemptions exist and are applied for rather than bought: some groups of old lorries are exempt, among them those that can show their emissions are at least equivalent to Abgasklasse "Euro 3", and Ausnahmegenehmigungen are granted by Abteilung 46, Verkehrsorganisation und technische Verkehrsangelegenheiten. What this record does not have is the Verordnung itself.
The City links it to RIS, the federal legal information system, which answers this project with a Myra Security bot check and will not release even its robots.txt (B-057), and we do not work around bot protection. So the hours, the full list of exempt groups, the commencement dates as legal dates rather than as the City's prose, and the fine are absent here and named as absent.