Growth Potential in Traffic Flows between Austria and Eastern Europe

The political changes in the East will have a strong impact on the infrastructure of the Austrian transportation system. Austria will not only be an important destination for those tourists that were prevented by the Iron Curtain from travelling abroad, it will also be engulfed by the stream of travelers going on to Italy and Western European countries. A similar development is to be expected for freight transportation when the division of labour within the CMEA will cease to work and commercial ties between East and West will intensify. A good indicator of the potential traffic flows is the size of population affected. It can serve as a standard for estimating the tourist flows as well as the potential import demand.