Erstellt am: 10. 10. 2015 - 11:33 Uhr
The Future Of Vienna's Mobility
This year, at the Vienna Earth Talks, traffic planner Harald Frey of the Vienna technical university showed a picture of the caged basketball court at Richard-Waldemar-Park in the 6th district. “This is a city where we put children in cages but the cars are free”, he fumed. It was a humorous example of what town planners like Frey feel is an over dominance of the private automobile in the planning and running of urban areas.
Erdgespräche
Recently the politics of mobility have moved from hipster concern to mainstream worry. This is partly due to a gathering consensus on the lethality of the toxic soup created by heavy traffic in urban areas: Only a month ago, the WHO named air pollution as a bigger global killer than HIV and malaria combined, with the nitrogen oxide emitted via exhaust fumes responsible for tens of thousands of European deaths every year.
Then the all-power automobile industry managed to spectacularly shoot itself in the foot. By cheating on its emissions tests, and allowing its vehicles to snort 40 times the legal limits of dangerous toxins, Volkswagen managed to remind us that major global businesses are prepared to deliberately flout regulations there to protect the environment and human health. Profits trump lives.
Profits Trump Lives
The future of urban mobility matters and that is why, while the loud debate of asylum and migration policy wages on, a quieter battle over the future of city design is waging ahead of Sunday’s Vienna election. A battle that pitches car lobbies against bike lobbies and, to an extent, left against right.
At a bike shop in Vienna’s 2nd district I ask Alec Hager, who has taken a sabbatical from the Austrian bike lobby to organise the bike culture festival Radkult Wien, what changes he has seen since the last legislative period. “In a big city like Vienna it is sometimes difficult to see changes over a 5 year period,” says Alec Hager “but you can see that we are moving in the right direction.”
Indeed the latest Fahrrad Report, compiled by questioning 4,500 cyclists in Vienna, showed that 72 percent felt that conditions were improving for cyclists in the city, up from 50 percent in 2012.
Mobilitätsagentur
Artist and designer Zahra Shahabi, a passionate cyclist and hobby mechanic, says she has noticed a boom in cycling in recent years. “I’ve seen it growing and growing and that makes me really happy,” she says “But at the same time it is really frustrating. Because there is a culture that is growing faster than it is being officially supported.”
She has brought her artist project Veletyping to Vienna for the Radkult festival, a fantasy bike building project involving stickers. It’s a fun game, bringing us back to the halcyon days of primary school but there is a serious point: “We’re trying to create hype. The festival is a platform for debate and discussion that should be continued for years.”
Alec Hager
A Growing Minority
Even if it hasn’t come at the pace that activists had hoped for, the balance between cars and bikes is changing in Vienna. The latest figures available from the Mobilitätsagentur show, that between 2010 and 2014 Vienna added 96 kilometres to its bike network, bringing it up to a total length of 1,270km. Nearly 10,000 new bike parking spaces have been added and in all 30 million euros have been spent for cycling infrastructure. The result has been an increase in cycling participation from 4.6 percent to 7.1 percent of all traffic in the city. Cyclists in Vienna are a minority but they are a growing minority.
Mobilitätsagentur
If any minority grows it inevitably hits resistance.
Some car drivers believe, the developments have made their lives more difficult and burdensome. The redevelopment of the inner-city Mariahilfer Strasse from a traffic thoroughfare to its current reincarnation as paved “Begegnungszone” has been particularly controversial. Alec Hager heralds to this development as one of the great successes of the past few years. Once the site of a near permanent traffic jam, the newly paved promenade sees pedestrians stroll near meandering cyclists as well as the odd taxi and occasional bus. Despite initial worries, the new Mariahilfe Strasse has proved beneficial to business.
"Car Drivers Are Humans Too"
But it has all gone too fast for some drivers, who have also complained that the pro-cycling and pro-pedestrian rhetoric of the government has unfairly maligned them. The Vienna People’s Party has been trying to tap into that disillusionment with slogans such as “Car drivers are humans too.”
Chris Cummins
Alfred Hoch, an ÖVP spokesman, told me that his party felt “car drivers have been particularly burdened in the past 5 years by the city government. There has been a bashing against this group.” He points out that it is the combustion engine that provides power for cities ambulances as well as most of its deliveries. “Vienna is also an economic area and that has to be protected.”
Alec Hager laughs off the idea that car drivers have been treated as sub-human as a typical election time absurdity and says that no-one is interested in a conflict between bikes and cars. Both he and Alfred Hoch agree on perhaps the most important point - most Viennese are car drivers, cyclists and pedestrians and it is just about choosing which form of mobility is appropriate for which journey. When you are setting off on a short inner city journey with little to carry, he says, it is best to leave your car alone. It’s about balance and sharing space.
chris cummins
Needless conflict can be obstructive and yet at one level we can’t just hug and get along. As the future of inner city mobility is decided there will be winners and losers. Private car drivers have been winning for decades but now town planners, pointing out the concept of shared urban space actually pre-dates the advent of the combustible engine, car drivers might have to cede some space.
As Hager puts it:“If decisions are made that promote one form of transport to the detriment of all other uses of space then of course it is also question of competition.”