UVAR_Austria – Upgrading the Austrian ITS landscape to implement the EU requirements for Urban Vehicle Access Regulations
UVAR_Austria is developing solutions to provide digital and standardised access restrictions in line with the latest EU regulations. The consortium is drawing up practical recommendations for action and an implementation plan for Austria. Goal: High-quality data for effective traffic management – accessible to all road users, including automated vehicles.
Urban Vehicle Access Restrictions (UVARs) are traffic regulations that control vehicle access to specific urban areas. The goal of these measures is to address challenges such as air pollution, traffic congestion, and noise pollution in cities while promoting sustainable mobility.
UVARs are highly promising. Access regulations are among the most effective tools for improving air quality, reducing congestion, promoting sustainable mobility, and shifting traffic patterns. Positive experiences with UVARs already exist, but there is still room for development in their application, data availability and quality, and the sharing of information with road users—including automated vehicles.
This need has also been recognized at the EU level, with recent European regulations highlighting the importance of making digital information accessible through standardized interfaces via National Access Points (NAPs) for traffic data.
Building on this diagnosis, the UVAR_Austria project aims to identify ways to enhance Austria’s intelligent transport system (ITS) infrastructure in line with EU requirements for Urban Vehicle Access Regulations. The project focuses on determining which vehicles or road users should—or must—face access restrictions, how this data can be made uniformly available in digital formats, and how process and data quality can be ensured.
Submitted as part of the 2023 call for Digital Transformation in Mobility and strategically aligned with the task of ensuring the availability of mobility-relevant data in connection with the national implementation of the ITS Directive, UVAR_Austria was commissioned as an R&D service by the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology and the Climate and Energy Fund.
An interdisciplinary consortium spanning the fields of law, transport, and administration, led by PRISMA solutions, is dedicating 18 months to this ambitious project. By the end of March 2026, UVAR_Austria will deliver actionable recommendations, paired with an implementation plan, to ensure that data on UVARs can reliably be integrated into various services for road users in compliance with EU requirements.
