From the 15th century Podkoren, in the far northwest of the Duchy of Carniola, was a toll station on the steep road up to the Wurzen mountain pass, for centuries the shortest and most direct link from the Littoral towns of Trieste and Gorizia to Villach in Carinthia. Today the main link is on the A2 motorway through the Karawanks Tunnel further east. A former railway line from Jesenice via Kranjska Gora and Podkoren to Tarvisio in the west built in the 1870s was dismantled after train service ceased in 1966.