There are two variants of “Bikeshopper“: a “Bikeshopper” delivering to people at home and a “Bikeshopper” serving offices and other institutions.

A volunteer (child or adult) receives shopping lists by e-mail or phone from different persons in a village or urban settlement. To handle the complete food shopping process, the cyclist takes the collected shopping lists and drives to the nearest grocery store at a specific time each day (once or twice daily).
The cyclist himself/herself receives a 10% price discount on his/her own shopping from the grocery. With a big bicycle basket or backpack, the cyclist is able to store the whole shopping for all clients and then drives to them to distribute the purchases. The cyclist first pays at the store and is then paid by the clients for their individual shopping when he/she returns with the products ordered. At the same time, the cyclist is able to earn some extra money from the clients.

Cyclists can also deliver food or snacks to offices and other institutions during lunchtime. The employees order the food they want by e-mail or phone in the morning from Monday to Friday, and the cyclists come to their offices with the food at noon.

Authors:
Julia Kopitschek, Irnfritz (Austria) and Julia Simon, Mollram (Austria)

This Cycling Story was made possible by our sponsor Wiener Städtische Versicherung:

“Health, activity, mobility and climate protection are important concerns for Wiener Städtische Versicherung.
We are delighted to support Velo-city 2013 – the biggest cycling conference worldwide –
and to sponsor three extraordinary Cycling Stories.”

Dr. Judit Havasi
Member of the Managing Board of Wiener Städtische Versicherung

When Belgian Bas de Geus gets on his bike to commute to work in the morning, he knows why. “Not riding a bike is actually dangerous for your health”, he says, and he is being serious. Bas has good reason to believe he’s right. At the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, where he is a professor of physical education and physical therapy, Bas has been doing systematic research about health risks and cycling. “We all need that daily dose of movement”, Bas explains, “and cycling is a perfect ‘vehicle’ to get it.” On the other hand, nobody wants to inhale the exhaust gases of buses and cars while riding a bike in the city. The question is how to weigh the positive and negative health benefits of cycling. After all, many people are concerned about their health when they get on a bike. Bas has been able show that it is indeed good for your health to cycle more often. But how to convince people to actually do so is another matter.

To find out why people cycle, apart from the obvious health benefits, is Peter Cox’s job. As a social scientist, he teaches and leads research about the processes of social change that cycling advocacy is part of. “A lot of studies about cycling have appeared over the last decade”, Peter says. He wants to show how these can help policymakers work with the great diversity of cyclists and cycling cultures.
Peter is excited about the potential that social sciences have in boosting cycling. “Social sciences have the capacity to help us understand and inform the processes of change that will bring about the doubling of cycling in Europe.”

Still, cycling needs appropriate infrastructure, says John Parkin, professor of transport engineering at London South Bank University. John is concerned about questions such as differences between the perceived and the actual risk of cycling. His research also focuses on segregation, the separation of road users to make them safer. He notes that ‘segregation’ has a number of different degrees. “Segregation can protect users, but it can also limit the users’ freedoms”, John explains.
But questions remain. What does segregation really mean? What methods of segregation do exist? When should you segregate? John’s work deals with emerging practices of semi-segregation as well as with priority at junctions. He is trying to find out whether it’s better to keep motor traffic separate from cycle traffic or to mix them.

The three researchers work together as part of the European Cyclists’ Foundation’s (ECF) Scientists for Cycling network. This large group of researchers and teachers from all over the world was launched in 2010 and aims to bring together experts from different disciplines engaged in research on cycling.
ECF president Manfred Neun explains how important it is to have such a network. “Research, research plans and scientific publications on cycling or cycling-related matters are often not sufficiently connected to other scientists”, he says. ECF hopes that Scientists for Cycling may help to bridge this gap.

Along with other researchers, Bas de Geus, Peter Cox and John Parkin will present their research at the annual conference of the network, which will be held on 10 June 2013 in Vienna. The subject of the meeting is: “How to double cycling in Europe?” That, to be sure, is a question that only first-class scientists will be able to answer.

Further information and registration for the annual meeting 2013 of ECF’s Scientists for Cycling network.

How can policy makers in developing countries tackle challenges such as urban poverty, access to economic opportunity or equitable access to transport?
Current mainstream development theory seems to suggest that if countries want economic development, then they need roads. And, a lot of them. A view still shared by many politicians and experts shaping development policies throughout the globe. Of course, to be mobile means to have better access to markets and work opportunities so improved mobility of a countries population can catalyse economic development. The question is which model for mobility do the development policies follow?
Flick for example through Tony Blair’s 2005 report on the Commission for Africa, you’ll read that Africa must “double infrastructure spending” citing approximately €20 billion for rural roads and regional highways. But, is paving hundreds of kilometres of highways through rural areas in Africa the right strategy to achieve prosperity and (sustainable) development?
“Our attitude to development is that more asphalt, more highways, more cars will mean that our country is developing,” says Mr. Chidoka, who heads Nigeria’s Federal Road Safety Corps. But the question is rather the quality of such development.
“You get to the point where you see what others are done, and you realize that that’s not the way to go,” Chidoka adds. We believe that Mister Chidoka is right:
Globally speaking, car centric policy comes at a huge social cost: more than a million people die on roads every year, and another 50 million are injured. Air pollution is at least equally dangerous, with the WHO reporting 1.3 million deaths per year caused by bad air. Road accidents actually kill more people than Malaria, and it’s expected that by 2030, it will be even surpass HIV/AIDs.
Perhaps you could argue for keeping our current car-oriented development polices, if we actually moved a little quicker, but the average speed of traffic is similar to the days of horse and cart. (Let’s not forget that OECD countries see 3% of GDP thrown away in traffic jams.)

  
Learning from the West’s mistakes in favoring a car-oriented development model could save decades of headaches for rapidly developing countries in Africa or Asia.
“We need to fast-track our understanding that we have limited resources, and we need to maximize their use. We need to find cheap effective means of transport,” explains Chidoka, who believes that a mere focus on more cars, and more highways may well not be the best answer.

Cycling: It Makes Economic Sense.
Cycling as the most equitable form of urban transport can move more people at a lower cost. In Africa, where money for transport can be scarce, cycling makes economic sense.
“In Denmark $ 170 million worth of infrastructure investment gets you one kilometre of metro,” says Chidoka. But “many African countries can’t afford Metro” he adds.
The same can be said for road infrastructure. It’s frightfully expensive to invest in auto-mobility. Chidoka feels that globalization has meant Nigerians travelling abroad who have seen top quality infrastructure, and want their country to have the same. Yet who would pay for it?
“If you want to have world class highways, you have to put the money into it. I gave the example, of Israel. With a very small land area, it spends about $5 billion every year on roads. Nigeria spends less than $1 billion dollars in ten years,” explains Chidoka.
“We don’t have the resources to have the kind of infrastructure that is in place in the West. It doesn’t exist,” he adds. So where is the leverage for countries with limited budgets to develop meaningful and effective policies for development and provision of mobility?
This is where bicycle infrastructure could represent serious value for money. For the cost of one kilometre of urban freeway you could build 150km of bicycle paths, 10,000km of bicycle lanes or 100 well designed 30kmph zones. In Africa, a two metre wide unpaved bicycle trail would cost less than 10% of building a 6 metre wide rural road for motor vehicles.

Changing Perceptions
Ma Nuo, a 22 year old woman from Beijing on a dating show made global headlines a few years ago when she said: “I’d rather cry in the back of your BMW than laugh on the back of your bicycle”.
People working to lobby for bicycle-supportive policies in Africa, Asia and even parts of Europe still have to tackle such backward images of bicycle use. Cars are a still a symbol of wealth, while cycling is often regulated to the status of poverty, child’s play or physical exercise. Nigeria, like many countries in Africa, struggles to have cycling considered as viable form of transport for the urban elite.
Mister Chidoka’s organisation – the Federal Road Safety Corps of Nigeria – is going ways which are at pace with promotion strategies for urban cycling in Europe or the US. “We’re trying to change that perception. Trying to make people see that it’s about choice, it’s about freedom, it’s about equity and it’s about mobility.” Says Chidoka about the rationale behind his organisation’s cycling promotion activities.
Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city desperately needs more people in the saddle of a bicycle. With an estimated population of 14 million, Lagos is currently one of the fastest growing cities on the African continent. Yet, 2 million vehicles crammed into a small area have grounded traffic to a halt in the city. According to Chidoka, the average daily commute in Lagos takes more than two hours each way. In this metropolis however, government officials are starting to take steps to change attitudes.
“The government of Lagos is trying to introduce a bicycle culture,” says Chidoka. He explains that “they’re thinking about having a day for bicycle in the city centre only. The Commissioners and the Governors have been trying to ride bicycles to promote it as a form of movement.”
Undoubtedly, it’s going to take time for change, yet more cycling in Africa’s most populous nation could be a beacon for change, not only in Africa, but worldwide. We wish that Velo-city 2013 can be a venue for exchange of successful and innovative strategies to make important and ambitious goals of for example the administration of Lagos a reality.
To conclude this article we want to make one thing very clear: We see urban cycling and the bicycle as a smart and highly potential tool for city-making and the creation of sustainable development policies. Just as the developed world increasingly realizes that the car-oriented model might not be the smartest solution for our society, the developed world might take the chance to not run into the trap of the car-oriented development model but rather use the potentials of the bicycle for the benefit of their peoples. With the professional exchange during Velo-city 2013 in Vienna we aim to facilitate such a process.

Many thanks to Mister Chidoka for the interview.

Velo-city 2013 Vienna | Cycling Stories
Authors:

Julian Ferguson – European Cyclists’ Federation

Florian Lorenz – Velo-city 2013 Communications Team

Cycling empowerment in Vienna – Cycling schools and cycling courses
Cycling is not only a leisure pastime but an everyday mobility form. To be able to make use of this-self-determined mobility, it is necessary to learn about cycling techniques, traffic rules and correct behaviour. And all this must be backed up by a pleasurable experience of movement and self-confidence to be able to hold one’s own on the street. The existing range of cycling schools and courses focus their services on children and adults, individuals, parents with children, groups, run-of-the-mill cyclists and athletes, newbies, veterans returning to the saddle as well as people who simply want to learn more about cycling.

“There is a manifest demand for people to develop a sense of responsibility for themselves and the traffic situation they find themselves in, and to understand that observing the Traffic Code is necessary but not sufficient to ensure smooth and skilful city cycling.” – Bernhard Dorfmann, City Cycling School Vienna

What is taught at cycling schools?
Cycling techniques, traffic rules and cycling behaviour are taught with a special focus on each individual participant group. In general, traffic safety is a priority concern.

Moreover, other factors are communicated, such as self-confidence in claiming and occupying road space and avoiding to be pushed to the edge of the street. Cognitive skills are trained to enable participants to absorb and simultaneously process the numerous sensory impressions typical of urban traffic situations. At the same time, health-related and ecological aspects as well as personal quality of life are addressed – cycling can be more than just a means of transport. Children taking part in group courses develop a strong sense of solidarity through joint learning and excursions. Smooth co-operation and co-existence in the streetscape with its myriad facets calls for a variety of skills and knowledge, which is taught in many different ways in the courses.

How are these skills taught?
The range of methods is varied and customised to react to participants. Cycling is tried out the first time in a protected environment – initially on push scooters, followed by the first short ride on a real bicycle. The City Cycling School also provides accompaniment for participants planning on travelling to and from work by bike, thus offering assistance regarding routes, biking techniques and similar questions, until the person feels safe to undertake the ride on his or her own.

The same experience is available for children wishing to learn how to travel to and from school. But children ride through the city not only on their own, but in groups or entire forms as well. The association Schulterblick assists up to 700 youngsters annually with city cycling courses – although the demand voiced by schools exceeds the capacity. To make sure that kids can also travel safely in their spare time, special joint cycling courses are held for parents and children travelling together.

Depending on a person’s skill level, courses are taught in various traffic settings. Beginners start out on parking lots until they acquire the basics of cycling. Then they are ready to face traffic, which they do first on quiet streets until they feel safe in travelling across the entire city.

The pilot project “BisikleteBinelim“, a co-operation of the cycling lobby IGF and the women’s integration association “Piramidops”, offers specially designed cycling courses for migrant women. With professional instruction and in a protected environment – which means that all participants and instructors of these courses are female –, women can learn something that was barred to them in their countries of origin.

“I’d have never thought that I could ever learn to ride a bicycle. I feel so light and so strong; finally, I can go on biking trips together with my husband and children.” – A participant of the “BisikleteBinelim – RaufAufsRad“ course organised by the cycling lobby IGF.

What about the future? Objectives, requests, plans?
“Since March of last year, interest has been noticeably increasing.” says Giles Ross from the cycling school Giles and Robert Fuchs from the association Schulterblick adds that  “the demand by schools significantly outweighs supply.”
It is evident that demand for the wide variety of courses is strong. The organisers above all wish that decision-makers, who can offer financial support, would catch up with this demand. And they do see the important role for cycling empowerment in successfully promoting sustainable mobility and the potentials lying therein as Robert Fuchs puts forward that “if we’re smart about it, Vienna could play a pioneering role in the switch to environment- and child-friendly mobility.”

However, the course directors not only wish to expand their range of offerings. For example, Giles Ross would like “that children’s bicycles were not longer produced like cheap toys but as serious, safe means of locomotion.”
Bernhard Dorfmann, head of City Cycling School, wants to strengthen confidence and safety in traffic by understanding and teaching traffic situations in their full complexity. The different road users do not compete with each other. Driving schools could e.g. include the perspective of cyclists in their curricula and enter into co-operation with cycling schools towards this purpose. With regard to the courses for migrant women, Ms. Debenjak from the IGF cycling lobby spots one problem in the fact that her course participants do not own bicycles and would want them to have access to a simple and uncomplicated way of renting bikes.

We want to thank all participants in the interviews for this cycling story for their valuable thoughts and for providing us with such encouraging images. May Velo-city 2013 be a catalyst for pushing forward the efforts in cycling empowerment in Vienna! We wish our interview partners all the best for their valuable work.

Read more about cycling empowerment via these websites:
Vienna:
Association Schulterblick – The Viennese cycling school
City Cycling School – The cycling school in Vienna
Cycling Lobby IGF – FahrSicherRad
Giles – Cycling with children starting from 2,5 years.
New York:
Recycle-a-bicycle

Velo-city 2013 Vienna | Cycling Stories
Author:
Claudia Sacher
Velo-city 2013 Communications Team

Citybike Wien (CBW) makes it easy to spontaneously decide to go by bicycle even if you didn’t bring your own. Usually, when you rent a bicycle, you are bound by opening hours and have to return it at the same place where you borrowed it – and often pay a hefty fee as well. All this is different with CBW, where you can rent and return bicycles 24 hours a day at any of 102 terminals spread out all over the (inner) city of Vienna. In 2013, Citybike Wien celebrates its 10th birthday; the first stations were opened in May 2003.

The first bike-sharing systems were Amsterdam’s ‘white bikes’ in 1965; unused bikes were collected, painted white and distributed throughout the city without locks so that everybody could use them. This, however, was more a political action than a long-lasting system. The second-generation bike-sharing systems drew on specially fabricated bicycles which could be used within marked inner-city areas and unlocked with a coin. The ‘Viennabike’, a 2002 precursor project of Citybike Wien, is an example of this. It followed a model from Copenhagen yet lasted only for a few months in Vienna. Since there was no user registration, nobody could be held responsible for the borrowed bicycles, many of which disappeared or were broken. This led to the development of a system with user registration, the third generation of bike-sharing systems.

Despite the failure (or, rather, the experiment) of ‘Viennabike’, the positive public reaction also showed that the city’s population liked the idea of a bike-sharing system. Within just a few months, terminals were developed where people can register with cards almost everyone owns: an international credit card or an Austrian Maestro card. At first, the terminals didn’t work very well, but frequent user feedback helped to eliminate bugs. This system safeguards that bikes will not be stolen because the users’ bank details are already known, and a fee of Euro 600 will be charged if a bicycle is not returned.

Citybike Wien started out with twelve stations in 2003; as of March 2013, there are 102 stations with about 1,200 bicycles in operation. Not only the number of stations and bicycles is on the rise but the number of registered users as well, attaining a total of 401,000 in 2012. The amount of kilometres travelled per year equalled a record of 2.3 million in 2012. Therefore Citybike Wien is a part of the increase in sustainable mobility in Vienna by significantly raising the share of distances travelled by bicycle.

An important aspect of Citybike Wien is that it is mostly free, which makes the system an easily accessible complement to public transport. Registration costs only one Euro. The first hour of every ride is free of charge, and 95% of trips do not exceed this time limit. The average usage time is 22 minutes; the most frequent, between 10 and 12 minutes. This goes to show that bikes are mostly used for short distances but also that they are a fast way to navigate through the city. Longer usage comes at the slight cost of one Euro for the second hour, two Euros for the third, and four Euros for every consecutive additional hour. Registration and rental can all be carried out directly at any terminal. Moreover, all terminals show the availability of bikes and free boxes for return on an interactive city map, which can also be found on the Internet. Furthermore, apps for various smartphones have been developed. The map has also been incorporated into online bike routing systems that tell you how to best ride from one station to another. Its availability at important public transport hubs allows for good intermodal connections. Overall, this is a quick and user-friendly system that the Velo-City team also utilises frequently.

The enterprise behind Citybike Wien is Gewista, a formerly municipally owned media company that has been privatised. It started the bike-sharing system with the first 50 stations and employs the team. Further expansion aimed at setting up new terminals is currently underway with the support of the Vienna City Administration. Gewista is part of the French corporation JCDecaux, which through its Cyclocity line has implemented similar systems in 67 cities across the world. Sponsors, who can see their logos actively moving around the city, cover the majority of the costs.

The CBW team, who maintain the bicycles as well as the IT system, consists of 18 people, many of whom were formerly working as bicycle couriers or active in bicycle self-repair workshops. The whole system is very mobile, based on a web app: notifications of technical malfunctions, broken bicycles, full or empty stations are sent to smartphones. Up to three citybikes can be transported with a self-built bicycle trailer. Of course, the technicians have work bicycles to move from station to station quickly and comfortably. Sometimes it is necessary to redistribute a larger amount of bicycles throughout the city; in this case, a car with a trailer for twenty bicycles is used.

In December 2012, JCDecaux’ Vélib’ in Paris won the Financial Times/Citi ‘Ingenuity Award’ in the infrastructure category. Citybike Wien was the forerunner of the Parisian system, which opened with 750 stations in 2007 and since then has grown to almost 1,500 with over 20,000 bicycles, therefore making it by far the largest of its kind in Europe. Other operators have adopted this strategy, and every year more cities are implementing bike-sharing systems. The biggest to date is Hangzhou Public Bicycle in Hangzhou, China, with more than 66,000 bicycles and distances between stations of only 100 metres.

Citybike Wien has an agreement with the City of Vienna to enlarge the network to 120 stations by 2015, while the management of CBW is aiming for the same goal already at the start of Velo-city in June 2013. The two key objectives are (i) further expansion and (ii) densification in inner-city districts. The first not only poses the challenge of longer distances but also of covering more hilly terrain; as a result, citybikes are often used for one direction only and then have to be transferred back by CBW personnel for the next day. The second will increase bike use by offering closer proximity to places where users want to go. In a recent online survey by the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation ORF, 77% of respondents stated that they would welcome an expansion of the network.

The participants of Velo-city will have the opportunity to ride a Citybike and thus to discover Vienna on two wheels. At this point it is also fair to state that some members of the Velo-city 2013 Communications Team are occasional ‘power users’ of Vienna’s Citybike. Yes, it is easy to use!

Find more information about Citybike Vienna on their website (in German).

Author:
Samuel Felbermair
Velo-city 2013 Communications Team

As a central project partner, the city municipality allocated a central location, as busy as it is attractive, for the Bike Base at the junction of the city’s internal ring and the northern gateway Dunajska cesta. (It’s more than an interesting coincidence that Dunajska cesta means “Vienna Road” in Slovene.). Click the image below to see the location dedicated for the Bike Base.

Competition winners
On 28 March, the organisers announced the winners of the Trimo Urban Crash 2013 competition. The overall winners are Manus Leung from the Faculty of the Built Environment at the University of New South Wales (Australia) and Kacper Krywult from the Faculty of Architecture at Warsaw University of Technology (Poland). Their project with the competition entry name SHIFT received the highest number of points based on the combined decision of the expert jury together with the public vote (at www.trimo-urbancrash.com) for their Bike Base concept. The jury commented on the project, “Somewhat self-orientated and dislocated, the so-called ‘country house’ inside a city brings an awareness of city greenery to the table. It does not act as a ‘quick stop’ but invites you inside to stop and relax and feel like being in a hamlet in what is a highly urbanised area. The project has also the attractive potential of revitalising the park area. The offshore park has the potential to acquire extreme popularity.”
The winners also responded to the competition demand to make the project a simple, yet sophisticated design that would allow the methodology to be incorporated into various bicycle-friendly cities all over the world with only minimal adjustment.

This solution still allows the building to maintain its primary concept as well as a direct relationship to its surrounding context, making it site-specific and unique in every situation. The shipping container construction makes it easy to set up, disassemble and replace. As a result, it embodies the idea of a universal building with a touch of local context.
The story of Manus and Kacper is interesting for itself, as they became friends two years ago during their time as exchange students in Stockholm (Sweden). Manus decided as early as in 2011 to participate in Trimo Urban Crash 2013. He invited his friend Kacper to team up, and with the help of the Internet technology – Skype and e-mail – they managed to win the competition while being at a distance of 10,000 miles from each other.

Second place & jury winner
The overall second place went to the winner of the jury vote, a combined group of German and Spanish students: Jorge Lopez Sacristan, Christina Codjambopoulo, Beatriz Gomez Martin and Sara Rebollo from the Cologne University of Applied Sciences, with their mentor Professor Eva-Maria Pape. Their project with the competition entry name JCSB0 was awarded the highest number of points by the expert jury, who comment on the project, “.. the facility solves and interconnects two entities: a public and a private space. The project is not self- or auto-oriented and, idea-wise, adds much more to the location than it takes away. In a site that does not yet display a particular urban quality, a fluid yet optimistic project can provide a very significant social contribution. This very intelligent project does not need an extensive amount of investment to be realised.”

Third place & public vote winner
The public vote winner and third overall place goes to a group of students: Ignacio Chavero García, Roberto Baños Pantoja and Alvaro Borrego Plata from ETSA Seville, Spain. Their project CG2BP received the highest number of votes in the public vote procedure.

The shortlisted projects are presented on the Trimo Urban Crash website, and from 5 April onwards all submitted projects will available to the public in the project gallery.

Trimo Urban Crash 2013
Trimo Urban Crash 2013 started in 2012 with careful planning. In close co-operation with Ljubljana’s Vice Mayor, Professor Janez Koželj from Ljubljana University’s Faculty of Architecture, the team selected the location for the future Bike Base. Cycling subcultures and cyclists’ needs were explored and documented. The competition opened in October 2012 and concluded 10 February 2013. In early March, the international expert jury shortlisted 31 projects from a total of 220 projects submitted from 37 countries all over the world. As in all previous years, the Trimo Urban Crash competition jury was both international and interdisciplinary:
Adam Kalkin is an American artist, architect and specialist in container architecture; Professor Michael Stacey, RIBA, from the UK is a renowned authority on zero carbon architecture;
Professor Janez Koželj, Vice Mayor of Ljubljana, and Jure Kotnik, architect, a specialist in modular architecture, are both from Slovenia; Polish Wojtech Nowak was the 2011 Trimo Urban Crash winner; and Angela van der Kloof from the Netherlands and Janez Bertoncelj from Slovenia are both cycling and urban mobility specialists. The jury was rounded out with Trimo international team members: marketing director Maja Lapajne (Slovenia), designer Ron Fitch (UK) and architect Mitja Vovko (Slovenia).
Jury president Janez Koželj offered that “the jury witnessed a wide array of diverse approaches in the project submissions. Entrants pushed a host of technologies and construction techniques; they used different approaches, paying particular attention to industrial design, integration in the park setting, and the composition of modular units configured as towers, portals or pavilions”.
Adam Kalkin added, “The competition was fun. And the projects were fun. Often the world of architecture forgets about that essential quality. The jury was generous with each other and the projects. It was a delight to participate.”

Trimo Urban Crash and Cycling Visionaries Awards
Trimo Urban Crash and the Cycling Visionaries Awards share many values and goals: they both search for out-of-the-box thinking and offer space for young people to express their thoughts about the future and contribute ideas to evolve cycling cultures. This was the reason why the shortlisted authors from the Trimo Urban Crash competition were specially invited to submit their projects for the Cycling Visionaries Awards as well. Many of the projects were submitted in both competitions.

The Competition
Trimo Urban Crash has been underway as a biennial competition since 2007. The competition organiser Trimo works closely with the municipal administration of the City of Ljubljana. The City of Ljubljana secures and allocates a specific public space, and Trimo challenges students of architecture and industrial design to conceive and design the new public installation. Individual undergraduate students as well as entire schools are invited to participate in the competition. Many schools include the competition in their curriculum as part of their seminar or project work.
The aim of the competition is to encourage aspiring designers of urban space towards a bolder, more ambitious approach to understanding architecture and its place in the larger urban environment. Furthermore, the competition supports and encourages co-operation between practice, theory and industry.
Three such installations have already been realised and remain operative in Ljubljana: one is an information point in the city’s Tivoli park; another is a public stage space in an alternative cultural quarter; and the third is a life stand injecting vitality into a local Ljubljana neighbourhood.
In addition to the City of Ljubljana, Trimo’s partners in the Urban Crash competition include the Imago marketing agency, which takes a central role in conceiving, planning and executing the competition; another partner for the 2013 Urban Crash competition is Akripol, a Slovenian company specialising in the processing of polymers and the production of cast acrylic sheets.
The competition is also supported by the Ljubljana Cycling Network NGO, which is valuable in providing a wealth of practical input and insights. Trimo Urban Crash competition is truly international, with hundreds of projects from more than 60 countries worldwide submitted.

Velo-city 2013 Vienna | Cycling Stories
Author:
Borut Sočan, Trimo Urban Crash Team
Trimo Urban Crash Competition

Overall, the meetings were set up as a venue for different individuals from the cultural sector to communicate their ideas regarding bicycle-related projects and for people to come together in order to forge new alliances for realising bicycle-cultural projects. The entire process should be understood as an effort to build social capital and networks to facilitate the development (and evolution) of cycling cultures in Vienna.
To kick off this process, the Velo-city 2013 Management Team decided to organise a Networking Meeting (Bi)cycles and Cultures with the aim of bringing together the greatest possible diversity of representatives from the cultural field of Vienna.

So far, four Networking Meetings (Bi)cycles and Cultures have been held, and about 50 institutions and initiatives have been involved in the meetings, with their number on the rise. The variety and diversity of the participants emphasises the ability of bicycles to bring people together and is an embodiment of Vienna’s rich cultural life ranging from classical music to urban arts. There are various projects directly originating from the networking meetings, such as film projects, initiatives for bicycle tours, bicycle exhibitions, an award program, lectures or the integration of bicycle-cultural initiatives into street festivals.

At this point, the networking meetings are organised by Vienna’s Mobility Agency, which aims to evolve them into a forum and network for cycling cultures in Vienna. We want to thank all persons, initiatives and institutions involved in the Network Cycling Cultures in Vienna. Please have a look at the below list of institutions and initiatives that have already participated and browse the links.

Architekturzentrum Wien
Argus – The Bicycle Lobby
Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management
Austrian Museum of Applied Arts
Basis.Kultur.Wien
Bike it on
Black River Festival
Citybike Wien
Cycle Cinema Club
Cyclecraft – The Cargo Bike Company
Das Radhaus
departure. The Creative Agency of the City of Vienna
derive – Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung
Embacher Collection
Energy and Environment Agency of Lower Austria
Famalleycat
fluc
Radlobby IG Fahrrad
In velo veritas
inoperable street art gallery
Lastenradkollektiv (Cargo Bike Collective) Bečs/Dunaj/Wena/Wien/Vienna…
Lilarum
Municipal Department of Cultural Affairs (MA 7)
Municipal Department of Urban Development and Planning (MA 18)
Maderna Cycle Systems
MOTMOT Wien
plansinn
Radku.lt Festival
Radlobby IG Fahrrad
Rosinak und Partner
SKOP Filmproduktion
Soundframe Festival
Studio Bezdeka
Technisches Museum Wien (Technical Museum Vienna)
The Bicycle Museum in Retz
The Vienna Bikekitchen
trummer + team
Velonautica – The Transnational Institute for Research, Documentation and Encouragement of Cycling Cultures
Verein Silo
Vienna Cycle Chic
Vienna City Library (MA 9)
Vienna Mobility Agency  and FahrradWien
Wien Museum
Wiener Festwochen
Wiener Konzerthaus
WUK Wien
ZIT. The Technology Agency of the City of Vienna

(For reasons of privacy, we have omitted the names of the individuals who have participated in the meetings.)

Velo-city 2013 Vienna | Cycling Stories
Author:
Florian Lorenz
Velo-city 2013 Communications Team

Premise
The City of Vienna is interested in stepping up its activities to promote cycling as a sustainable and eco-friendly form of locomotion. After appointing a Cycling Co-ordinator in winter 2011 and the temporary institution of the Cycling House in April 2012, the City Administration has succeeded in bringing Velo-city 2013 with the motto “The Sound of Cycling. Urban Cycling Cultures” to Vienna. It is the ambitious goal of the provincial government to double the share of bike traffic by 2015 (see newspaper “Der Standard.at” of 29 March 2012).
The western gateway to Vienna plays a decisive role for the entire cycle way network of the city.
The first section of this cycling route from the weir zone to the pedestrian bridge Hackingersteg was upgraded by Municipal Department 45 in 2006. Through a co-operation of Municipal Departments 29 and 45, the cycle way along the bed of Wien River was extended to Kennedy Bridge in 2010. The newly-created space along the riverbed is open to different user groups, thereby providing added value beyond efficient bike access. In addition to cyclists, it is hence possible to observe joggers, walkers or young children trying to learn to ride a bike or use roller skates. This open space is used intensively both in the daytime and during evening hours.

Task
It was the subject of this one-semester design class to propose ideas for the continuation of the Wien River Valley cycle way following the riverbed in the city-bound direction, a section where the discharge conduit runs centrally and the canal cross-section becomes narrower. The task involved the following aspects: definition of the exact route and division into individual sections, hook-up to existing cycle way network and practical implementation of this link, and ensuring usability of the thus created open space along Wien River.

Structure of semester
The semester proved a challenging but also a very enriching experience for both students and teachers; however, it proved necessary during the initial phase to first develop an inter-departmental work approach. After a kick-off lecture, in which Thomas Berger of Municipal Department 18 highlighted the potentials and problems of the existing western cycle way route into Vienna and the teachers sketched the task at hand, student working groups were set up to first of all develop presentations on such diverse issues as the history of bicycle traffic planning, the “car culture vs. bike culture” debate in Vienna, safety and security aspects along the Wien River bed as well as bicycle infrastructure and traffic safety. The eight issues covered by these presentations were developed over the span of two weeks; in addition, each group also prepared a digital presentation and a poster, which were then submitted to all students of the group and provided the technical basis for the design class. In the meantime, the students and teachers had taken a close look at the existing western cycle way route into Vienna on-site (by riding bikes) and reflected on potential improvements.

To obtain a clearer understanding of the complex aspects of planning for the Wien River bed, a kick-off lecture was given in the fourth week of the semester. During this lecture, Christa Illera spoke about her longstanding research into anxiety-inducing spaces while Tadej Brezina reported on bicycle traffic planning. This was followed by a four-week intensive work period used for brainstorming and defining the layout of the future cycle way and the spatial characteristics of its design; moreover, the students discussed their results in weekly revision meetings with their teachers. During an intermediate stocktaking on 3 December, the students prepared posters and presented their results to a guest jury (composed of Christoph Chorherr of the Green Party, Thomas Berger of Municipal Department 18, Franz Blaha of Municipal Department 29 and Markus Hoffmann of the Institute of Transportation (ISTU) of Vienna University of Technology). This event proved particularly valuable, as it enabled the students to integrate the criticism voiced by the guest jurors into their work and hence to deepen their design approach in the remaining weeks of the semester.

Results
The results of the students’ work provide a valuable basis for continuing the discussion conducted within the Vienna City Administration regarding the viability of a western bike gateway extending from Kennedy Bridge in the city-bound direction within the bed of Wien River.
Most designs propose solutions in which the cycle way runs along HQ 100 (this value is indicative of flood events occurring only once every 100 years). The advantages of these solutions lie on the one hand in the safety aspect for the population and on the other hand in lower cost and reduced land consumption in building the ramps. One sole contribution looks at the possibility of continuing the cycle way within the riverbed and intensively addresses the safety measures that would be required for this option. The central theme of this proposal is the benefit to be derived from creating “quasi-natural” open spaces in a densely developed city.
With particular stringency, one design addresses the planning of the new cycle way route along Wien River on the one hand and the improvement of the current western gateway route on the other hand. Other contributions try to define the new route through identity-fostering design elements as a high-quality urban space that is open to a wealth of different forms of use. In this way, open spaces would be created that not only prove of benefit for cyclists but for all citizens of Vienna.
All contributions submitted by the students not only deal with the problem posed by the cycle way route design but aim to generate more vibrancy and greater potential for the scarce public space in the city. Some contributions intensively focus on historical and delicate sites, such as Schönbrunner Schlossbrücke and the debouchment of Wien River into Danube Canal. Other students suggested exciting and innovative solutions to create useable open spaces around Naschmarkt.

Mistelbauer+Wimmer – “Renn [Rad] Weg” (click preview banner to see full image).

Niel+Treml – “Kommt Zeit Kommt Rad” (click preview banner to see full image).

Koppold+Sageder – “Velowien – Fluss zum Genuss” (click preview banner to see full image).

Glatz+Scholz+Tschanter – “Wien.Rad.Fluss” (click preview banner to see full image)

Aschauer+Morawetz+Polacek – “High-Low” Poster 1 (click preview banner to see full image)

Aschauer+Morawetz+Polacek – “High-Low” Poster 2 (click preview banner to see full image)

Conclusion
Due to interdepartmental participation and the co-operation with Municipal Departments 18, 29 and 45, the course, which was concluded in late January, proved stimulating as well as technically productive. I would like to express my thanks to all students and colleagues who made this event possible.

Visit the website of the interdepartmental urban design studio “Velocity” with all projects (German).

Velo-city 2013 Vienna | Cycling Stories
Author:
Annalisa Mauri
Vienna University of Technology
Department of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture

Cargo bikes have a long history that actually goes back to the origins of the bicycle itself. This (still) unusual means of locomotion was rediscovered in recent years. Independent of fuel and high running costs, the cargo bike offers a sustainable and efficient alternative to engine-driven vehicles, especially in urban areas, since it is operated under your own steam, running on muscle power alone. Cargo bikes have proven their worth as ideal vehicles for small and large transport, above all in city contexts, and can be used with ease by all cyclists.

On Vienna’s streets, too, the cargo bike is an increasingly frequent sight. Since they are extremely practical, cargo bikes should ideally be accessible to all potential users. Often, however, there is a lack of appropriate parking spots; the acquisition costs are high, and cargo bikes as a rule are not needed for all bicycle trips. Despite these challenges, nobody in Vienna need forgo the enjoyment and benefits offered by cargo bikes – this is where the Cargo Bike Collective (“Lastenradkollektiv”) comes into play.

In early 2010, the motto “Cargo Bike Collectivism Now!” motivated a group of bicycle enthusiasts in Vienna to found the Lastenradkollektiv (LRK) as a sort of “cargo bike share”.

The collective embraces the idea of a solidarity economy: cargo bike use should not aim for profit and commercial advantage but strive for solidarity and try to respond to actual needs. LRK is expressly opposed to private ownership; community benefits are at the foreground. Each member of this self-administered and self-organised collective takes part in handling the maintenance and rental of one cargo bike. There are no fixed rental fees; users donate an amount of their choice for cargo bike usage. These donations are relayed to a bike repair fund and serve to purchase new bikes and trailers.

Since 2010, LRK has been incorporated as an association under law; in its initial stages, it was supported by fundraisers, subsidies and Vienna’s bicycle community. In 2010, LRK was honoured with the KLIP 7 climate protection award organised by Vienna’s 7th municipal district Neubau.

In the beginning, the LRK bike pool was composed of just a few cargo bikes. After three years, it has grown to a total of 20 cargo bikes and trailers. Any kind of transport can be handled in a variety of ways. Two-wheeled and three-wheeled bikes as well as different types of trailers for all types of transport are available. The locations of the bikes and trailers are distributed as evenly as possible across the entire municipal territory. Some vehicles of the pool were built very creatively at the Vienna Bikekitchen and WUK by transforming old bicycles into new cargo bikes. In this way, the LRK vehicle pool also embodies do-it-yourself (DIY) and bicycle-recycling strategies.

Renting a bike from the LRK pool sidesteps red-tape obstacles like registration or membership fees. Interested parties should just have a look at the LRK website for detailed information about dimensions, maximum loaded weight and rental conditions. As a second step, potential clients need to e-mail LRK to set an appointment for the handing-over of the cargo bike. Rental is based on voluntary donations according to the pay-as-you-wish principle. A deposit for the bikes rented serves to minimise loss in case of theft and is used for repairs in case of wilful damage. In the same way, an appointment is fixed for returning the bike, which is then briefly examined for potential damage.

LRK has managed to change the cityscape of Vienna. Special actions, such as e.g. a house moving convoy composed of several cargo bikes across Vienna or a live concert of 16 musicians on cargo bikes in the context of a Critical Mass event, were outstanding collective experiences that have generated attention and anchored cargo bikes more firmly in the cityscape. This helps to strengthen awareness of the unlimited possibilities offered by the brilliant invention that is the cargo bike and moreover promotes bicycle traffic in general.

Since the establishment of LRK, the situation of cargo bike use in the German-speaking region has changed quite a lot. Inspired directly by the Vienna Cargo Bike Collective, the worldwide platform Velogistics.net was initiated in Berlin. Velogistics uses an online map of the world to visualise the geographic location, models, details and rental conditions of cargo bikes available for shared use. In many German cities (such as Munich, Berlin, Dresden and Hamburg), the “Postfossil Mobil“ project by the non-profit association anstiftung&ertomis organises cargo bike self-build workshops. And the website www.werkstatt-lastenrad.de provides detailed instructions on how to build your very own cargo bike.

The model of collective cargo bike use is currently being tested on a wider scale, and many collectives similar to Vienna’s LRK are emerging (see links at the bottom of this article). In our opinion, strategies such as self-administration and self-governance, collective use and the increased shift of small-scale transports from car to bike are essential in order to tap even wider potentials for urban cycling.

We want to thank the members of the Vienna Lastenradkollektiv very cordially for their support of this article and wish the entire LRK group all the best for the future.

Read more:
Lastenradkollektiv Wien
Velogistics
Postfossil mobil
NYC Cargo Bike Collective

Velo-city 2013 Vienna | Cycling Stories
Author:
Stefania del Sordo, Annemarie Sulzberger, Julia Wölcher, Florian Lorenz
Velo-city 2013 Communications Team

A recent event at Vienna’s Cycling House tried to highlight this conflict in order to support a productive debate about how Vienna’s roads can be shared with fewer conflicts. The podium of the latest Cycle Talks united transportation experts, traffic psychologists, cycling advocates and politicians with a critical attitude to expanding cycling to the disadvantage of car traffic.

At this event, we also met with one of Austria’s foremost specialists in public opinion and communication research, Dr. Helene Karmasin of Karmasin Motivforschung, who also participated in the Cycle Talks.
With her insight into Austrian popular preferences with regard to mobility and lifestyle choices, we wanted to learn more about public opinion in terms of cycling (and cyclists), mobility and traffic culture as well as how campaigning to increase cycling and improve traffic culture can become more innovative. Enjoy the interview.

Velo-city 2013: Do you like cycling? When do you use the bike in everyday life, and when and why don’t you?
Dr. Helene Karmasin: I like cycling very much but only as a leisure pastime. Honestly, I don’t really have the courage to cycle in the city. I find it too scary. And pedalling to a meeting in more or less fancy clothes is an unusual idea for me.

Velo-city 2013: How does your research work relate to the general issue of mobility as well as to cycling in particular?
Dr. Helene Karmasin: Obviously, mobility is a very wide field that many of our studies touch upon. The question is how a society will organise mobility. We look into that aspect at various levels. At the individual level, we have noticed that the different ways of movement are not just perceived as possibilities to get from A to B. Rather, each and every mode of transport has a very specific image, conveying a very specific lifestyle and the feeling of belonging – or not belonging – to a specific group.
In this way, transport is like all products that are not only functional items but encompass many emotional aspects as well and at the same time express different values within our society.

Velo-city 2013: In your opinion, why is cycling such an emotionally charged issue for people in Vienna and Austria? What positive and negative popular emotions with regard to cycling can you identify?
Dr. Helene Karmasin: This is indeed interesting. Cycling is really a mode of transport with strong emotional connotations. It is an entirely autonomous and pleasurable form of locomotion that directly translates physical activity into mobility. It involves a sort of funktionslust on the part of cyclists – the pleasant feeling of experiencing one’s body. There are many sensual stimuli, you can feel their air, humidity and smells around you; you perceive your surroundings from a very specific perspective.
At the same time, there is an element of antagonism, too, a sort of accusation: “car drivers are reckless, and cyclists don’t swerve.” There’s a feeling that there are many enemies against you. In part, this may have a rational basis, but it is also something to do with a certain group feeling, and a component of ethics likewise comes into play here.

Velo-city 2013: Different modes of transport are often used as a mode of differentiation between individual groups of society. What measures could help to break down such attitudes in order to perhaps facilitate better coexistence of the various road user groups?
Dr. Helene Karmasin: It is essential to involve the different groups in a dialogue, to initiate a sort of mediation. Basically, I do not believe that motorists are deliberately out to harm cyclists or behave in a life-endangering and reckless manner. Cars are still central objects of our society, and thus motorists have this feeling, “well, this is my street, my route”, and bikes are viewed as a hindrance. Motorists have this experience of almost natural dominance, sort of being “the king of the road”.
Conversely, cyclists quite literally have a rough ride on the streets; they have to avoid certain obstacles and make do with little space. This should be communicated to car drivers in order to create awareness for the situation of cyclists. It’s about creating awareness for this situation. I think that many car drivers behave inappropriately because they simply do not have an inkling of the situation of cyclists.

Velo-city 2013: What are your experiences regarding the visual language used in advertising and campaigns to promote cycling-based mobility? What innovations and refreshingly new approaches can you identify for campaigns to promote cycling or improve the “traffic climate”?
Dr. Helene Karmasin: There is basically very little innovation. Unfortunately, the thing that makes ads for cars so exciting – that an object is assigned its true importance through visual language – is not offered at all by cycling commercials. Adverts for bikes as an instrument for leisure activities are simple, staid and sober. They do not convey the experience you have, the added value or the freedom – all this is never translated into imagery.

Velo-city 2013: What issues would you like to see discussed at the Velo-city Conference 2013?
Dr. Helene Karmasin: Precisely these: visual worlds. What sort of semantics, pictorial ideas or semiotic strategies does cycling need to be associated with? This is not only about verbal arguments – what is cycling good for, who are its opponents or its advocates, etc. – but rather about stimulating desire, creating an emotional bond with people, so that they will say, “oh, that’s lovely, that’s nice, I want that”. And this can only happen if the idea of cycling is charged with a certain meaning, and this meaning must be communicated through images – also via semantics, but mainly through images that stick in the mind. This is what I would really, really like to see.

Velo-city 2013: Thank you for the interview.

For us, the bottom line of this interview is: cycling needs to be presented as an equally important mode of transportation, and the positive aspects and potentials of the “good life” on a bike saddle can be emphasised through cycling campaigns. Two ongoing campaigns in Vienna are currently working towards this objective. The campaign “tschuldigen” (“Sorry”) aims to improve traffic culture among different stakeholders. And the Vienna Cycling Agency is showcasing cycling as an enjoyable and valuable form of urban transportation in their campaign “Setzt Freude in Gang“ (“Sets Joy in Motion”).

Finally, we can all dream one dream together – namely, that cycling campaigns will one day receive as much funding as campaigns presenting the car as the sole model of individual mobility. Dream on, and go on cycling (campaigning).

Velo-city 2013 Vienna | Cycling Stories
Author:
Florian Lorenz, Hanna Posch
Velo-city 2013 Communications Team