Brenner Railway bypass was completed in 1994 to improve access to the Lower Inn Valley railway. The bypass consists of a 12.75-kilometre tunnel (Austria's longest) and aims to remove the bulk of the freight train traffic from Innsbruck. In Italy, several new sections have been built, removing sections of line with several short tunnels with small cross sections. These include the 13.159-metre long Sciliar tunnel opened in 1994, the 7.267-metre long Pflersch tunnel opened in 1999 and the 3,939-metre long Cardano tunnel opened in 1998. Following a sharp increase in freight traffic through the Brenner Pass (largely on road), the railway is
Brenner Pass in 268 AD, but they were stopped in November of that year at the Battle of Lake Benacus. The Romans kept control over the mountain pass until their end of the empire, in the 5th century. During the High Middle Ages, Brenner Pass was a part of the important "Via Imperii", an imperial road linking the Kingdom of Germany north of the Alps with the Italian March of Verona. In the carolingian "Divisio Regnorum" of 806 the Brenner region is called "per alpes Noricas", the transit through the Noric Alps. Since the 12th century, Brenner Pass was controlled by the