Munich airport to St Anton - best route

Flying in to Munich on Saturday, 17 March and driving down to St Anton :mrgreen: . I have been looking online at possible driving routes on both google maps and viamichilin. They are offering a variety of routes :roll: with roughly the same travel times:

1. Down the 95 and then over the Fernpass (through Garmisch and Lermoos). This the shortest, by a long way, but not much is on motorway and involves a windy road up over a high mountain pass.

2. Down the 8 and 93 motorway down through Kufstein and Innsbruck or

3. Across to the West on the 96 through Memmingen and then down through Bregenz.

The first option is most direct but presumably is prone to weather issues and getting stuck behind slow moving traffic with no passing possibilities ( I know it is still a good bit away but the current long term forecasts are suggesting that there could be heavy snow that day) :cry: . The 2nd seems most straightforward but this route does seem to suffer from very heavy traffic at the weekends. I don't know anything about the 3rd option.

Is anyone familiar with the journey and can offer advice on which is the best route to take?

Also will be heading back on Wednesday, 21st around 3pm. Any advice on the return route also appreciated (bearing in mind that traffic should be less of an issue mid-week). :thumbup:

Hi Wanderer,

I have been driving down to Austria and Italy for the past several years and can give some comments on your routes.

I have been over the Fernpass about four times in either direction, and tbh it can be an absolute nightmare if the traffic is heavy. Never had any issues with snow, but on 3 out of 4 of the journeys the traffic simply had a habit of grinding to a complete stop for up to an hour at a time. Never really found out why, but we strongly suspect it is due to a number of tunnels on the road that need to be vented if the traffic is heavy.

You are correct about the motorway route down from Munich, I don't think I have ever had a clear run through when using this option. However, one year we did do a detour from this and went over the hills via Bad Tolz and Achensee. Fantastic route and perhaps one of the most scenic drives you can do, but again it did get very slow once past Achensee and down to rejoin the motorway. Having driven that route I have promised myself a return to Achensee one summer though, beautiful place.

Finally the Memmingen and Bregenz route. Never done this myself, but my brother and a friend tried it out this year after stopping overnight in Memmingen en route to Italy, and they said it was one of the best crossings they have done and would definately use that route again.

Hope this helps, and let me know which one you take and how you get on please.

Have a great trip. FQ :)

I will agree with Far Queue..I got stuck on the Fernpass on a Saturday afternoon in January it might have been Ok if we had got there early.....just weight of traffic ..about 1.5 hours..but absolutely no problem on the return .. Innsbruck to Munich last year ..2hours stationary on a Saturday ..I will try the Alrlberg tunnel next year

I drove route #1 (Fernpass) MUC-StAnton on Sunday afternoon Feb 18th and back on Thursday morning Feb 22nd. The only problem was the heavy traffic in Munich.
It took just under 4 hours both ways with short coffee break.

Thanks for all the feedback - a great example of the value of this site :thumbup:.

Sounds like there is no obvious choice but that the Memmingen routing may be the best bet even if it is somewhat of an unknown quantity. Intuitively, it looks like a routing that would serve less ski destinations and therefore should not suffer as much from "changeover Saturday" traffic chaos :shock:.

Certainly, I could not bear sitting in static traffic for lengthy periods as seems to happen from time to time on the Fernpass route plus the small windy roads look like a lot more work for the driver (i.e. me) :twisted: .

We drove from Italy through Mittenwald and Garmisch to Munich on a first Saturday in February this year. Northbound towards Munich was absolutely fine but we could see there was a long queue of slow traffic going south starting from the end of motorway (A95) all the way to Garmisch. Perhaps it will be better now as it's not high season. Driving back on Wednesday should have no issues. All the best!

Just to add the road from near Innsbruck through Mittenwald to Garmich was a nice wide one.

Just back from my trip and thought I would update you on my route. Based on the comments received, I decided that the most reliable route was the North West routing by Memmingen. It is a pleasant drive with motorway nearly all the way. Traffic was relatively light and we had no holdups at all - far easier than the alternative routes. We did hit a major traffic jam on the A99 Munich ring road which I am guessing was due to an accident but we were able to divert through a part of the city and avoid the blockage - we lost no more than 10 minutes as a result of this. The journey down probably took about 3.15hrs while the way back was about 3.30hrs.

Locals in St Anton reported regular issues with the Kufstein route with the border controls in particular regularly causing delays ranging from a few minutes up to half an hour. Interestingly, there are no border controls (for private vehicles anyway) on the North West route.