Cycling the campus

Long time since I wrote last, I must apologize. I was off on holiday in India, and then got pretty sick for a while. But now me and Paula are back!

Minor differences

I found this comic today, and well, I think there is some truth to it.

About fairness

A few days back I got this fairness flyer on the Donaukanal bike path:

"fair cyclists" flyer -- to read the back click here (in German)

Crossing streets

This is my friend Alberto crossing a street in Vietnam. He told me that there are about 90% scooters in the modal split there, and that people even take them into shops etc. The noise level is very similar to Indian cities, however, there are already more cars in those places.

In Vienna, many streets have traffic lights. So crossing a street as a pedestrian (and often also cyclist) is done by the following procedure:

• approach the junction
• (press a button)
• wait
• wait
• wait
• cross

You're a poor guy/girl and have to cross once more? Too unfortunate. You'll have to wait again, because there are hardly any "diagonal" traffic lights. I don't know how there are called technically, but I mean those where you can use cross diagonally because all the vehicular traffic has a red light. In Austria (and most other European countries I know, apart from Ireland) motorists have green at the same time as pedestrians and cyclists on, e.g., a parallel segregated bike path. Of course, car drivers have to yield those, but sometimes there are dangerous situations, especially on bike paths that are somehow visually detached from the road. Be aware!

Many times on small roads I find that the traffic lights are not necessary because a) there is not much car traffic in the first place and b) pedestrians have green when most of the car traffic has too, anyhow.

In Vienna, there are a lot of traffic lights for cyclists. The seperate ones are pretty neat, as long as they are not "on demand" lights (it takes ages for them to turn green, and especially when I wear thick gloves in the winter, they are not so easy to use).

Two "on demand" traffic lights for cyclists in the 3rd district

However, most of the time cyclists' lights are included in the pedestrians' ones. This is a big disadvantage, because cyclists are much faster than pedestrians, and we could do with a much shorter clearing phase and hence a longer green phase (cyclists are actually much closer to "normal" traffic than to pedestrians). Especially on the Gürtel bike path, cyclists have a huge disadvantage due to these joint lights as well as due to turning cars -- we just miss the progressive signals at almost every junction, i.e. on average every 50-200 m. By the way, this is called "Grüne Welle" (green wave) in German. I like that term, but I would like it even more if it would refer to bike rather than car traffic.

How is it like in your town? Are there many traffic lights? Special ones for cyclists? Green waves for cyclists?

A new plus and a new minus in the 9th district

Since a few days I live in the 9th district in Vienna. Generally, it has a dense network of bicycle infrastructure -- a lot of bike racks and a lot of bike lanes. In fact, too many bike lanes. And some of the new ones in horrible positions: in the door zone, and on cobblestones. Who the hell plans something like that? Certainly not a regular cyclist... By the way, in Austria we have the law that any bicycle infrastructure available must be used, so on many such "bike lanes" I am forced to either ride illegal or unsafe.

On the other hand, I can also report something good.

Suddenly Vienna seems so peaceful...

After being back from India (see posts from Nagpur, Delhi and Jaipur) and its stressful traffic, I do appreciate the peaceful and almost empty streets in Vienna. Everything seems so organized and easy.

Gürtel bike path in Vienna

A stroll through Schönbrunn

There are so many nice places in Vienna that I never bother mentioning them -- simply because I hardly ever go there, but also because I am so used to them, that I do not consider them so special. However, it's always nice, to take a walk around the center (it's a pedestrian zone) or other parks. Filigree has once mentioned the Augarten as her favorite park in Vienna. Now here's one rather touristy place that is also very enjoyable:

Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn

The Schönbrunn palace (with an umlaut written as "Schoenbrunn") is the former residence of the Habsburg monarchs and the whole area very very pompous, both the palace and the surrounding gardens. If you're interested in the historical background I recommend to visit the offical website of the Schönbrunn palace or Wikipedia (and Vienna :)).

Soon after the end of the monarchy the population of Vienna discovered the park as an attractive recreational area, which it is still. In December 1996 the Schönbrunn Palace was put on the list of UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Sites.

Map of the palace (the yellow thing in the South) and parks at Schönbrunn

Picturized ideas for sustainable transport in major cities

I hope you're not getting bored with me talking about Budapest so much, 'cause I still have something interesting to share with you concerning the workshop about urban mobility Sonja and I attended (winner of an EU youth exchange project).

This time, however, it's not about infrastructure or activities. This time it's about the results, most of which are available as videos. I think this is also interesting for people outside of Budapest and Europe as most problems in urban planning (due to car-centric planning) are quite similar worldwide. Note that all this work was done within ten days only, and even less working days!

First, students (mostly in the fields of architecture, civil engineering, geography and spatial planning) as well as filmmakers worked together to analyze the transport problems in a given project area in the center of Budapest. View all observations from different groups, or in particular ...

... a video about the accessibility of public transport ...


... the noise problem ...


... the lack of bike racks in important places ...


... the power of (parked) cars and white lines.


Do you agree? Can you find similar problems in your town? Do you think some of them are solvable? If yes, how? Brainwashing our society does not count, by the way ;-). Difficult, isn't it?

Well, we tried to solve some of these problems anyhow. Possible solutions or let's say suggestions are collected as final results. Among others you can for example ...

... follow a curious man on a walk through Budapest ...


... see how you can become an everyday life star ...


... or simply try to love Budapest.



Still not bored? For further reading see

• all previous posts about the workshop in our blog
  
• the official website of the workshop
• a German summary on velosophie.at

Disability and radical pedestrians

Budapest has one big problem that pedestrians and public transport users have to face, namely underpasses. Personally I don't like to go underground. It's always kind of dark and dirty there, and I loose my orientation. In Budapest there is also the other issue of mobility for disabled people. Although they are trying to improve according to European Standards, there are still a large amount of obstacles on the streets. As in every proper car centric society, it's the pedestrians that have to go underground and not the cars. And it's almost always done by stairs (although apparently existent I haven't seen any elevators or escalators myself). The stairs don't have bright lines for partially sighted people and there are no tracks for wheelchairs or bicycles.

Underpasses with only stairs: bikes have to be carried, people in wheelchairs or with buggies are simply stuck

However, these things are made visible to the public. And there are also people who protest against the fact that on certain junctions there are no crosswalks but only underpasses. At the Mobility Week Workshop we took part in a flashmob at Blaha Lujza square last Wednesday. Some activists painted there own pedestrians lights and gave green whenever the according parallel car lanes had green. Since there was no crosswalk/zebra crossing painted on the streets they used different posters with animals and zebras painted on them to demonstrate their ideas. I quite enjoyed that creative way of approaching these problems. It certainly increases awareness. The flashmob was a huge success. A lot of people used the opportunity to cross the streets on the surface (and not underground) safely in big crowds. It was a pleasure to see human mobility.

People crossing at Blaha Lujza square on the artificial zebra crossing

How to go shopping by bike and what would make it more convenient

While most people agree that some kind of shopping is possible by bike, not everybody wants to do all shopping by bike. I also don't, to be honest. I transport my groceries (including party supply) by bike. I do my clothes and shoe shopping by bike, and I even transport electrical equipment by bike (e.g., computers, printers, espresso machines, dishes).

But what about refrigerators and closets, someone might ask. Well, small furniture I transport by bike, medium pieces by public transport (taxi or renting a car is also an option if the latter isn't available) and for big stuff I hire a professional transport company anyhow as this is the most convenient and cheapest way to do. Well, there are not many people who move house by car and I rather avoid such experiences after having it done myself.

Not enough transport capacities on a bike?

Anna cycling in Barcelona

Hola, this is actually anna from Vienna. I'm currently visiting Catalonia. It's a surprise visit for the other Anna, organized by her boyfriend Xavi. He also ensures that I do a lot of bicing and sightseeing while Anna is busy at work :-). I've been to Barcelona before in 2002, but only for one day. I think many things have changed the face of the city ever since, especially the cycling boom that has started with BiCiNg (Anna was damn right about that). So here are just a few of my impressions and comparisons to Vienna:

Bicycles
The vast majority of the cyclists here use BiCiNg bikes, second probably being folding bikes (quite unusual for me). BiCiNg bikes have three gears (the new Citybikes in Vienna will also have that), pneumatic tires (compared to solid rubber tires in Vienna), a refreshing red color and all the good stuff (fenders, chain and skirt guard, front rack, lights). In Vienna borrowing the city bikes is more involved, but you can choose the bike yourself. Here, the system chooses it for you and sometimes you have to repeat the procedure if you catch a broken bike.

Me bicing at the seafront this morning
By the way, can anybody explain me the sense of a smaller front tire?

Women and transport

I can only talk about my own experience, but have you ever noticed that there are no women doing BMX (at least none that I know of) and that women road cycling is little-noticed in the public? There are hardly any female bike mechanics or frame builders too (actually Trisha already investigated that). Even among civil engineers and traffic planners are far less women than men. There are also fewer women driving buses, trams, subways and trains..

What about everyday life? I read that in Austria there are more women than men who use public transport and bikes to commute or simply walk, although generally women have more trips per day and have to carry more things (because in families there are still more women who look after the children and do the shopping). Hence women move much more complex than men and therefore have more "experience" with transportation systems.

But as I already said -- traffic planning in Austria (and probably also worldwide) is mostly done by men who drive their cars to work in the morning and back home in the evening. Can you see the discrepancy?

Some people already ask for gender mainstreaming in traffic planning. I found a nice introductory website about women and mobility: "Frauen machen schön mobil!" ("Women make lovely mobility", in English and German). Please tell me if you know more about research in that direction, I'm very much interested in that.

And to round the topic off two pictures of beautiful women cycling in Vienna :-). Keep at it and get involved!

Shit happens.

Today I had an accident. Not a bad one, but it hurts a bit and I will have several bruises. My friend Anna from Barcelona once said that the bicycle infrastructure there isn't very good and that she would like to have more bike lanes. I thought I will do a pro and contra list one day to show her that less bike lanes can be an advantage too. I won't do that now. But this is going to be a contra bike lanes argument..

Well, as every morning I rode my bike on the bike lane (in German "Mehrzweckstreifen" - the one with the broken line that trucks are allowed to ride over) to the university. Actually I like that bike lane although I already had an accident there in 2007 (a car driver overlooked me and cut me off), but at a different spot. I like it cause there's always a traffic jam that I can pass easily on the bike lane. And the progressive signal system is set up in a way that I have green lights in a row. It is the only street in Vienna that I know where they favor cyclists. Well, I was constantly going around 18-20 km/h which isn't fast, but also not slow. The cars on the left were sitting in a traffic jam. And suddenly there appeared an old lady in front of me that I didn't see before cause the cars blocked my view. She was on a crosswalk, but run a red light. Probably she only saw the standing cars but didn't look out for other road users. So she suddenly appeared in front of me, I shouted and braked hard. She turned her face in my direction but stopped in the middle of the bike lane rather than continue walking. I couldn't maneuver around her cause there was a car to my left and a scaffold to my right. In the last moment I pushed my front wheel to the left so that it didn't hit her frontal. But of course I lost my balance and we both fell. I helped her to get up. She was really confused. I asked her whether something hurts and if I should call an ambulance or accompany her to a doctor. She said it's ok and wanted to walk away. I think she felt ashamed cause it was her fault. I wanted to give her at least my details in case that she suffers from the accident later (I know that this happens), but she didn't want them.

Usually in Austria you only have to report an accident if people got hurt. So at first I thought it was not necessary. But then I kind of felt responsible cause I was on the "stronger" vehicle and reported it to the police. Unfortunately the old lady is gone. I don't worry to much about my injuries, cause they are not severe (although they hurt). But my front wheel is warped and I probably have to get it fixed from my own money.

I just hope that the old lady will not run red lights in the future and watch out for cyclists too. And hopefully she will not tell bad stories about bicycle rodwys. I still feel a bit sorry though. I don't want to hurt people, even not accidentally.

What's the contra bike lanes argument:

• Most pedestrians are not aware of bike lanes and that there are actually cyclists driving there independently of the car lane - they ignore them, trust their ear (you can hear cars, but not bicycles!) and don't look.