Driving to a ski resort in Austria: what the car needs

ASFINAG's vignette FAQ puts the limit in one line: a digital vignette bought in the ASFINAG toll shop or through the ASFINAG app is only valid from the 18th day after the online purchase. A half-term week booked a fortnight out therefore cannot run on an annual vignette, however well the price would have worked out.

The same FAQ names the exception, and it is the one that matters for a ski trip: the deadline does not apply to a 1-day or a 10-day vignette. A 10-day vignette runs for ten consecutive calendar days including the start date, which is the shape of a week with a travel day at each end. A 1-day vignette covers one calendar day and expires at midnight, so a Saturday transfer that ends after twelve needs the Sunday too.

There is one other way round the wait, and ASFINAG states it itself: buy from a distributor, at a toll booth or from a vending machine instead of online, and the 18 days do not apply at all. The vignette is valid immediately. That is how an annual vignette can still cover a departure next week, at the cost of a stop at a sales point on the way.

The vignette buys the general motorway and expressway network. Six stretches sit outside it and carry a section toll, the Sondermaut, charged by ASFINAG at the route itself. Two of the six are on the same motorway, the A9, and three of the six are on ordinary ski approaches.

• A10 Tauern Motorway: the Tauern and Katschberg tunnels, between the Flachau and Rennweg junctions.
• A13 Brenner Motorway: the whole road, which ASFINAG says can be driven without a vignette at all.
• S16 Arlberg Expressway: the Arlberg Tunnel, between the St. Anton am Arlberg and Langen am Arlberg junctions.
• A9 Pyhrn Motorway: the Bosruck Tunnel, between the Spital am Pyhrn and Ardning junctions.
• A9 Pyhrn Motorway: the Gleinalm Tunnel, between the St. Michael and Übelbach junctions.
• A11 Karawanken Motorway: the Karawanken Tunnel, between the St. Jakob im Rosental junction and the Slovenian border.

Since 15 December 2019 four stretches of the ASFINAG network have been outside the vignette requirement under the Federal Roads Toll Act. Three are border crossings and the fourth is a construction exception.

• A1 Westautobahn, from the Walserberg border to the Salzburg-Nord junction.
• A12 Inntalautobahn, from the Kufstein border to the Kufstein-Süd junction.
• A14 Rheintal and Walgau Autobahn, from the Hörbranz border to the Hohenems junction.
• A26 Linzer Autobahn, until its link to the A7 at the Linz-Hummelhof junction opens to traffic.

The exemptions above matter because a Tyrolean or Salzburg valley is often reached from one of them on federal roads, which carry no vignette obligation of any kind. Driving to Saalbach-Hinterglemm is the clearest example: every route the resort publishes is marked vignette-free.

Where a resort does sit on the motorway, the boundary is worth checking before you assume the tunnel toll applies. Driving to Flachau leaves the A10 at the junction where the Tauern section toll starts, so arriving there never enters it, while driving through Austria to the Italian Alps is the opposite case: the Brenner is charged separately from the first metre. Check your own route against the two lists above before you assume what it costs.

Between 1 November and 15 April a car or light van up to 3.5 tonnes may be driven in wintry conditions, meaning snow, slush or ice, only with winter tyres on all wheels. Austria sets no date by which they must be fitted. The obligation switches on when the surface turns, which on an alpine approach can happen one hairpin above dry tarmac.

A qualifying tyre is marked M+S, M.S. or M&S, or carries the snowflake symbol. The tread minimum for a winter tyre on a car is 4 mm on a radial casing and 5 mm on a diagonal one, against 1.6 mm for an ordinary tyre, so a set that passed a summer inspection may still be short.

Snow chains are a substitute for winter tyres only where the road is covered continuously or almost continuously in snow or ice, and only when fitted to at least two driven wheels. Buses and lorries over 3.5 tonnes have the stricter version: winter tyres on a drive axle for the whole window whatever the weather, and chains carried on board.

That is the whole of it, and it is the only version of it a ski approach meets. We checked each of the six destinations linked from this page against its own municipal and tourism sites, and found none of them publishing a rule of its own: the same national law governs the B311 into Saalbach, the B186 above Sölden and every other road in the set. The destination pages therefore leave the equipment here and take up what actually differs between them, which is the road, the toll boundary and the village.

The vignette is a record against a licence plate, read by camera. ASFINAG says up to twenty automatic control cameras work across more than 2,200 kilometres of motorway and that they are moved regularly, so there is no stretch you can count on being unwatched. Nothing arrives in the post and nothing goes in the windscreen.

A car swapped at the last minute is the trap. Only the digital annual vignette, the section-toll multi-trip cards and section toll FLEX can be reassigned to a new plate once validity has started, and ASFINAG charges an administration fee to do it. The 1-day, 10-day and 2-month products cannot be reassigned at all, so a replacement vehicle needs its own Austrian vignette bought against its own plate.

A ski box on the roof changes nothing, and neither does a trailer. ASFINAG states that no additional vignette is required for trailers, caravans or motorbike sidecars: the towing vehicle is what is charged, as long as the combination stays inside the 3.5 tonne limit. Above it the drive falls under the GO-Box distance toll instead, which is a different system entirely.