Watching the new neighborhood from above

I am sick these days and stuck in my house with a bad internet connection. So what should I do in a half-furnished flat apart from lying in bed? Well, let's have a look outside the window:

Winter cycling

This year has been snowy and cold everywhere in Europe. I've heard news of snow in Spain and Italy, and Austria received first snow before Turku, Finland. Actually, we don't always get a good snowy and cold winter here either. A couple of years ago there was no termic winter (temperature drops permanently below zero) here at all, but that was exceptional. I have never experienced such a poor winter before, and it really sucked. However, this year has been delightfully snowy and cold, we received permanent snow cover a few weeks back, earlier than usually (I have to mention that in Turku the statistical average for that is in the Christmas Eve :D). So, considering my little winter cycling experiment, the conditions have been ideal. Apart from the raging blizzard outside as I'm writing this.

In the middle: walking on frozen Kallavesi lake, Kuopio; other images: modifications for the winter

COP15 and cycling

COP15, the Copenhagen climate change conference, is trying to find appropriate mitigation and adaptation goals and strategies against climate change. Cycling is a carbon-efficient means of transport that in many cases presents a true alternative to driving a car. Let's take a look at how cycling has been showing in the first week of Copenhagen climate negotiations.

Denmark is a country of utility cycling, which can be an inspiration to both the conference participants and internationally. In Copenhagen, 1/3 of commuters cycle to work or school, but the city goal is even higher. Copenhagen is aiming at becoming the cycling capital of the world and hopes to achieve the cycling commuter rate of 1/2 by 2015. That city knows how to set a positive example!

Suburbanization and cycling

Suburban sprawl by David Shankbone 2008

As you may know, I am a geography student, so why not utilize my education? Forgive me if I'm dry, I'll try to be at least informative :)

There are 2 types of suburbanization: British and American. Both mean that people desire to live outside the city center. The British suburbanized in the 19^th century by developing public transit system. The American way was to get to the suburbs by private automobile, which also enables the low density population structure and urban sprawl. Nowadays there the both suburbanization types occur in Europe too. The American type has proved to be particularly detrimental for cycling, because the distances are too long and often the necessary and safe light traffic infrastructure does not exist.

Low density housing in America pretty much destroyed community walkability and light traffic infrastructure, but in those European towns that have managed to invest in cyclist friendly infrastructure the cyclist rates are still very high (Follman 2007). The examples of 20^th century Amsterdam and Copenhagen prove this point but they also show that it is possible to reverse this development and break the connection between suburbanization and lower cycling rates.

In the 1^st half of the 20^th century up to 75% of trips in Amsterdam were done by bike. 75 percent! After the second world war cars took over Amsterdam and the city expanded. This obviously had a massive effect on cycling, and the cycling rate dropped to the all time low of 25% in Amsterdam and 10% in Copenhagen by the 70s. How ever, the city road capacity couldn't handle many cars and the oil crises forced the government to think of measures to decrease oil dependency, so they began aggressively promoting cycling among other things by investing in bicycling infrastructure and enhancing cyclist priority in traffic. They succeeded and nowadays the cities have 35-40% bike trip share. That is impressive! Nowadays the cities are known for their cyclist friendliness and are among the safest cycling cities of the world (Jacobson 2009).

So, usually suburbanization and cycling decline go hand-in-hand, but it does not have to be that way. Suburbanization can also promote cycling if the suburb is not too far, but that would be on the expense of pedestrians or public transit, not cars. It is better to reign in the (mostly the American type) suburbanization a bit by supporting strong city centers and restricting suburban mall-building. E.g Muenster has some positive experiences of that strategy (Pucher and Buehler 2007).

Turku has both American and European type suburbs. Less than half of the households on the closer and denser (British type) suburbs have cars, but 70% of the more distant ones have at least one. The highest cyclist rates coming to the center of the city are from the closer suburb area. Surprisingly the cyclists are not coming to the grid plan center as often as the average cycling rate (11,5% of all trips) suggests. From the more distant “American type” suburbs almost no-one bothers to ride a bike to the center (numbers are from Turku Bustrip self-assessment report 2006, in Finnish).

So, it looks like these suburb theories do fit pretty well on my town. How about you, do you have any theories about the connection of suburbanization and cycling or would you like to share your experience? Is this kinda stuff too boring for you or do you wanna hear more of my academic brain farts?

P.S. Here's a video about the solution to the problems presented by urban sprawl (which is not the same as suburbanization, but closely related to the American type)

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

Cyclists' Turku

Hi everyone! My name is Sonja and I'm a 4th year geography student in the University of Turku. I am a regular cyclist, not for fun, statement or sport, but simply for transportation. Safe cycling should be everybody's right because it is efficient, environmentally friendly and good for you!

I met anna in Budapest Mobility Week Workshop. She was one of my roommates, and I greatly enjoyed her company and ideas. She asked me to write something on her blog, so if you are interested, I'll be writing here every now and then. Here's a short introduction to my city:

Turku is a city of 175'000 people (300'000 at the agglomeration) located at the south western coast of Finland. I have lived there for 6 and a half years, and almost always used cycling as my primary means of transportation. In 1997 11.5 % of all trips were made by bike and half by car, the rest by public transit and walking. There is a separated bike lane network centered at the city center so it is easily accessible by bike. Most of cultural, economical and educational activities also take place at the center, so it is a city with an active core, although suburbanization is an increasing trend. There is also a rather functional market square-centered public transportation system, but you are not allowed to take your bike into the buses. There are lots of bike racks everywhere in the city. 45% of households don't own a car, but most of these households are singles living on their own, like me :). Most of us go around by bike, bus or walking.

The market square

I'm happy to say, that Turku has a good reputation as a cyclist friendly city. There are many functional bike lanes, and most of the motorists respect cyclists and bike lanes. Cycling is rather safe, and in the last 20 years the share and amount of bike accidents has decreased. Also, for bike tourists Turku is a nice base town. There are ring roads that leave from Turku or nearby towns to the Archipelago of Turku, which is a famous holiday destination for cyclists.

My friend Heidi Heinonen riding Föri, a light traffic ferry, accross the river with our bikes

However, despite of the great plans of the city to build new bike lanes and promote cycling, nothing new is happening. The city fathers don't seem to care too much about developing the city light traffic. There are issues with the accessibility of some bike lanes and the safety of some crossroads. Also, increasing area of the city is getting car dependent because of suburbanization. Some in the neighboring municipalities are not easily accessible by public transit and are too far to cycle from. The system in Turku is not as good as e.g. in Netherlands, but it is better than in Budapest, Hungary, or Thunder Bay, Canada.

Thank you for your interest and thanks for the opportunity, anna!

P.S. If you have something specific that you want to hear about, please let me know.

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?

An incomplete field study in East Tyrol

I have some relatives in East Tyrol (Osttirol, in German) that I visited for a few days. East Tyrol in the very south of Austria, bordering Italy. To the capital Lienz one can get in a reasonable time from Vienna, but in the rest of East Tyrol it's basically impossible to move around without a car. Well, there is a regional train operating between Lienz and San Candido (in Italy, called Innichen in German), but it's very slow and only connects a few towns. Due to bicycle tourism it runs more often in the summer and it's also fairly easy to bring along bikes. On the other hand, there are no more buses (except school buses), not even taxis, in most of the rural areas although the population is constantly growing.

Due to wide spread settlement it is difficult to operate a good public transport system

My grandma is lucky because she can still walk to the town center on her own and has my cousin looking after her, but for most of the old and young people in East Tyrol living there means heavily depending on people that are entitled and capable to drive a car. Must be very depressing to feel so locked in. My grandma only realized that when my granddad died, who used to drive her around.

Most families own more than one car. The scenery is nice, but they pay a high price for living in houses far away from centers. Strange enough there are also many who choose to live so car-dependent: many build their houses further and further away from basic infrastructure (such that they can't even get a liter of milk without getting in the car) and accept long commutes to work. Bicycles are rarely used on a day-to-day basis.

Cyclist waiting to cross the main road through East Tyrol. Did he go shopping at the petrol station?

However, in the summer one can see many tourists cycling in East Tyrol. Most of them cycle downstream along the Drava cycle path and look like that they only touch a bicycle for one or two weeks in the summer. I'm not really into that type of cycling and I also don't want to promote it (as this is done extensively already), but as part of a field study this is certainly worth mentioning.

Yesterday I read in a newspaper that the city of Lienz supports the purchase of E-bikes by paying 10% (max. 150 €, altogether spends 10.000 €). This is of course a nice gesture and brings bicycles as daily means of transport back into peoples' minds, but similarly to the scraping bonus in Vienna it won't be enough. What cyclists really need is a reasonable infrastructure (e.g. safe bicycle parking in front of shops, restaurants, schools etc.) and bicycle friendly traffic planning and politics. I wasn't particularly looking for it, but I couldn't see any bike path or bike lane in Lienz. And I also couldn't see many cyclists, except road cyclists and tourists. They still have a long way to go, but I wish them good luck in increasing the number of everyday cyclists.

A quiet weekend

Today I finally got a second-hand carrier for my bike (maff had a spare one). Immediately I bought one of these cool expanders that I once saw in the Netherlands. Not many bikes have them here, but they are really practical. The next investment (apart from a new urban bike) will probably be one of those cool Basil Mirte shopper bike bags. Well, I also had a look for a new bike, but today I saw nothing eye-catching.

1. my bike with the new carrier 2. other stuff I bought (bike oil, cleaning spray, repair kit, inner tube) 3. Basil Mirte bag

I also bought the Falter (an Austrian weekly newspaper) cause their top story is "The future of the automobile -- about the deep crisis of a former status symbol". The main article can be read online here (in German). It also contains some interesting information about how the USA lost their public railway system by e.g. replacing trams by buses (that's what they say happened in Los Angeles massively). Apparently not everybody in the USA believes the story around Bradford Snell's report and some people simply call it a conspiracy theory. Well, I'm not really an expert on that, but I tend to believe what the Falter says cause it's a very serious newspaper. But they also claim that cars probably would also have ruled the world without GM destroying the public transport system in the USA. What do you know about it?

But well, it also happened in Europe that many tram lines were closed in the first half of the last century and are only rebuilt now, e.g. in Dublin, Barcelona and many other major cities. Unfortunately, it takes much longer for good things to come back then it took to destroy them. But at least they come back :-).

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!

Velos and public transport in Switzerland -- a perfect synergy

Last summer I worked in Zürich, Switzerland. Of course, I took the train to get there (from Vienna to Zürich there are three direct connections each day, it takes about 9 hours) and of course I took my bike with me :-). Unfortunately, I couldn't use the night train, cause one is not allowed to bring a bike there. I also couldn't bring my bike on the first train in the morning, cause that was already booked out for bicycles more than one month before my travel. Luckily on the last train there was still some space available for my bike. The bicycle transport is quite cheap -- only 12€ for one way. On the way back I shipped it via rail cargo which was a bit more expensive -- 30 CHF (~20€).

In Austria, the new highspeed trains (the so-called ÖBB railjets) don't carry bikes at all. Actually that's against a guideline by the EU, but they don't care. Read more about it in an Austrian newspaper or on Radlobby.at (both in German). Moreover, in most other trains it's also either forbidden or complicated to transport bikes.

In Vienna, you're allowed to bring your bike in the subway at certain hours (not in the rush hour) for the cost of a half-fare ticket. Bicycles are completely forbidden in trams and buses though.

In Switzerland, public transport is great. I absolutely love it and I could talk about it for hours ;-). But I will focus on the bike-related stuff for the moment: bicycle transport in buses, trams and trains (mostly also on boats and funiculars) is allowed, cheap and easy. On the SBB website (Swiss national railway company) they also promote the transportation of bikes as hand-luggage in special bags ("Velotragetasche" in German), which in particular is free of charge and always possible.

When I lived in Switzerland, I thought about buying one of those bags, but in the end I didn't cause they are quite expensive (100-150 CHF) and because I'm probably not allowed to use it in Austria. If you're interested, you can download a review in the Velojournal here (in German, 2005).

But there are also other easy ways to transport bikes, e.g. the "Veloselbstverlad" in trains (for loading and unloading at the luggage vans no conductor is needed). Besides you can rent bikes for free in all major cities (but only for one day) and almost everywhere with Rent a Bike. Have a look at the map regarding self-service loading and bike rental.

Public transport and biking go quite well together in Switzerland and I think it deserves to be a role model.

Day trip to Bratislava

Yesterday Anna and I were in Bratislava. We got there by train from Vienna South Station within 1 hour travelling time to Bratislava – Petrizalka. There is an EURegio – Ticket including roundtrip, public transport in Bratislava (which is very nice, because the Petrizalka station is far off the center), and also bicycle transportation. The ticket costs 14 EUR, which is quite cheap. On the other hand, one could go there by bike. Bratislava is only 60 km away from Vienna which is a nice distance for a recreational ride along the Danube/EuroVelo Route 6.

First thing I noticed in Bratislava was the absence of bicycles. There are no parked cycles, hardly any bike racks, and only a small number of riders although the weather was very nice and warm. Bike lanes seem to be available only in places where it would be impossible to ride otherwise, like the bridges over the Danube. For the most part the old town is a pedestrian area. I don't know if riding a bike is allowed there, but since the streets are paved with cobblestone, it wouldn't be very comfortable.

In the afternoon we watched some trial bikers fooling around at a wall. Anna took some pictures.