Pop-Up Bike Lanes and Temporary Shared Spaces in Vienna During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Similar to many cities, Vienna (Austria) implemented measures to provide more space for pedestrians and cyclists during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this chapter, the implementation process of the temporary shared spaces and “pop-up” bike lanes is described, and the evaluation results regarding their usage as well as the political decisions of their early removal are presented. With video recordings and manual counting, we found that pop-up bike lanes were well adopted by cyclists, but temporary shared spaces have largely failed to attract pedestrians. The possible reasons are discussed as well as the criteria for better implementation of temporary walking and cycling infrastructure in the future. Drawing on the multiple streams theory, we link the decision of suspending all temporary infrastructures to the political situation at the time with pop-up bike lanes as a highly controversial issue before the local elections in October 2020 and a change of government afterward. We conclude that this presents a lost opportunity to permanently redistribute road space for active mobility, but future initiatives could learn from the Vienna case by thinking more strategically about political aspects.

7.1 Introduction

In spring 2020, the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe led to far-reaching containment measures and a strong decrease in motorized traffic (Shibayama et al. 2021). Most people avoided public transport due to perceived infection risks while the number of cyclists increased significantly. Outdoor amenities such as parks and playgrounds were closed. This increased the importance of local mobility and the role of public space in residential areas. In the meantime, some re-regionalization occurred—at least temporarily. In order to give people enough space and to enable them to keep the required minimum distances, short-term temporary measures were taken worldwide, such as “pop-up bike lanes”, extended sidewalks, or temporary shared spaces. These temporary measures are also called “light individual transport (LIT)” infrastructure (ITF 2020).

Cities made use of tools that are usually applied in “tactical urbanism” in a more bottom-up manner (Lydon 2020; Lydon and Garcia 2015; Silva 2016). Existing resources such as traffic cones, bollards, and markings were used to reclaim street space from motor vehicles for pedestrians and cyclists quickly and with low cost. After cities such as Berlin, Bogota, Mexico City, and New York started building temporary infrastructures for active mobility in mid-March, many others around the world followed. In Seville (Spain) and New York City (USA), such resources have previously been used to create extensive networks of bike lanes (Combs 2020; ITF 2020; Lydon 2020).

In past crises, bicycles have proven to be a resilient means of transportation. After major earthquakes in Mexico City in 2017 (de Jong 2017; García-Franco 2020) and in Tokyo in 2011 (Steele 2012), bicycles and motorcycles proved to be the safest and most effective means of transportation. The oil crisis of the 1970s produced iconic images of people cycling and walking on highways. In the Netherlands, the bicycle has never lost its great importance as an everyday means of transportation (Reid 2017). Socially, this first break with the car-oriented transport system was borne out of its ecological side effects and the rapid increase in traffic fatalities; it was also manifested through civil society movement (“Stop de Kindermoord”). In response, the Dutch government initiated, among other things, a massive bike path construction program that continues to this day (Reid 2017).

Cities have long been trying to bring about similar developments (increase the shares of cycling and walking modes) in the transport system in the interests of climate and environmental protection as well as social equity. Certainly, the circumstances of the COVID-19 crisis are exceptional and not desirable, but at the same time, are disruptive to the established practices and allowed for acting upon the long-held objectives of redistributing road space to more sustainable transport modes. The COVID-19 pandemic opened a window of opportunity to provide more space for active mobility in a short period of time. This chance was taken by many cities worldwide, which made those changes permanent and accelerated the envisioned shift to sustainable urban transport. Unfortunately, Vienna failed to use this opportunity and suspended all temporary infrastructure after only a few months—and therefore presents an interesting case study to analyze.

The Mobility Agency of Vienna (100% owned by the city) commissioned and funded a study to analyze the effects of introducing temporary infrastructure for active mobility. The objective was to find out if and how people used the pop-up bike lanes and temporary shared space streets as well as to identify deficiencies and success criteria for the implementation. The results have been published in a report in German by Frey et al.(2020) and present the basis for our analysis.

In this study we document the process of implementing temporary shared spaces and pop-up bike lanes in the city during the first wave of COVID-19, use traffic counting to assess the usage of these infrastructures and analyze possible reasons for their suspension. We focus on the “supply side” intervention of infrastructure provision rather than addressing “demand side” interventions such as education, skills acquisition, and community uptake of cycling. Although out of scope of this study, we acknowledge the importance of such interventions and their interrelations with political decisions (Batterbury and Vandermeersch 2016; Cox and Koglin 2020).

Our analysis is based on the framework introduced by Cox (2020) to describe the politics of cycling infrastructure, in combination with Kingdon’s multiple streams theory (Kingdon 1995), which has been applied for the assessment of pop-up bike lanes in Sydney by Harris and McCue (2022). Following Gartner (2016), Cox (2020) describes three approaches to infrastructure development: the technocratic, the interventionist, and the critical, with the first two being the dominant perspectives. While the “technocratic” is focused on material value and provision of physical infrastructure to increase cycling, the “interventionist” also views infrastructure as instrumentally valuable but only for achieving broader objectives such as increasing public health or protecting the environment. Due to their shortcomings in terms of political dimensions, Gartner proposes the “critical” approach arguing that infrastructure objects symbolize existing power struggles and can be seen as the material output of social-political relationships.

To further assess this political dimension, we use the multiple streams theory (Kingdon 1995), which encompasses the three streams of (1) problem recognition, (2) formation and refining of policy proposals, and (3) politics. The problem stream addresses the agenda setting of what is seen as a problem. The policy stream deals with solutions to problems and the politics stream with the political will, where elected officials, lobbying groups, and other political players affect the decision. Harris and McCue (2022) highlight the following factors for increasing the likelihood of a policy solution to receive political consideration: technical feasibility, resource adequacy, and value acceptability. Kingdon (1995) described the political stream as being composed of “such things as public mood, pressure group campaigns, election results, partisan or ideological distributions in Congress, and changes of administration” (p. 145). For a new policy to be implemented, all independent streams must align to form a policy window when a new policy can be successfully implemented.

The rest of the chapter is structured as follows. In the next section, the case of Vienna is described in terms of previous transport policy and COVID-19 measures. After that, the implementation process of temporary infrastructure for active mobility is described. In Sect. 7.3, the survey methods for traffic counting, followed by their results are presented. In Sect. 7.4 the political situation and interpretation of survey results are discussed. Conclusions are presented in Sect. 7.6.

7.1.1 The Case of Vienna

Vienna is the capital of Austria with 1.92 million inhabitants (Statistik Austria 2021). Even though the city has a relatively low share of car traffic (26% car trips in 2021 (Wiener Linien 2021)) and has been praised for its sustainable transport policy (Buehler et al. 2016), there have been substantial shortfalls in the past years. The share of car trips stagnated and cycling rates are low compared to similar cities in Europe. Between 2013 and 2019, the share of cycling in Vienna was 7% and increased to 9% in 2020 (MA 18 2015; Wiener Linien 2018; Wiener Linien 2021) while the share of cycling in a comparable city, Hamburg, Germany was 15% in 2017 (Follmer et al. 2019).

Strategically, the city has been calling for redistribution of road space in favor of active mobility and aimed at increasing cycling rates since the 1990s. With the latest Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan “STEP 2025” (MA 18 2014) and associated concepts (MA 18 2015; MA 18 2018) being carried out, the City of Vienna has formulated clear objectives for the future development of mobility in Vienna: among others, the reduction of the motorization rate to 250 private cars per 1000 inhabitants by 2030 (now 371 cars per 1000 inhabitants) and the increase of the modal split of active mobility and public transport to 80% in 2025 and to 85% in 2030.

Nevertheless, only a few projects for the redistribution of road space have been realized up until now and no substantial effort has been made to implement a city-wide concerted concept. Most of the projects have been controversial before their realization, such as converting Mariahilfer Straße, Vienna’s largest shopping street into a pedestrian zone in 2014 (Bartenberger and Sześciło 2016; Lankhorst 2020), or the creation of a 400 m long cycling path closing a gap in the cycling network at Naschmarkt in 2019.¹

Measures for containment of the COVID-19 pandemic in Austria from mid-March 2020 included the introduction of working from home on a large scale, bans on entering pubs and stores, the closure of schools and kindergartens, and a call to use public transport only for journeys to work or to help someone. These measures were also referred to as the “1st Lockdown”. This greatly reduced the number of trips made outside the home, by about 60–80% (Frey et al. 2020). After the measures were relaxed, there was a gradual increase, but to varying degrees for different modes of transportation. In motorized private transport, the share has bounced back to the previous level by the beginning of June, while in public transport—where it was compulsory to wear a face mask from April 14—only a maximum of 80% of passengers had returned by the end of June. At bicycle counting stations, strong increases over previous years were observed in the months leading up to the COVID-19 outbreak. In March, there was an overall decrease of only 2%, while at individual counting points far more people were counted even during the lockdown [e.g., + 15% in Lassallestraße (Frey et al. 2020; Nast Consulting 2020)].

An international online survey by Brezina et al. (2020b) asked about changes in everyday mobility during the COVID-19 crisis. A non-representative sample from Vienna contains a total of 1304 individuals who participated in the survey between March 23 and May 12, 2020. A large part of the survey participants were working from home or were not working at the time (70% in total). For the remaining 30%, the share of public transport usage dropped massively (from 49.5 to 2.3%) while the car as a means of transport remained almost the same (7.7% before COVID-19, 6.2% during measures) and the shares of those who walked or biked to work dropped to a lesser extent (from 5.9% to 3.2% and from 23.8% to 8.4%, respectively). The remaining 10% did not answer the question of commuting during the time of lockdown. Further results for Austria were published in Brezina et al. (2020a).

In Vienna, measures were taken to create more space for pedestrians and cyclists in April 2020, in order to enable people to keep the recommended safety distance according to temporary COVID-19 regulations and to create a better situation for pedestrians and cyclists in the immediate living environment. Two types of measures were taken: the introduction of temporary “shared space” streets and the so called “pop-up bike lanes”. The implementation process of these two types of temporary measures will be introduced in the next section.

7.2 Implementation Process of Temporary Infrastructure

To describe the process of installing pop-up bike lanes and temporary shared space zones (“Begegnungszone” according to the Austrian road code), we used personal communications with city authorities in the form of e-mails and personal discussion in this study, as well as the collected information from press releases, newspaper articles, and on-site visits. No formal interviews have been conducted but the implementation process has been documented in the report by Frey et al. (2020) in collaboration with city officials.

7.2.1 Implementation of Temporary Shared Space

The legal basis for shared space (“Begegnungszone”) has been introduced in the Austrian road code in 2013.² While in other countries pedestrians have the right of way in shared space zones, in Austria, all road users are supposed to be equal. The road code states that pedestrians are allowed to use the whole driving lane, but they are not allowed to “willfully impede vehicle traffic”.³ Since its introduction, more than 80 streets have been declared as shared space in Austria, with 8 of them in Vienna.⁴

During the first COVID-19 wave in spring 2020, the Austrian federal government passed an amendment to the Road Code,⁵ making it possible to temporarily open lanes for pedestrians and therefore also for creating temporary shared space streets. This allowed the city to designate conventional streets as shared space zones for a limited period of time. The City of Vienna implemented 23 such shared space zones throughout the city.

Before deciding to introduce shared space zones, the city reviewed alternatives for giving more space to pedestrians such as ordinances of driving bans, physical barriers for cars to enter or changing streets into pedestrian zones or residential streets (“Wohnstraße”) where cars are permitted to enter at low speed but not to drive through. There are no official publications documenting the assessment and decision making. The authority (MA46—municipal authority for traffic organization, personal communication) claims that the alternative options were examined regarding the necessary time for implementation, space gained for pedestrian traffic, access and passage for cars and public transport as well as for garbage and emergency vehicles, necessary car parking markings and the overall traffic situation. Other factors that influenced the decision included the effects on traffic organization, the costs, and the need for and availability of traffic signs. According to city officials, the shared space zone was identified as the best option, as it is a more moderate measure than driving bans and pedestrian zones. (MA46—municipal authority for traffic organization, personal communication).

The city authorities determined the criteria for a street to be suitable for a temporary shared space zone as follows:

• Narrow sidewalks

• High adjacent population density

• No open parks or green spaces in the immediate neighborhood

• Traffic compatibility (low share of car traffic)

• Max. 1 lane per direction

• No light rail traffic in the street; case-by-case examination for regular bus traffic

• If possible, no traffic light signal system

• Existing markings for parking spaces (as parking spots have to be indicated with painted lines in a shared space zone).

The first temporary shared space street was implemented on April 10, 2020 (Rechte Bahngasse), and the last ones were suspended by the end of the year on December 31, 2020 (streets in the 15th district).

According to the Viennese constitution, transport planning and traffic organization fall under the governance of district mayors and district councils—with the exception of main routes for cycling (WStV, LGBl. Nr. 28/1968, § 103). Therefore, the decision on where temporary shared spaces were implemented had to be reached in agreement with the districts. Although there were guidelines by the municipality (see above), the district mayors did not need to follow those and could decide on their own where to implement shared space streets.

Table 7.1 shows the locations of temporary shared space zones and characteristics of the streets, with their locations shown in Fig. 7.1. The selection of the individual street sections was made together with the city council for transport and the district authorities.

Table 7.1 Temporary shared space locations and characteristics

Fig. 7.1

Temporary shared space locations, surveyed locations shown in orange (Base layer: city map of wien.gv.at with district borders in purple; shared space locations and text: by authors)

Some temporary shared space zones were implemented despite not meeting the criteria recommended by the public authorities (marked italic in Table 7.1). The criterion of parking space markings is met by all but two of the selected streets. The criterion of narrow sidewalks did not apply to about half of the street sections. In some cases, the selected street sections contradicted the criteria of traffic compatibility, or the high adjacent population density. There were no traffic lights within indicated shared space zones, however some zones have been divided into sections with interruptions at intersections with traffic lights. Figures 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4 show the physical implementation of shared space on five different streets.

Fig. 7.2

Temporary shared space Kettenbrückengasse 11.05.2020 (left) and Schaumburgergasse 11.05.2020 (right). Credit Ulrich Leth

Fig. 7.3

Temporary shared space Rechte Bahngasse 13.05.2020 (left) and Schopenhauergasse 13.05.2020 (right). Credit Ulrich Leth

Fig. 7.4

Temporary shared space Hasnerstraße 13.05.2020. Credit Ulrich Leth

7.2.2 Implementation of Pop-Up Bike Lanes

The implementation of pop-up bike lanes in Vienna started in the beginning of May 2020 at Praterstraße. They were introduced at four streets in three of the 23 districts with a total length of 2.4 km (see Table 7.2). These temporary bike lanes made use of former parking lanes or lanes for motorized traffic and redistributed those areas for dedicated cycling infrastructure. The new bike lanes have been separated from motorized traffic with orange painted lines and mobile elements such as bollards, construction site beacons or Jersey barriers (modular concrete barriers) to create protected bike lanes. They were either located directly next to existing, highly used but narrow bike infrastructure or in one case in a three-lane street that previously did not offer dedicated cycling infrastructure.

Table 7.2 Implementation and duration of pop-up bike lanes

The decision on locations was based on existing plans for building cycle paths. Even though the city council has the decision competence for main cycling routes, the implementation decision was also made together with local district mayors (the 2nd and 9th district cooperated whilst the 22nd was against it). All of the temporary bike lanes have been suspended within 6 months, see Table 7.2.

Figure 7.5 shows the locations of pop-up bike lanes and existing cycling paths. The existing network is made up of 169 km of dedicated cycling paths and 170 km of mixed walking and cycling paths (Stadt Wien, n.d.). Figures 7.6, 7.7, 7.8 and 7.9 show pictures of the four pop-up bike lanes.

Fig. 7.5

Map of existing cycle paths and pop-up bike lanes in central Vienna (Base layer: city map of wien.gv.at; cycle paths: OGD dataset https://www.data.gv.at/katalog/dataset/stadt-wien_radfahranlagenwien; pop-up bike lanes and text: by authors)

Fig. 7.6

Pop-up bike lane on Praterstraße 07.05.2020. Credit Ulrich Leth

Fig. 7.7

Pop-up bike lane on Lassallestraße 09.06.2020. Credit Ulrich Leth

Fig. 7.8

Pop-up bike lane on Hörlgasse 03.06.2020. Credit Ulrich Leth

Fig. 7.9

Pop-up bike lane Wagramer Straße 27.05.2020. Credit Ulrich Leth

Figure 7.6. shows the physical appearance of the pop-up bike lane on Praterstraße. While construction site beacons provided a sense of safety in the inner area, this visual separation was missing in the outer area due to the preservation of the parking lane. The start of the pop-up bike lane was not very recognizable, which could have been placed one intersection before, at Aspernbrückengasse.

The one-way bike lane in the direction out of town on Lassallestraße (Fig. 7.7) was implemented using physical separation with construction site beacons and the elimination of parking spaces along the lane. The signage at the beginning was not very visible and there were no beacons at the end, where the lane ended abruptly in mixed traffic.

Figure 7.8 shows the one-way pop-up bike lane in Hörlgasse, which was implemented instead of one of the three car lanes. There were also construction site beacons for separation from car traffic. Similar to Lasallestraße, at the end of the lane, beacons were missing, and cars often used the lane for right turns.

Wagramer Straße is one of the main arteries connecting residential and recreational areas in outer districts across the river Danube with the inner city, in extension of Praterstraße and Lassallestraße. At some sections of the street, there are cycle paths. The section where the pop-up bike lane was implemented (between Kagraner Brücke and Arbeiterstrandbadstraße) leads over an old branch of the Danube. Before implementing the pop-up bike lane in that section, cyclists used the existing infrastructure which is situated below the car lanes (an area closed to vehicles except for bicycles) together with pedestrians. The temporary infrastructure is shown in Fig. 7.9. The bi-directional pop-up bike lane was separated from the car lanes by concrete walls and was only 1.55 m wide (national guidelines require a minimum width of 2.00 m). Visibility of the into-town branch was poor at first but was improved later on.

7.3 Survey Methods and Results

The value of tactical urbanism is derived from testing assumptions through physical design. Literature recommends the build-measure-learn process to test projects (Lydon and Garcia 2015). The empirical part of this study was about measuring the success of temporary infrastructure for active mobility in Vienna. The key metrics against which to judge success have been defined as bicycle and pedestrian volumes using the new infrastructure and the share of cyclists using pop-up bike lanes compared to the cyclists who continue to use existing infrastructure.

We chose direct observational methods (Richardson et al. 1995), manual traffic counting for the pop-up bike lanes and manual analysis of video recordings for temporary shared space streets. For the shared spaces, it was of interest to find out how many and how cyclists and pedestrians used the infrastructure. This includes the share of people that were taking advantage of the new legal rule and were walking on the driving lane instead of the sidewalk or crossing from one side to the other. In order to be able to assess these different aspects, we decided to use video recordings of the streets for the manual analysis.

Concerning the pop-up bike lanes, the main interest was to find out if cyclists preferred the existing infrastructures or adopted the parallel temporary lanes for cycling. For this, we chose to count traffic at the intersections of the streets with pop-up bike lanes. In the case of Hörlgasse, there was previously no cycling infrastructure. But at two parallel streets (Berggasse and Maria-Theresien-Straße) there are cycle paths. Therefore, we also conducted traffic counts in those parallel streets on one occasion.

Traffic count surveys on particular days are only single data points of traffic that varies from day to day (cf. Richardson et al. 1995). Given resource constraints, we conducted the observations at each location on two different dates and chose weekdays as well as weekends or holidays to increase the diversity in the data inputs. We are aware this still covers a small sample, which has to be considered when interpreting the results.

7.3.1 Traffic Counting at Temporary Shared Spaces

Video recordings were made at five locations in temporary shared spaces to survey traffic volumes by mode, interactions, and lane crossings. This set of locations was chosen because of their heterogenous street and cross sections characteristics and the technical possibilities for video recording. There were several constraints such as the uncertainty for what time period the temporary shared spaces would be implemented by the city administration and preparation and installation time of the technical survey infrastructure.

The pedestrian behavior was categorized in 3 types:

• Pedestrian crossing the lane

• Pedestrian and motorized vehicle interaction in longitudinal direction

  • Sidestep of the pedestrian

  • Vehicles got out of the way of pedestrians

  • No requirement to get out of the way because there was enough space

• Pedestrian-Pedestrian interaction

  • Pedestrian reduces walking speed and waits on the sidewalk to avoid collision

  • Pedestrian changes to lane to avoid collision.

Each of the recordings took place on a weekday and a Sunday or holiday. Weather conditions were also documented, see Table 7.3. Automatic evaluations of motor vehicles and bicycle traffic volumes were conducted for the entire survey period (7.00 a.m. to 9.00 p.m.) and evaluated at 15-min intervals. Pedestrian actions and the percentage of pedestrians walking on the lane were also evaluated manually for three times of the day (“morning”: 7.00 a.m.–8.00 a.m., “noon”:12.00 a.m.–1.00 p.m., “evening”: 5.00 p.m.–6.00 p.m.).

Table 7.3 Recording dates of temporary shared space

Figures 7.10, 7.11 and 7.12 present the results of traffic analysis. In Fig. 7.10, traffic volumes of pedestrians, cyclists, and motorized vehicles are shown. Figure 7.11 shows crossings of pedestrians and interaction with other modes. The share of pedestrians crossing and walking in the driving lane in temporary shared space streets are summarized in Fig. 7.12.

Fig. 7.10

Traffic volumes of the 5 temporary shared space zones and different means of transportation

Fig. 7.11

Pedestrian behavior in the five temporary shared space zones with detailed evaluation

Fig. 7.12

Proportion of pedestrians on roadway and pedestrian crossings of the 5 temporary shared space zones

In Kettenbrückengasse, the highest overall pedestrian volume was observed (see Fig. 7.10)—presumably due to the existence of numerous stores and restaurants on the ground floor. However, a maximum of 4% of these pedestrians were moving on the driving lane in the longitudinal direction (see Fig. 7.12). The most pedestrian crossings (see Fig. 7.11) occurred in Schaumburgergasse, where the second highest number of pedestrians was counted while the number of motor vehicles was very low. Overall, there were very few longitudinal interactions between pedestrians and motorized vehicles. The highest percentages of pedestrians on the driving lane were observed in Hasnerstraße (35%) and in Rechte Bahngasse (28%). Both maximum values were measured on Sundays, so they are probably leisure trips. In Rechte Bahngasse, the high percentage of pedestrians on the roadway is accompanied by low motor vehicle volumes (maximum value at 5% motor vehicle share). Hasnerstraße, on the other hand, has comparable traffic volumes and shares of motor vehicles as Kettenbrückengasse (14–39 motor vehicles to 25–44 motor vehicles per hour and 10–15% to 10–20%), while the use of the driving lane by pedestrians differs greatly (18–35% Hasnerstraße to 0–1% Kettenbrückengasse).

A significant difference between the two streets is the percentage of cyclists on Sundays/holidays, which is 20–23% in Kettenbrückengasse and 44–61% in Hasnerstraße. Hasnerstraße is a main bicycle route and designed as a “cycling friendly” street. This means that it can be used by cyclists throughout—mostly with priority—while the route for cars is prevented with physical barriers (modal filters) and one-way traffic regulations. Hasnerstraße has many trees planted along its entire length, with cars parked crosswise in between, resulting in a lower barrier effect between the sidewalk and the lane. The cars park partially on the sidewalk and reduce the sidewalk width. The bi-directional driving lane is approximately 7 m wide, allowing cars to pass pedestrians. In the year 2019, Hasnerstraße was part of a programme initiated by the city called “cool streets”, where tactical urbanism elements were used in several streets during summer time. This means that no motorized traffic was allowed on the street. Instead, public space was used for playing and spending time outside, accompanied by temporary furniture and cooling measures. Thus, the residents had experience with an alternative use of the street. Kettenbrückengasse, on the other hand, is a one-way street with a narrower lane and cycling in both directions, without trees and with longitudinal parking lanes to the left and right of the lane (see Figs. 7.2 and 7.4).

7.3.2 Traffic Counting Pop-Up Bike Lanes

For the four pop-up bike lanes, the frequency of use by cyclists, including the relief effect of any existing bike infrastructure, was counted on a weekday (Mon–Fri) and on a weekend (Sat or Sun) in June. With a third survey in August, we monitored the effects of habituation and of adjustments. The survey days and weather conditions are listed in Table 7.4. The survey was conducted as a manual traffic count with counting boards. The survey period was from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. each day.

Table 7.4 Survey dates and weather conditions of pop-up bike lanes

Table 7.5 shows the total values of traffic counts and Fig. 7.13 shows share of cyclists using pop-up bike lanes compared to existing parallel routes. The two parallel routes to Hörlgasse have only been surveyed in August, and therefore there is only one comparison.

Table 7.5 Cycling volumes on pop-up bike lanes

Fig. 7.13

Usage ratio of pop-up bike lanes (Hörlgasse corridor was only surveyed in August)

In absolute numbers, the pop-up cycling infrastructure on Praterstraße (1835 and 2549 cyclists, respectively, in June; 804 in August) and Wagramer Straße (1177 and 2429 cyclists, respectively, in June; 2222 in August) was used the most, followed by Lassallestraße (521 and 1605 cyclists, respectively, in June; 788 in August). The usage of the pop-up bike lane on Hörlgasse was significantly lower (339 in June as well as in August).

The usage share of the pop-up bicycle infrastructure was the highest on Wagramer Straße, at just under 90% in August. The share of use in Praterstrasse and Lassallestrasse was around 30–40%, the one in Hörlgasse (in relation to the corridor) being 25%. With increasing cyclist frequency, we observed an increasing share of use of the pop-up bike lane, i.e., the more cyclists rode on the very narrow existing bike lane, the more switched to the temporary bike infrastructure. The utilization rate of the pop-up bike lane by outbound bike traffic on Lassallestraße (between Venediger Au and Vorgartenstraße) ranged from 25% (Wednesday) to 39% (Saturday).

The pop-up bike lane in Hörlgasse was the longest (from Obere Donaustraße to Universitätsstraße), the latest to be implemented and the least frequently used (with an average of 26 cyclists per hour). It was the only one where there was no parallel dedicated cycling infrastructure in the same street before. Nevertheless, an average of 24% of the uphill cyclists in the corridor (Berggasse, Hörlgasse, Maria-Theresien-Strasse) still used the temporary bicycle infrastructure in Hörlgasse. However, due to the lack of physical separation, especially at the intersections, over 50% of the motor vehicles illegally used the pop-up bike lane for turning maneuvers.

Initially, there was criticism of insufficient marking of the entrances to the pop-up cycle lane at Wagramer Straße. By improving the ground markings, the usage rate was increased from 67% to almost 90%. The increase of pop-up bike lane users could also have a habituation effect, although this could not be observed in Praterstraße. With an average of 89% (inbound) and 92% (outbound) of usage rate, the pop-up bike lane on Wagramer Straße was used the most. It largely relieved the burden on the existing infrastructure, which was otherwise used jointly by pedestrians and cyclists in recreational and everyday traffic and was often overcrowded.

7.4 Analysis of Political Situation

Following the critical approach of Gartner (2016) and Cox (2020) for cycling infrastructure development, the implementation process and suspension of such infrastructure cannot be assessed entirely without looking at the political occurrences. The political situation at the time is described in this section according to Kingdon’s multiple streams theory (Kingdon 1995) to provide context and add to explaining the decisions around pop-up infrastructure in Vienna.

7.4.1 Problem Stream and Policy Stream

The problem stream deals with defining if a condition is seen as a problem that attracts political interest. Disasters and crises can play a major role in setting the agenda of a problem, although often they only intensify problematic conditions that have been developing for a longer time. The COVID-19 pandemic certainly presents such a crisis. Legal rules of safety distances of two meters between people and restrictions on public transport use have been implemented. Due to mandates to work from home and the closing of schools, people spent more time in their immediate surroundings, leading to increased walking and cycling rates. All of this made obvious the limited space for active mobility. As described in the introduction, the issue of street space allocation or rather the necessary redistribution in favor of walking and cycling has been discussed in academic and policy papers before. Nevertheless, the pandemic served as a trigger to start viewing the condition as an urgent problem that needs to be addressed.

The policy stream aims to find acceptable policy solutions for the problem. The likelihood of a policy solution to receive political consideration is increased by technical feasibility, resource adequacy, and value acceptability (Harris and McCue 2022). The technical feasibility of building separated cycle lanes and shared space streets has been proven by the (slow) extension of the cycling network and implementation of shared space in the past years. It is supported by legal regulations, policy documents of the city [see introduction and (MA 18 2014; MA 18 2015; MA 18 2018)], and the designated network of cycling main routes.⁶ The technical feasibility of introducing temporary infrastructures was also supported by the new amendment to the Road Code for creating temporary shared space streets.⁷ Examples of tactical urbanism projects in the past as well as earlier pop-up bike lanes in other cities also added to the technical feasibility. Berlin, for example, had produced a handbook (Senatsverwaltung für Umwelt 2020) on how to implement pop-up bike lanes quickly around the same time when Vienna opened its first pop-up bike lanes.

Concerning resource allocation, the budget for cycling infrastructure was quite limited in the past. The new coalition that formed in November 2020 announced to increase the annual budget for building cycling infrastructure by 20 million Euro (SPÖ Wien and NEOS Wien 2020). For the years before there are no official numbers on the cycling budget but the estimated values range between 6 and 7 million Euro.⁸ Since temporary infrastructure is less expensive than permanent constructions and the budget has been significantly increased afterwards, financial resources don’t seem to have played a crucial role in the process. However, the factor of value acceptability might have been more important and is connected to the political stream which will be discussed in the next section.

7.4.2 Political Stream

During the phase when pop-up bike lanes and temporary shared spaces have been installed, it was the campaign time of local elections in Vienna. The elections took place on October 11, 2020. From 2010 to 2020, there was a coalition between the social democrats (SPÖ, the party of the mayor) and the Green party. During that time, the city council for transport was led by members of the Green party and the period was marked by conflict over street space reallocation such as in the case of the redesign of Mariahilfer Straße as a combined pedestrian zone and shared space (Bartenberger and Sześciło 2016; Lankhorst 2020). While the Green councilors were in favor of creating more space for walking and cycling, SPÖ officials seemed to be concerned about the restriction of private cars. Voters seemed to be content with the government and the election results showed increased support for both parties in 2020 (SPÖ: 41.62%; + 2.03; Greens 14.80%; + 2.96%).⁹ However, there was a lower number of voters than in 2015 and looking at the total votes, SPÖ received 27,800 votes less, while the Greens received about 8700 more votes than in the 2015 elections. Nevertheless, after the elections in 2020, the government changed and SPÖ went into a coalition with the political party NEOS (“The New Austria and Liberal Forum”, liberal).

Prior to the implementation of pop-up bike lanes in Vienna, cycling lobby groups demanded a network of 130 km pop-up bike lanes for the city (Radlobby Wien 2020). But there was also heavy criticism. Conservative and right wing opposition parties (Die neue Volkspartei Wien Rathausklub, 2020; FPÖ Wien 2020) lamented “ideological games” and “car-hating”, referring to the reduction of car lanes from two lanes to one at Praterstraße. Motor clubs (ARBÖ 2020; ÖAMTC 2020) criticized the rapid implementation without citizen’s participation and feared congestion for car traffic. The Chamber of Commerce (Wirtschaftskammer Wien 2020) was worried about limited access for customers and delivery vehicles.

Members of the SPÖ also criticized the Greens heavily for installing the pop-up bike lanes and temporary shared space. We discuss this based on the example of the district council of Leopoldstadt (the 2nd district in Vienna). In the period before the elections, the local district council in Leopoldstadt was led by the Green party. Two of the pop-up bike lanes were located in that district, on Praterstraße and Lasallestraße. In June 2020, SPÖ members of the district council introduced a motion to end the pop-up bike lanes which was accepted by a majority—against the leading Green party (District Council Leopoldstadt 2020, p. 13–14). SPÖ Vienna published a press release arguing that pop-up bike lanes are “only campaigning of the Greens and do not serve sustainable transport policy”. They criticized that only single short-term projects were implemented without an overall plan and without public participation. However, in contradiction, they also discussed about Lasallestraße, saying that “there has been a majority resolution for expanding the bike lane for a long time—why was it not implemented yet?” (SPÖ Wien Rathausklub 2020). In media, the lead candidate of SPÖ in Leopoldstadt was quoted with the headline “the pop-up bike lanes need to be removed” and mentioned that the removal of parking places in favor of the bike lanes was problematic (kosmo.at 2020). After the elections, SPÖ took over the council for transport in Vienna and won the district mayor in Leopoldstadt. One month after the elections, the new councilor made headlines in boulevard media announcing that she will not implement pop-up bike lanes and stated that she is not planning on “making life hard for car drivers” (Pommer 2020). The conflict of reallocating space from cars to cycling infrastructure seems to be at the core of the actions.

The political situation is therefore seen as a major factor in the decision of suspending the temporary infrastructures in Vienna. Even though official strategy documents as well as resolutions of district councils ask for expanding the cycling network and providing more space for active mobility, decisions against pop-up bike lanes and temporary shared space have been made. Referring to the multiple streams framework of Kingdon (1995), in the first phase in Vienna, all three streams aligned in favor of installing pop-up bike lanes and opened the policy window—although the number and total length stayed well below that of other cities. With the change of government, political will was not given anymore. This led to the suspension of all temporary shared spaces and pop-up bike lanes, despite its success in attracting a considerable number of cyclists. This is contrary to the situation, e.g., in Sydney, where all three streams aligned, and pop-up bike lanes are considered a success and were announced to be upgraded to permanent infrastructure. The last change of government there occurred in recent times before the pandemic (Harris and McCue 2022).

7.5 Discussion

7.5.1 Temporary Shared Space Streets

Out of the different options of giving more space to pedestrians, the temporary shared space is the option that promised the least impact on car traffic and could be implemented under flexible conditions (time pressure, preliminary tests, etc.). In almost all the streets surveyed, there was not a lot of pedestrian traffic to begin with, and most streets don’t have lively ground floor commercial zones but are rather residential areas. All streets were still equipped with car parking lanes along the sides of the sidewalks, which posed a barrier for pedestrians to enter the driving lanes or cross to the other side of the street. No measures were taken to change the street design. The only change to the physical appearance was posting the traffic signs of “shared space” at the beginning of the streets. Some of the signs were stolen/not available anymore. Some of them were placed on the sidewalk and not well visible for drivers. There were no measures of tactical urbanism such as painted lines, placing bollards, seating, or planters in the streets.

It is not clear why authorities defined new criteria for the temporary shared space streets, whilst such criteria and success factors are already known and can be found, e.g., in the national guideline (FSV 2016). They include:

• Central location in the city

• High number of workplaces and ground floor areas of public interest

• Mixed use including restaurants and bars

• High number of pedestrians and low number of cars

• Public transport stops on street or close to street

• Active local residents or businesses.

The criterion of mixed ground floor use, which was intended to identify locations with potentially high pedestrian and crossing frequency, was hardly met in any case. The recommendations for street design furthermore underline the importance of design, saying that only a suitable design ensures high quality and safety of the shared space, and pointing out that “merely putting up the sign for shared space according to [the road code] is clearly not enough” (FSV 2016, p. 12). Yet this is what happened in the case of the temporary shared space zones in Vienna. In choosing the locations, the criteria recommended in official guidelines were not followed but rather arranged with district council leaders according to their interests.

Given this, the low use of temporary shared space streets by pedestrians and cyclists was not surprising. On the studied street sections of the temporary shared space, the majority of pedestrians walked only on the sidewalks. Higher numbers of pedestrians on the roadway could only be observed where there was a low volume of motor vehicle traffic or where there were existing designs such as modal filters or one-way traffic, lower barrier effects due to fewer parked motor vehicles or residents who had experienced tactical urbanism before. The highest number of pedestrians was observed in a shopping street, although 96% of the people were using the sidewalks. Higher shares of pedestrians in the car lanes were observed on streets with little car traffic (less than 5%) or high number of cyclists and streets that were part of “placemaking” initiatives in the past.

The fact that the approach of using shared space without any design elements was chosen instead of closing streets to cars completely shows the high value that decision makers still attribute to car infrastructure. We argue that this constitutes a negligence for what users (cyclists and pedestrians) need and is an example of the existing dominant regime that prioritizes motor traffic over pedestrians and cyclists (cf. Cox 2020).

7.5.2 Pop-Up Bike Lanes

The survey of pop-up bike lanes showed that temporary bike infrastructure is largely accepted by cyclists, with differences in the frequency of use due to local conditions (especially routing and road markings). Regarding the absolute number of cyclists, it must be taken into account that the surveys are sample counts on individual days, which can be dependent on weather conditions and other disruptive factors (such as construction sites, events). Compared to automated bicycle counter data, the lower count values in August (Praterstraße and Lassallestraße) correspond with the generally lower bicycle traffic volumes on the counting days in August (Frey et al. 2020; Nast Consulting 2020).

Differences in adoption rates of pop-up bike lanes can be attributed to different characteristics. Pop-up bike infrastructure seems to be better accepted by cyclists when the existing bicycle infrastructure is congested or inadequate and the pop-up bike infrastructure is easily accessible, visible, and subjectively safe. On the other hand, it seems to be less accepted by cyclists if there is a good, parallel existing infrastructure as well as no or a poor connection in the beginning and end (as at Lassallestraße). Usage is also lower when it is a detour compared to existing bike infrastructure (Hörlgasse) or it offers a low sense of safety at and between intersections due to a lack of structural separation (Praterstraße, Hörlgasse, Lassallestraße). An increase in the frequency of use of the pop-up bike infrastructure can be expected over a certain habituation period, as many people first have to discover the new infrastructure and adopt it in their route choice. Accordingly, it is important to advertise the pop-up bike infrastructure and provide local signage to make it easier to find. There seems to be a self-reinforcing effect (especially observed on Praterstraße): the more people use the pop-up bike infrastructure, the more cyclists dare to switch from the existing infrastructure to the pop-up bike lane as well. This could be an indication that many people do not know or are unsure that the orange markings and construction site beacons represent bicycle infrastructure or whether they are allowed to use it. Other than a press conference by the city councilor to introduce the first pop-up bike lane, there was no campaign to advertise them.

We showed that the pop-up bike lanes that have been installed in Vienna were highly used. Kraus and Koch (2021) looked at 20 European cities (including Vienna) that introduced such infrastructure and analyzed the impact on cycling rates. They conclude that the policy increased cycling between 11 and 48% on average, compared with the period 13 months before introducing the measure.

In contrast to the temporary shared space streets, the pop-up bike lanes were effective in redistributing space from cars (driving lanes and parking lanes) as well as in attracting users. Even though their design showed some flaws, they seem to have catered to the needs of cyclists significantly more than the temporary shared spaces. This difference might be attributed to the fact that infrastructure on cycling main routes lie in the competence of the city councilor (who was more willing to challenge the car-oriented status quo) and don’t need to be negotiated with the district levels.

The pop-up bike lanes provided safe cycling infrastructure quickly and inexpensively and enabled to test the impact of reducing capacity in motor vehicle traffic. Nevertheless, they have been highly controversial in the media and politics and were subsequently suspended after a few months. This can be explained with the political situation at that time, i.e., the timing during campaigns before the local elections.

Even though the temporary infrastructure has been removed, there is a positive outlook that might have been supported by the struggle with pop-up bike lanes. Vienna built pop-up bike lanes in streets where a permanent redesign of the road section was planned, but the final design has not been agreed on yet. While none of the Viennese pop-up bike lanes were transformed to permanent infrastructure for cycling so far, there have been announcements to expand the existing cycle paths on Praterstraße and Lassallestraße in fall 2022 as part of the largest cycling infrastructure construction program in the city so far.¹⁰

7.5.3 Limitations

The chosen survey methods come with a set of limitations. Using traffic counts, we could only observe the numbers of cyclists and pedestrians, and with the video recordings also interactions between travelers. Resource and time constraints led to a low sample size that is limiting the robustness and validity of results. Also, no conclusions are drawn about the effect of pop-up bike lanes on overall cycling rates in Vienna.

Although the survey results have been combined with an analysis of the political situation, other seemingly important aspects could not be included in the study. This refers for example to the attitudes of people using the infrastructure or attitudes of people who felt limited by the new infrastructure (e.g., motorists). This might be relevant especially considering the political stream. However, the direct observational methods can provide a view that is more likely to show a “revealed preference” compared to individual interviews and other qualitative methods that have been used in different chapters of this book. We therefore believe that the Vienna case and traffic count methods complement those analyses in drawing a broader picture.

7.6 Conclusion

The case of temporary shared space streets in Vienna shows two things. First that the location and design of street space matter. Neither have known success criteria been followed in choosing where to install shared spaces, nor was the street design changed according to its new function. Priority was given to preserve car access and parking. It came to no surprise that these infrastructures largely failed to attract pedestrians and cyclists and were suspended. Second, the choice of measure and resulting infrastructure are a manifestation of social-political relationships. As Cox put it: “Implementation that ignores the safety or the basic requirements of users is not simply a problem of adequacy but is an outworking of power structures: visible implementation of the disregard of its (potential) users by providers”. (Cox 2020, p. 28). In the case of temporary shared spaces, the disregard of pedestrians and cyclists is confronted with the continuous high estimation of car users. The implementation also showed that distribution of competences resulted in complicated negotiation processes between city and district levels, which can give rise to additional power struggles. Additionally, the decisions of authorities and government are non-transparent to researchers and the public which makes it difficult to analyze the decision criteria.

In contrast to shared space streets, pop-up bike lanes were able to attract high numbers of cyclists. Judging from the indicator of cycling volumes and share of cyclists choosing pop-up bike lanes instead of existing infrastructure, they could have been seen as a success. Nevertheless, they were removed after few months. In terms of the tactical urbanism approach of build-measure-learn (Lydon and Garcia 2015), Vienna seems to have failed on the learning part. The two examples of temporary infrastructure for active mobility show that the success of tactical urbanism schemes not only depends on design and adoption by users but also political factors. Maybe even more so if the measures are applied in a top-down manner from the government. Political conflict needs to be considered, especially in times before upcoming elections. In Vienna, initially all three streams of problem, policy and politics (Kingdon 1995) aligned in favor of temporary infrastructure for active mobility, but due to conflict during campaign time and the following change of government, the political stream was redirected and all temporary infrastructure was suspended at an early stage.

While the situation in Vienna presents a lost opportunity for change in terms of permanently redistributing road space for active mobility, the case and findings of this study could help future tactical urbanism initiatives and policy actors to think more strategically in terms of assessing the political situation and looking for policy windows where streams align.