Back on track

What a day! First day after me being sick on the bike again. You must know that I live very close to my work now (only 5 minutes by foot) and don't have to cycle there anymore, so I grap every opportunity to ride my bike to places elsewhere. Today these were, all at once:

• my doctor
• a bike shop
• the Vienna University of Technology to meet a friend

Here's the story:

Setting off at home, I picked up Paula from the basement. There is a huge bike storage room in the house, but there are less stairs from our compartment in the basement to the street than from the bike storage room, so I keep my beloved there for the moment.

I even dressed up today (slightly).	Paula in the basement.

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

More than a Critical Mass of cyclists in Budapest

Last night I attended the Critical Mass in Budapest for the first time. Critical Mass is a world-wide event that usually takes place once a month. Read more about it here. In Budapest, however, the Critical Mass only happens twice a year but they have an amazing number of participants. In spring of 2008 there were about 80.000 citizens cycling on Budapest's streets.

Official Critical Mass logo

This time the event was slightly different, more "radical" meaning without police escort. According to different sources about 10.000 to 20.000 cyclists hit the road. It was amazing to see so many different people. For example, there was a choir in yellow T-shirts. I saw bike messengers as well as sporty riders and everyday cyclists. Among all of them there was us, the participants of the Mobility Week Workshop.

Finish girls on rent bikes at the Critical Mass
Sonja (on the left) will be co-blogging here soon

Neverending mass of cyclists

In the beginning of the evening the city hall was surrounded. Later on the mass started to move slowly. Quite slowly in fact. Traffic rules were obeyed. In the beginning we cycled in a big bulk, but later that split up and small subgroups were cycling through the town. I quite enjoyed that. One could see cyclists everywhere, but didn't have the feeling of being in some boring organized crowd.

In the end, however, everybody again gathered at Deák tér for the obligatory bike lift. I'm quite proud of myself that I could lift my heavy steal-framed bike including accessories :-).

Bike lift at Deák square in the end

For more insight you should read through Greg's impressions (as he is a local) and the website of Critical Mass Hungary.

The day before I met Mikael from Copenhagen Cycle Chic and Copenhagenize.com on a Cycling Lifestyles Workshop organized by the Hungarian Cycle Chic (thanks again to Ádám from the Hungarian Cyclists' Club for the translations to English). So there might be another outsider's view of the Critical Mass on his blogs too.

To finish all this and come back to the title of the post, I wish that Budapest and Hungary in general will see so many people cycling every day. Currently I have the impression that many subcultures exist, but not yet a culture of cycling that addresses everyone. All the best to achieve that!

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UPDATE
See Mikael's video of the Critical Mass in Budapest: Budapest Bike Ride with 20,000 Friends

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

First (and second) time cycling in Budapest

As I already mentioned last week, I'm currently attending a Mobility Week Workshop in Budapest, Hungary. It's a meeting of 30 young Europeans from basically 6 different countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, Hungary, Spain). After exploring the city center and area around the youth hostel Casa de la Musica, we will set different goals and work on how this area could be improved mobility-wise.

My bike impatiently waits for our departure at Wien Südbahnhof

I. (another girl from Vienna) and myself brought our own bikes along. Unfortunately, this is unnecessarily complicated since bike transport is only possible on the slow regional trains. Apart from the longer traveling time (4 rather than 3 hours) this also includes also other disadvantages for cyclists. For example, we had to change trains twice and always drag all our luggage and the bikes up and down the stairs at the stations (no elevators, not even rails on the stairs for wheelchairs – how do disabled people manage that?). Apart from that we didn't arrive at the main station Keleti in Pest but further outside at the Deli station in Buda.

I. at Györ station: changing trains means draging bikes and luggage up and down the stairs

Such things really annoy me. I don't understand why they discourage people to bring along bikes on long distance journeys. I think the EU should really try to work towards a excellent train network that includes possibilities for bike transport. Nowadays it's almost impossible to bring bikes (except folding bikes) on long-distant trains and the situation actually gets worse and worse, at least in and around Austria after the Austrian railway network ÖBB introduced their new Railjet trains that simply don't transport bikes. Such things just make me sad.

So, after all, how is cycling in Budapest? Before we left, we heard all kinds of stories basically saying that cycling in Budapest is very dangerous and that car drivers are aggressive. I must say that I didn't have that impression at all. Of course, there is a lot of car traffic. The roads and lanes are wide and the motorists get priority over everybody else. But cycling in traffic is not so bad. Car drivers leave a lot of space to the side when overtaking and nobody ever honked at us. With all our luggage (both of us had a 50l backpack and a small one) we found our way to the hostel easily and safely. We only had a problem once after we got on a bike path as this one actually lead us away from the Erzsébet bridge rather than onto it. So we ended up carrying our bikes up and down stairs (again) and crossed the Danube on the sidewalk of the bridge. Well, the view was great and we took some nice pictures :-). Though our first cycling trip in Budapest was actually quite pleasant.

Night view from Erzsébet bridge to Buda, Danube and Pest

The next day we cycled through Budapest on rented bikes from Budapestbike in the whole group of 30 people. That way we could see some of the bicycle infrastructure in the city. There is not much and of course there are many improvements that could be made. Compared to Vienna, however, I quite enjoyed that the bike lanes on the road are so wide here and even have an empty space between the parked cars (absolutely necessary and should be standard anyhow, but Viennese planners apparently don't believe in "dooring"). I didn't like the segregated two-way bike paths so much as they are quite narrow and not so visible from the car lanes (always problems with cars turning right that only see cyclists at the last moment). Still, I liked their clear and straight design and that they had a center line. At some places the surface was quite rough though. Very often the bike lanes are painted red at junctions, but the color already faded away.

Cycling in Budapest: cycling in traffic, on a bike lane and a two-way bike path

What I really miss here are one way streets with contraflow cycling traffic. That is something that works very well in Vienna and that really safes me a lot of time in everyday life. They do try to implement such things here too. As mentioned in one of the talks, they also have one advanced stop lane for cyclists (meaning that cyclists can stop in front of the first row of cars at traffic lights, also referred to as 'bike box') and so-called suggested cycle lanes (simply bike pictograms on the road with no real bike infrastructure – I reckon that they are much more efficient than small signs beside the road saying that this is a bike route, as these are not really seen by car drivers).

Concerning bike infrastructure (and generally traffic and spatial planning), Budapest still has a long way to go, but cycling is possible and safe if one is cautious. Cycling, however, is certainly not pleasant here. Still, cyclists in Budapest already represent 3-5% of the modal split which is quite similar to Vienna (as far as I know we have 5% cyclists, but already 8% in the “summer months”), and the numbers are continuously increasing.

More about other aspects of traffic in Budapest and a flashmob by “radical pedestrians” at the Blaha Lujza square in the next post. Stay tuned.

Information of the whole idea and activities in the Mobility Week Workshop on the official website: mobilityweekbudapest.eu. Have a look at the project diary.

What's up in Hungary?

Although Hungary is Austria's neighboring country and partner in crime in historical terms (I'm sure you heard about the k.u.k. monarchy), I must admit that I have not been there very often. I remember a rather long visit to Budapest in the early 90s, but apart from that I have only passed trough it a couple of times on my way to the Balkans.

But finally I will pay Hungary a proper visit again. It's all due to the Mobility Week launched in Budapest from 16th to 23rd of September 2009, organized by the Hungarian Cyclists' Club. There will be an international workshop on urban mobility and cityscapes. If you're interested, read more about it on their homepage or at the IG Fahrrad homepage (in German). The project description says:

"The objective of the project is to go over the common and alternative forms of city-scale public and individual means of transport and urban land use along with their ability to remodel the cityscape in negative as well as positive ways. We would like to show directly and clearly, that the direction of these future changes strongly depends on our present attitudes."

Although it was a bit unclear in the beginning, I hope now that I can attend all week, meet nice people and have interesting discussions. Greg Spencer from the Cycling Solution Blog already told me that he will be there and give a talk on the 16th. And seemingly Mikael Colville-Andersen from Copenhagenize.com und Copenhagen Cycle Chic should be there too.

Apart from that, Greg also informed me about the problems they have with the City Hall concerning the Margit bridge renovation in Budapest. Apparently, the orginal costs of 47 Mio. € increased to 77 Mio. €, why they now want to delete a bike path from the project. However, the EU subsides the project with 22 Mio. € including the bike path and there will hopefully be some protests coming from that side now. For more details see Greg's post.