Driving in Linz

Austria: 1 scheme to know about before you drive in.

The short answer for Linz

Linz has one driving restriction on our books: the Verordnung des Landeshauptmannes von Oberösterreich, mit der ein… (low emission zone). What is a low emission zone?

What it means for your car

Diesel. Two formulations of the same line, from two Upper Austrian authorities, and a driver should know both. The Land states it as a build year: the ban reaches "schwere LKW mit Baujahren älter als 2000", heavy lorries built before 2000, and it has applied since July 2016. The Bezirkshauptmannschaft Linz-Land, which prosecutes breaches in this Sanierungsgebiet, states it as Euro classes: its Tatbestandskatalog für Anonymverfügungen names "Missachtung des Fahrverbotes Sanierungsgebiet A1 West Autobahn Enns-Steyr Haid für Euro 0, 1 und 2". Read together, and consistent with each other, that puts the line between Euro II and Euro III — a heavy lorry of Euro 0, I or II may not use the stretch, and Euro III and above may. The same catalogue shows that being new enough is not the end of it: it also lists "Missachtung der Kennzeichnungspflicht Sanierungsgebiet A1 Westautobahn Enns-Steyr Haid für Euro 3, 4, 5 und 6", so a lorry that is allowed through is nevertheless expected to be able to show its class, which in Austria means the IG-L Abgasklassen-Kennzeichnungsplakette. ⚠️ The Euro numbers and the marking duty come from that catalogue, and the catalogue's own status limits what can be claimed from it: it is published in the Bezirkshauptmannschaft Linz-Land document folder on the Land's own host, its file name calls it a Vorschlag — a proposal — and the document carries no date. So the Euro classes here are stated as what the district authority's catalogue says, corroborating the Land's build-year sentence, rather than as a quotation from the Verordnung. The Verordnung, which would settle it, is published through RIS and RIS refuses us (B-057). ⚠️ And one figure is deliberately missing: no source we can read states a tonnage. "Lastkraftfahrzeuge" and "schwere LKW" are the publishers' words, and Austria has already proved that the weight line belongs to the Land — 7.5 tonnes on Tyrol's A 12, "ALLER Gewichtsklassen" in Lower Austria. Whether a van registered as an Lkw is inside this one is a question this record cannot answer, and does not answer by borrowing a number from a different Land.

Sources last read on 2026-09-18, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2027-03-18.

The schemes, one by one

• Verordnung des Landeshauptmannes von Oberösterreich, mit der ein… Low emission zone

  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.

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Before you set off

Austria also has a national requirement

• Vignette für Kraftfahrzeuge bis 3,5 tMulti-track motor vehicles up to 3.5 t technically permissible maximum laden mass — cars, light motorhomes and small vans. Single-track vehicles (motorcycles, three-wheelers and motorcycles with sidecars) pay a separate, lower rate: annual EUR 42.70, 2-month EUR 12.80, 10-day EUR 5.10, 1-day EUR 3.80.

This is owed on the country's roads, not inside this scheme. What Austria asks, with the source

Other cities in Austria

• Viennaabout 151 km away, 1 verified scheme
• Schwechatabout 162 km away, 1 verified scheme
• Innsbruckabout 244 km away, 1 verified scheme