Rural Vorarlberg pupils face Austria’s longest drives to academic secondary schools
Tuesday 15th September 2026 on 10:45 in
Austria
Students in rural Vorarlberg have Austria’s longest average car journeys to academic secondary schools, according to an analysis by the Foresight Institute for ORF and the Austrian Press Agency. Overall, however, school journeys in Vorarlberg are shorter than the national average.
The analysis covered all 2,091 Austrian municipalities and 23 Vienna districts. It found major differences between urban and rural areas: journeys near cities, particularly to primary schools, can take only a few minutes, while trips to special schools and academic secondary schools in rural areas can take nearly an hour or more.
In Vorarlberg, journeys are shorter in the Rhine Valley and the city of Bludenz, while children and teenagers in rural areas in the south generally travel farther. The Kleinwalsertal valley was excluded because it has no road connections to the rest of Austria.
Travel times to all types of school included in the analysis, from primary and lower secondary schools to vocational schools, special schools and academic secondary schools, are below the Austrian average in Vorarlberg. Vienna was excluded from that comparison.
For journeys by car to an academic secondary school, students in rural Vorarlberg travel an average of 21.7 minutes. In rural Burgenland, the average is 14.8 minutes. The picture is different for primary and lower secondary schools.
Vorarlberg ranks second after Vienna for public transport journeys before school starts. The average journey takes 14.7 minutes for upper-secondary students and 10.7 minutes for lower-secondary students.
Within Vorarlberg, children in Fontanella and Damüls have the longest school journeys, at an average of 24 minutes. The calculation includes all school types and measures the journey from the centre of each municipality.
Bludenz has the shortest journey, at one minute from the city centre to primary, lower secondary, special and academic secondary schools, as well as higher vocational schools. The school centre is located in the city.