Given that our motorways are already running out of space for cars, with (mainly foreign) lorries overcrowding both lanes, serious consideration needs to be given to alternatives. Freight traffic is polluting our environment to an excessive extent and destroying our overpriced motorways. This road situation leads to more accidents. The transport lobby has always been strong, which is why the tolls are not too high, but Slovenia, because of its location, is literally swallowing up all east-west freight transit. Apart from the ruined roads, we have nothing to show for our kindness. Foreign freight transit is destroying our roads, and we are paying for them, fixing them...
There is a solution to this. Make it compulsory to load freight vehicles on to a rail train at the point of entry into Slovenia, and transit the country by rail. The measure may be inconvenient for foreign truckers, but if they disagree with our system, they still have the route from Hungary via Austria to Italy.
The positives of such a measure are:
- ecological relief for our beautiful nature (no more exhaust fumes from lorries),
- modernisation of the railways (we should invest in this, but we are also wasting a lot of money on motorway renewal because of the congestion of freight traffic),
- decongesting motorway lay-bys and making it easier to maintain toilets (these days we can see on TV the worrying results of the Consumers' Union's survey in this area),
- the roads freed from endless truck columns would be much SAFER, and certainly fewer lives would be lost.
The argument that nowhere in Europe is traffic regulated in this way does not hold water - we can be more radical when it comes to our nature and our lives.