Is 900 Years Sustainability?

Anyone interested primarily in our work scoping out tours can skip this one. On the other hand, an evening spent with a community celebrating the 900th anniversary of the founding of their parish may offer a perspective on sustainability that we in America are incapable of appreciating. Many of our friends in this village and the surrounding area can trace their family's histories in these towns back much farther than the founding of the United States.

The church in Nussbach, Austria.

When I was 16, I was given an opportunity that opened up the world to me. My high school in a small desert town in California had hosted American Field Service exchange students from abroad for several years. I was the first student from Hemet to be accepted by the national AFS committee to go overseas. I spent a summer about an hour east of Salzburg in the village of Sierning, living in a large country inn that was built in 1313 (www.forsthof.at). It is operated by a family that has owned it for over 150 years. My exchange "brother" has long been married to Maria from the nearby village of Nussbach, so when we were teenage boys he somehow had us spending a lot of time there with her family and their neighbors. I came away from that summer with as many friends from Maria's village as from the one I lived in. One of those teenage friends has been the city manager of Nussbach for years.

Nussbach rests on a stream in the Alpine foothills.

So every visit back to Austria, we see a lot of old friends from both places. One evening early in this trip, a collection of us was gathered in the inn my exchange family runs. Someone mentioned that it was too bad Emily and I would miss the 900th Anniversary party for Nussbach the following Saturday night. Eventually we were talked into adjusting our schedule and spending that evening in Nussbach. Of course, we were hosted by Maria's brother Hans Staudinger and his wife Doris. The view from their house on a ridge above the village includes some of the highest peaks in Upper Austria.

The courtyard of the vierkanthof.

A side note for the planners and preservationists: The Staudinger's house is in an agricultural preserve. The brand new structure is on the site where a much older "vierkanthof" (four-sided court) farmstead that Hans inherited stood. The rules in the district are that any replacement structure must be in kind and in situ. So a stunning modern vierkanthof stands where a ruin once was falling in. It is still built around a courtyard, with the original huge paving stones intact. It has the most modern furnishing and fixtures imaginable, but every room has traditional touches like dining nooks and warming ovens. It still is part barn, with 386 horses in residence in the building. One stall houses a single horse to meet the agricultural use requirement. The remaining horses power Hans' Porsche Carrera 4S.


Hans and I and some other teenage idiots climbed a few of the peaks we can see from his house back when we knew we would live forever. We could hitch a ride to the train station in Kirchdorf, get off at the end of the line in Hinterstoder, and start walking. With a student membership in the Austrian Alpine Club, it cost about one American dime to stay in a hut. Twice that for a bowl of goulasch with some bread for dinner. We would sleep on big platform beds and get up in the dark with all the other adventurous sorts and scatter through the mountains. You can still walk from Croatia to Monte Carlo carrying just your basic clothing and a sleeping sheet, staying in a different hut every night.

But back to the celebration. We arrived in Nussbach just before things were starting off. The city was closed off by the firemen, who were driving shuttle vans from parking areas on the two entrances to town to the huge tent set up for the event. A bathroom trailer was set up on a slanted hillside outside a side door in the tent. The door to the bathrooms was on one side of the trailer, which was several inches lower than the far side. That meant going up the steps felt like climbing an Alp, and coming down felt like falling off one. Late in the evening, it was almost more entertaining to watch those who had sampled too much Nussbach beer navigate the bathroom steps than it was to listen to the mayor's speech.

Emily and I with the Staudingers.

There were probably 500 people at this event, more of them in traditional dress than not. Emily got to wear her new dirndl from Munich. The governor of Upper Austria was there, but otherwise very few non-locals. A large crew of young people from the town served dinners from a short menu, and the beverages flowed. Kids ran about, the band played, teenagers made eyes, conversations were shouted, and pandemonium reigned. A 900 centimeter (9 meter) strudel created by a small army of local women was carried in on a 30-foot plank by a small army of their husbands in lederhosen.

The ten or twelve movies and slideshows were mostly in High German, but almost all of the people at the microphone doing introductions, giving speeches, singing, or doing the skits spoke the local dialect. I've spent a year of my life in this part of the world, but when they are deep into the local lingo I only just get the gist. In other words, I knew the person talking while he showed slides of buildings was speaking about historic preservation, revering our old buildings, and the dates involved in the construction and additions to those buildings. But not much more than that. Emily has a great understanding of German, but was also pretty lost. Still, should it be any other way? Of course not. Living local for 900 years has served them well. This is their community, their anniversary celebration, and it MUST be conducted in their language. So we sat, and smiled, and loved every minute of it as they basked in their transition from subsistence farming to hi-tech employment.

A high point, as he intended it to be, was the mayor's speech. I can't tell you much about most of his talk because it was in dialect. But he spoke very slowly and clearly and with great dramatic effect for his closing statement. All 15 of them. The first one was something like "Und so, meine Damen und Herren, Ich lassen Sie 900 Jahre von Nussbach!....." (And so people, I give you 900 years of Nussbach....dramatic pause) The crowd clapped, whistled, and roared, then turned their attention back to their conversations.....and the mayor began to talk again. A few minutes later he again entered the dramatic mode of speech with "Here's to 900 years of Nussbach!....." And the well-trained crowd clapped, whistled, and roared. And once more he picked up his speech. Repeat this cycle a few times and the crowd quits listening. Then they start shouting their own conversations while the mayor talks. Then they quit clapping when they are supposed to. Then the heckling starts. Then relatives begin screaming at their drunken uncles for being rude to the mayor. It became a hilarious, drawn-out verbal brawl at the family reunion. Finally, yes meine Damen und Herren, finally, the mayor signed off and abandoned the podium. THEN the crowd responded with a last deafening ovation and the servers jumped to their tasks of pushing wine and strudel through the crowd. It was one of the best evenings of this trip.

I rarely go back to the town in Southern California I grew up in. It's not there any more in any recognizable form. My childhood friends have all scattered to the winds. But the 500 good folks from Nussbach and Sierning in the tent that night? Those are my people.

Doris with flowers and Hans holding the frame, receiving an award for excellence in business.

Smoking in Europe

As we walk around and explore cities here in Europe, my dad and I have noticed a far greater number of people smoking than you see in the average city in America.  Many of the young people here smoke, too, which means they picked up the habit long after the health risks were exposed.

Growing up in Davis, smoking was never something I was exposed to much.  There are strict non-smoking ordinances in place in the entire city prohibiting people from smoking in public buildings or on transit.  In fact, Davis' ordinances were the first of their kind in the entire country.  In Europe, it's completely normal for people to smoke in restaurants and bars, or standing immediately outside office buildings.

It's odd that a continent that is light years ahead of us in terms of sustainability is so far behind in this issue of public health.

In restaurants, we have been seated indoors eating when longtime friends have dropped by to sit with us.  They know we don't smoke, but they pull out their cigarettes and light up right at the table anyway, often making no attempt to direct the smoke away from us.  Really ruins your appetite.

One friend at a crowded beer hall kept nudging his ashtray over in front of my dad, in order to clear the table space in front of him.  When it got full, he called a waitress over and proceeded to dump the ashes and cigarette butts out all over her tray that she was serving food and drinks on.  She looked absolutely livid, but kept her temper and simply turned on her heel to go deal with the reeking mess.

In Munich, there must be some kind of no-smoking rule in the train station, because we did see designated "Smoking Areas".  Not very effective, though: a yellow painted rectangle on the floor doesn't contain the smoke well at all.

In Gent, we went to an Irish Pub for lunch with a friend of ours, and the restaurant had a "smoke-free" entrance if you wanted to avoid the cigarettes.  It was a set of double doors that led down a hallway into the courtyard, which was full of people smoking at tables while they ate their lunch.

It's impossible to walk a block on the sidewalk without encountering at least a handful of people standing outside on their smoke break.  We've seen parents walking down the street with their toddler on one hand and a cigarette in the other.  There's no escaping it.

I've seen only a few anti-smoking advertisements in all of Europe, and they were in Germany or Austria.  It seems to be a battle the governments here aren't concerned with fighting.

Vienna Bike Rides

The weather turned on us by the time we got to Vienna, so the bicycle rides represented in this post consist of:

1. Two short rides on our CityBike rentals, split by at least an hour while we watched the bikes get soaked in a hammering downpour while we had cakes and coffee in a café.
2. A 30 second rental half an hour after we turned the first pair of bikes in, just to verify that we could rent another bike the same day and return it within an hour at no cost.
3. A ride we borrowed from UC Davis Professor Mont Hubbard, who visited Vienna earlier this summer and took a long ride into the country at our suggestion.
4. A drive by visit to the Bike Kuche (Kitchen) located in Vienna.

A Mozart and a Mozart-ess selling tickets to the opera.

The sky was threatening when we first decided to rent from CityBike at the famous Stadtopern that is a must-visit for tourists. In the summertime, the regular theater company leaves Vienna for two months to mix some light touring with holiday for the actors. While they leave the opera house vacant, the area around it suddenly populates with clipboard-carrying costumed Mozarts and princesses selling tickets to an attractive alternative. There are nightly shows that are basically a sampler platter of highbrow stuff well suited to a peasant like me: a few arias, some opera bits, orchestra pieces, and classic Viennese comedy sketches. You can even get standing places you claim by looping a scarf over your section of railing. These are quite cheap, and let you unobtrusively tiptoe away if you would rather go find a loud punk band in a cheap dive bar.

Anyway, as described by Emily in the Vienna Bike Rental post, the system is not hard once you fumble through the initial registration. Unfortunately for us, that registration process consumed half an hour that we could have used to ride bikes. Our first goal was to play with the counter-flow bike lanes that are all over the one-way streets in the city center. They were a breeze to use, and allowed us to take short cuts not available to cars. Without fail, drivers respected our right to ride against the flow, raising our comfort level. The core of Vienna has a messy maze of narrow streets, many of them one-way and most of them clogged with cars parked half on the sidewalks and half on the streets. The ability of a cyclist to cut directly through this area riding against the flow of traffic on one-way streets makes biking the most attractive option for getting around the city center.

Bicyclists are allowed to ride counter-flow on most one-way streets.

Hiding from the rain in a cafe.

Not five minutes into our rental, a cloudburst began soaking the streets and anyone out upon them. We ducked into a café we knew had wireless service and settled in at a window table to wait it out. That means 45 minutes of our first (free) hour was spent watching our poor bicycles sitting in the rain two feet away.

Once it cleared up, we used our handy bandanna to dry the seats and wandered aimlessly around the city core for a while. Eventually we dismounted at the big pedestrian zone, and walked the bikes to the plaza in front of St. Stefan’s. It took a while to find the CityBike kiosk, though, because it is off a rear corner of the cathedral, partially obscured by a hedge. Finessing the bikes into the locking mechanisms consumed more time. With experience that will come more easily. But we can say that running at it full speed and using a hard slam don’t work as well as a gentle nudge at the correct angle.

The CityBike kiosk at Stephansdom.

We immediately tried to rent bikes again, but were blocked out of the system because we had just used a free hour. This feature makes it impossible to string multiple free hours together for a longer rental at no cost. That’s understandable, since the purpose of this system is to eliminate short vehicle trips and provide access for visitors. It does that beautifully, as we were able to use the system again half an hour later and pull a bike out of the Mozart-rich kiosk next to the Opera House.

Let’s contrast this bicycle access to our experience driving into Vienna with our car. I know the city fairly well, and thought I would be tricky and navigate to the neighborhood inside the outer ring and northwest of St. Stefan’s cathedral. Unfortunately, when I crossed the Danube on the way in from Georg’s I took a bridge too far (slap me). This put me outside the outer ring, and I compounded my error by turning away from the city center when I thought I was already inside it. After half a mile under heavy tail-gating pressure to get off the street, we came upon an underground parking garage. We found a space, and surfaced at the top of the stairs completely disoriented under a cloudy sky. We did walk off in approximately the right direction, but only got to the city core after help from a local, a long walk, and a streetcar ride.

View of the Danube from an upstairs window at Uferhaus.

The last bike rental I’ll discuss here we have second-hand from UC Davis Professor Mont Hubbard, who attended a conference in Vienna early this summer. I had suggested to Mont that he ride out to Uferhaus, a restaurant that sits directly on the banks of the Danube about 20 miles downstream from Vienna. It is owned by Georg Humer, a friend since 1973 who did an exchange in my home town a few years after I went to live in Upper Austria with AFS. I got the Sound of Music and Georg got a blistering wasteland in the California desert. His website is at www.uferhaus.at

There is a 13 mile long island in the Danube that extends the whole distance of metropolitan Vienna. Mont took his private all-day rental bike from his hotel out to that island, and rode downstream all the way to the southeastern tip. Then he crossed to the north side of the Danube, but there encountered a gate across the bike path. (Georg later surmised that the path had been closed due to recent flooding.) He was pondering what to do when another cyclist appeared who was attempting the same route. In a fine example of post cold-war cooperation, the Russian cyclist left his bike and climbed the fence. Mont handed the bikes across then climbed over himself.

Next Mont rode onto an abandoned rail line atop a levee that has been converted to a riding and hiking trail through a national park along the river. Fifteen miles later he was sitting on the patio at Uferhaus chatting with Georg. At the end of a great long meal, Georg loaded Mont and his bike into his van and delivered them back to the hotel in Vienna. Mont said it was the best experience of his week-long trip.

Mont was the third Davis resident I have sent out to Uferhaus on bicycles in the past few years. This is something we can easily do with the more adventurous clients when (not if) Vienna is included on the tours. The return trip to Vienna does not need to rely on Georg's good will, either. You can take the train, assuming the post-meal doldrums have one disinclined to ride back the 20 miles. There is a ferry that crosses the river from Georg's restaurant to the village on the other side of the Danube, where a short ride gets one to the train station and a quick trip back to Vienna. This bike path system Mont used extends on both sides of the Danube the full length of Austria, from Germany to Slovakia.

The entrance to Vienna's Bike Kitchen.

Because of the constant rain that set in after our first day, our final bicycle related activity was not by bike. On our way back west towards Switzerland we stopped by the Bike Kitchen near the museum quarter in Vienna. This radical, pro tolerance, feminist cooperative/repair shop/café is in an unremarkable location that seemed pretty obscure. Then we noticed that all the half-basement windows in one building on the street in question were plastered with stickers and slogans. They were closed, but the bike rack out front had a bunch of home-welded creations that would be at home in Peter Wagner’s collection in Davis. See Peter's pictures for examples. We’ll come back another day for a discussion with these folks.

In all, I was very surprised at the advances in the bikeway system in Vienna, and the different bike rental options. The CityBike system is wonderful for the casual tourist cyclist, and there are several longer term rental options. CityBike can be zero cost if all you do is take short rides. The bikeway system is wonderful, and drivers show a high level of respect for cyclists. This is a city to visit and ride in.

Vienna Bike Rental System

CityBikes lined up near the Vienna Opera House.

On our last day in Vienna, we got up early and went into the city to try out the CityBike rental system. It was early enough that we could park the car on the street in the Altstadt, and parking was free for the weekend.

The CityBike system runs out of a series of kiosks around Vienna. There are over 50 within the city. You can pick up a map at the tourist office that shows the locations of the various kiosks, or you can download an iPhone app that will show you the locations along with the availability of bicycles and parking spaces at each one.

Dad taking the first stab at registering.

We walked to the kiosk near the Vienna Opera house, conveniently located next to an entrance/exit to the subway system, and a big parking garage. There was a machine there, and about 20 posts to park bikes at. There were 5 or 6 bikes there when we arrived.

The machine let us choose a language (German, English, French, or Spanish), and had a button to look at a map of the kiosks. We then selected our method of payment--credit card, Austrian bank card, or Tourist Card. With a credit or bank card, you can only check out one bicycle at a time per card. You can purchase a Tourist Card at the Tourist Office that allows you to take two bikes out of the system. Having the machine work in English was nice, but the instructions on the card reader remained in German, and we struggled to understand what it was asking at times.

Struggling with the machine.

Dad put his credit card into the machine, and it prompted us to register because we were new users. The touch-screen was rather difficult to use, and Dad gave up after a few minutes because his fingers hurt. The screen liked me better, so I gave it a shot. It timed us out once because we were trying to take too many pictures, and then I messed up and had to start over, but we eventually got Dad registered. You create a password when you sign up that you use to access the system later.

Once we got through the registration process, it gave us the option to start renting bikes. We were shown a diagram of which of the numbered posts at the kiosk had bikes available to rent and we could select one. We looked over the bikes that were there and made our selection, and the computer freed that bike from its post and we could pull it out.

We then repeated the process on my card to create an account for me, and checked out a second bike. All of the bikes were equipped with baskets, but the baskets were plastered with flapping advertisements that screamed "I'm a tourist, and this is a rental!" They also had mechanisms to lock the front wheel, but had no lights.

Just as we got on our bikes and started to ride, the sky opened up and it began pouring rain. We ducked into a cafe to hide, and watched our newly rented bikes get wet through the window while we had coffee and wrote postcards home. When it started to let up, we got back on the bikes and rode through the old city for a bit. Without consulting the map, we guessed that there would probably be another kiosk near St. Stephan's cathedral (there is one near just about every major landmark in the city, along with many other locations) so we set off for the church. We had to walk our bikes when we got close, because the plaza was thick with pedestrians.

When we found the second kiosk, it was simple to turn the bikes in. You just have to slide a bar on the frame into a slot on a free kiosk post, and then a light turns green and you're done. Well, it's simple unless you're us, I suppose. It took us several tries to get the bar all the way into the slot, and was a rather finicky process. Finesse is required over force, and a little patience, but it would be frustrating if you watched the bus you wanted to be on drive away as you were still struggling to turn the bike in.

If you stop for coffee or lunch and there isn't a kiosk nearby, you can lock your bike's wheel so it's not easily portable. You rotate the front wheel 90 degrees, turn a key in its slot near the front wheel, and push the metal flap down so it fits around an arm of the fork on the front wheel. Then remove the key, and the bike is locked. It will only go in circles, unless the front of the rather heavy bike is carried. To unlock it, you simply put the key back in and turn it, and the flap pops back up.

Once you're registered, checking out bikes is fast and easy. You just insert the card you registered with, type in your password, and select a bike.

The system is designed to encourage short rentals, and discourage people from checking out a bike all day long. When you pull a bike out of a kiosk, the first hour is free. That means if you ride from St. Stephan's to Schoenbrunn Palace, which is less than an hour, and turn the bike back in to the kiosk at Schoenbrunn when you get there, you don't pay. Then you can tour the palace for as long as you like, and when you come out check out another bike. You then start another free hour of riding time, and so on. If you keep the bike out for more than an hour, the price rises steeply. Two hours is 1 Euro for each commenced hour. Three hours is 2 Euros for each commenced hour. So in one hour, your rental fee jumps from 2 Euros to 6. 4 to 120 hours is 4 Euros for each commenced hour, and beyond that you pay a flat rate of 600 Euros--the same price charged for a lost bicycle.

We did find out that the system thwarts people trying to 'hopscotch' bikes across the city by just checking in and out at each kiosk along the way so they always stay under the one hour mark. At St. Stephan's when we tried to check out another set of bikes just to see how the system worked once we were registered, we encountered a ten-minute waiting period before our rental time would reset to 0.

The bikes appeared to be well maintained, for the most part. When we looked at the bikes on Friday, one of the cycles in the kiosk had a flat tire. By the time we came back the next morning, it had been either taken for repair, or fixed on the spot.

Vienna's CityBike system, similar to Munich's DeutscheBahn system that we explored earlier, was an absolutely wonderful system for tourists exploring the city or residents commuting across town. It's not a viable option for larger tour groups, though, because the odds of finding 20 bikes at a single kiosk are low and the time involved in registering 20 separate credit cards would make the whole endeavor a nightmare. But for a casual user taking short trips, it's absolutely free.

Electric Cars, Utilities, and Community CO2 Efforts

Something very interesting appeared in front of the inn where I lived during my high school exchange. An electric car. A pure electric. Moreover, a FIAT 500 with its original powerplant yanked out. In fact, at this time this is the only pure electric car in Austria that is in private hands. The others are running around owned by utilities, car companies, or research institutes.

The oldest son of my exchange brother Reinhold is a car guy. He’s driven a classic Porsche 911 for years, and hopes to get his hands on a well-maintained or restored 356 “bathtub” Porsche. He’ll probably go through our friend in Newport Beach who builds engines, restores whole cars, and brokers deals in 356s all the time.

Yet here is Reinhold Jr. admitting that he finds some joy in driving slow and milking the last volt out of the power system in this little FIAT. Counter to that ethic, though, was his participation in an electric car race in the large city of Linz on Friday ten days ago. We would have given up a lot to see this event, and maybe he could have used the pit crew skills I acquired washing windshields at Le Mans. Alas, that was the day we were checking out the bikeway and bike rental systems in Vienna.

But more interesting is the word from Reinhold Jr. that this event is sponsored by the very progressive electric utility that serves the state of Upper Austria and the capital city of Linz. Their Director and Reinhold Jr. were scheduled to film a piece for Austrian TV about electric vehicles last weekend.

This utility has made a big push into solar electric and wind energy, and played a major role in the huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that Linz has achieved through programs targeted both at industrial plants and residential energy.

We will expand on this post in the future as we find out who won the race, maybe get copies of the TV show, and gather information about the emissions reductions targets, programs, and numbers.

Stay tuned.

Salzburg Fire Marshal Interview

This meeting was the product of a chance encounter in the courtyard of Hohensalzburg, the big fortress that has stood above the city of Salzburg since 1200 a.d. Its looming presence seems to have been effective, since the only two incidents of aggression I am aware of are 1) a mob of angry farmers who stood in the fields to the south a few hundred years ago and yelled up at the high stone walls then dispersed, and 2) a single US bomb that fell directly through the dome of the cathedral in the last months of WWII. It took 15 years during the hard times that followed to rebuild the church where Mozart was the organist.

One of the Salzburg Fire Department's miniature fire trucks.

Anyway, three years ago I was in the courtyard with friends from California when a tiny diesel fire truck came chugging up the pedestrian pathway from the old city below. Since I had recently worked on a U. S. EPA-funded project for the Local Government Commission where narrow streets and small fire vehicles were at the core of our efforts, I grabbed my tape measure to get the dimensions.

While I was doing this the two firemen aboard opened the rear and helped a women in a nice evening dress out, followed by two men in suits. I overheard them commenting on a tourist sizing up a souvenir, so stepped over for an explanation. After I told them why the small truck interested me, one of the men said, “Ach! You mean narrow streets! I’m on the Salzburg Town Council and we have this same issue. You need to talk with my friend here the Fire Marshal.” So the Fire Marshal and I exchanged cards, made a date to talk later on my next trip over, and they proceeded to the reception they were attending on one of the terraces overlooking the old city. I imagine the taxi service the fire truck provided was logged as an “inspection” of the fire access route up to the fortress.

Inside the rear of the miniature fire truck.  The vehicle holds 4 men in the back, and two in the front.

This week, we finally got the chance to sit down with the Fire Marshal. After Emily and I had our Monday meetings in Munich, we grabbed our rental car and a quick lunch, rushed out to Petershausen to load up everything we had left at the Hausmaninger’s, and drove to Salzburg.

Fire Department headquarters is an impressive building, with two sets of ten doors facing a street on the “back” side of the huge rock the fortress sits on. Several stories of administrative offices and living quarters are on top of the garages, with more structures to the rear of a huge courtyard. After some confusion about getting through the security door we were greeted, and offered drinks in the meal room and kitchen complex until the Fire Marshal arrived.

In the Chief’s office, our discussion was fairly brief. We stayed focused on the street dimension issue and the strategies they have developed to deal with the sometimes quite narrow streets they have. Some passages are so narrow that the small truck I measured three years ago and some of the other trucks have dense wooden bumper boards on the sides.

The Salzburg Fire Department is one of only six (that is not a typo) “professional” fire departments in this entire country of nearly 8 million residents. Only the larger towns of Vienna, Graz, Linz, Salzburg, Innsbruck, and Klagenfurt have full-time funded staff. All the rest are volunteer departments operating on a small stipend basis. A skeleton crew (sometimes only a single person) staffs the station and the rest of the department members respond as needed. Salzburg, and I presume the other large city departments, does have trained volunteers that are called to service at times. I know from discussions with fire department volunteers in the Upper Austrian village of Sierning where I have spent so much time that serving as a volunteer is considered to be a great honor. I think the only service that comes close to this in the States is the National Guard, but I’m sad to think it does not carry the same level of respect.

One of the department's smallest fire trucks.

Street widths for the whole town are mapped in a system that codes access routes for different width vehicles when a fire is called in. So an initial fire call may trigger a response by one of the narrower trucks directly through small passageways. If it is determined that a ladder truck is necessary, that larger vehicle’s on-board information system will direct the driver to take a longer path on streets the truck fits through.

The fire access route up the pedestrian pathway is narrow and slow, and large trucks won’t fit at all. On a summer afternoon during the Mozart Festival (which seems to run from the first of July to June 30th) that route is completely clogged with tourists. So a couple of unusual strategies improve fire response up at the castle:

First, two Fire Department employees live in apartments up in the fortress, and at least one of them must be present at all times. Second, a large cache of fire equipment is staged in a room in the fortress to reduce the load on the small truck and eliminate multiple trips up and down. So by the time the smaller truck arrives with a crew of six, one or two fire personnel will already be on the attack with the equipment stored on site.

As with our Uniform Fire Code and other documents, there are national standards in Austria for street widths and set-up space. I will give more detail about this when we decipher the German-only national code (TVRB Technische Regulieren). We did learn, for example, that on new streets all access routes are to be a minimum of 3.5 meters wide. This is under 12 feet, considerably less than the standard that is often rigidly demanded in the States. 4 meters are required between or around the edge of structures, and they seek 6 meters clear for access to new buildings. (This is nearly identical to our 20 foot clear standard.) The only exception to this is for the temporary booths set up for Salzburg’s famous Christkindlmarkt, which has an extended schedule leading up to Christmas.

Soon the Fire Marshal had to go when most of the staff responded to a hotel fire near the Altstadt. We were turned over to an employee who gave us a verbal tour of the dozen or more fire vehicles (including one boat) that were in just one of the three garages at this complex.

As expected, these trucks are smaller than the typical US fire department fleet across the board. They tend to be specialized, but none has a single purpose. For example, one truck will carry the minimum fire response and first aid gear, but be designed to haul as many at ten personnel to a scene. Another may be devoted primarily to vehicle extraction equipment and supplies for injury treatment. A third will have a huge (and heavy) water tank, just a few people to run hoses, and little else.

There are two different sizes of water trucks. The large “pumper” has 2,000 gallons on board, and a dual-wheeled Sprinter van like our local FedEx driver has carries 1,000 gallons.
The small truck I first observed three years ago is a reduced-scale personnel hauler (6 passenger), with a minimum amount of water and gear aboard. Every effort is made to keep the weight and space required by the critical equipment this truck carries to a minimum. For example, there is no on-board pump to provide water pressure for the 50 gallon water tank the truck carries. Instead, an oversized SCUBA-like tank pressurizes the water tank with compressed air. Light and compact.

Here are some simple dimensions:

The Pinzgauer 6 passenger first response truck: 16 feet long including the 1 foot protrusion of the bumper-mounted winch, 83 inches feet tall, and 69 inches wide (84 inches to the outside of the folding mirrors).

The large ladder truck: Under 30 feet long, and just 84 inches wide without the mirrors. This was the largest truck on site, but it is a full foot narrower than the smallest we see in fire houses in the States.

Munich Bikeway Engineer Interview

Monday, August 23, 2010, 10:30 am

This was an information-packed but delightful time with a lead engineer in the bikeway system what we would call the public works department in Munich. He was informative, full of technical details, and concise. We collected a number of documents from him, some in English, and the rest needing only a bit of translation to pull out statistics. We also got links to online material, and a good contact in Copenhagen, Denmark, for future use.

Some basic facts to start with:

• 1,400 km of bikeways are planned in Munich.
• 1,200 km of that system is already in place.
• The last 200 km are in the planning and engineering stages.
• 85% of the streets in the city are limited to 30 km per hour speeds (19 MPH).
• On main routes, the focus is on getting separate bike lanes or paths instead of sharing space with cars.
• The quiet residential streets are considered to be the “muscles” of the bikeway system.
• The travel concept is to show route options off the busy major streets.

And some definitions and terminology for Munich:

• Bike lanes are painted on the street, as in the States.
• Bike paths are on the sidewalks in the street right-of-way.
• Bike roads are separated facilities, what we would call bike paths in the States.

Bike paths on the sidewalks have been built for the past 80 years, but cyclists have been moved into the street space in bike lanes for only the last 10 or 15 years. There is an understandable split opinion about which approach is better. Residents usually want bike paths on the sidewalks, as they feel safer on them. Engineers see the accident data, hampered visibility, and increased conflict points that bike paths bring and come down in favor of keeping bike traffic in structured and visible spaces on the street. Cyclists in bike lanes are more visible to drivers as they approach intersections. In fact, one bike path was removed entirely because of hazardous situations.

Where residents prefer bike paths but the engineers see potential problems, they may bring the bike path right to the curb adjacent to the street near the intersections. This increases the visibility of the cyclists without putting them in the street.

Counterflow riding is reduced with bike lanes in the street, because cyclists riding against oncoming traffic are forced into the vehicle lane to pass an oncoming cyclist, making them uncomfortable. Even with major efforts to improve connectivity, not all cyclists follow the routes provided for them. The whole bikeway network was redone at the Sendlingertor Platz just south of the old city recently. This is a very busy location with several secondary streets feeding into the primary 4-way intersection and big volumes of pedestrian, bicycle, bus, streetcar, and vehicle traffic. Even with the careful redesigning of the bikeway routes at Sendlingertor, including directional signs and colored asphalt in conflict areas, 10% of the cyclists in the bike lanes are riding against the flow of bike traffic.

This counterflow rider issue contributes to the bicycle accident problem citywide, and is getting more attention from city officials. Cyclists and right-turning vehicle accidents compose another big percentage of all bicycle accidents.

Counterflow bike traffic is designed into many one-way vehicle streets, especially in quiet residential areas. These streets usually get painted stripes and bicycle markings for the counterflow bike traffic. Bikes going in the direction of the vehicle flow are mixed into traffic, which is reasonable in slow speed areas. The bike lanes that are in many of these quiet residential streets are marked with dashed lines which indicates it is clearly reserved for the bikes. This means that vehicles may normally use that portion of the street, but must yield that space to a cyclist if one appears.

One additional complication is the requirement for “back side” traffic lights when counter flow bike traffic is on one-way streets that have lights for vehicles. But our observation after riding bikes on counterflow lanes is that no other bikeway feature improves connectivity so much. We talk about tipping the balance towards bikes, so opening hundreds of direct short cuts to cyclists while drivers circle the blocks makes a huge difference. More on this feature in other cities will follow.

One downside of all bike lanes is that many drivers view them as a convenient parking and loading zone, indifferent to the burden this places on cyclists who must then go around in traffic. An earlier post has our observations about an empty car blocking the bike lane so the driver could run into a nearby Starbucks.

A vehicle capacity analysis is often required for a solution that has the potential to impede traffic flow.

There are technical guidelines for street and bikeway features, similar to our MUTCD. And like our manual, the review and approval process for new devices and techniques can be years long. Still, there is a bit of informal experimentation going on, with less concern about liability than we seem to have in the States. As a result, they have introduced bike boxes to Munich.

There are cross sections with dimensions for urban streets in the manuals, but they offer little guidance for bikeway engineering.

Standards:

The standard width for bike lanes is 1.85 meters plus a 0.5 meter buffer next to parked cars. A 0.75 meter buffer is preferred.

There are two types of bicycle lanes: The normal lane is marked with a solid line which vehicles are not to cross. The “protected” lane is marked with a dashed line, indicating vehicles may cross into the bike lane but not when cyclists are present. Protected lanes may only be 1.25 to 1.5 meters wide, which is too narrow IF drivers leave only this little space on the street for cyclists. They are used when the street is under 7.5 meters in width.

A one-meter wide bike space marked only by a single dashed line is allowed near intersections, but the engineer we apoke with does not like this minimalist approach.

The preferred width for bike paths is 2.0 meters, with a minimum standard of 1.60 meters. These get a 0.50 meter buffer to vehicle traffic and a 0.75 buffer to parked cars. Care is taken to be sure a bike path does not deprive pedestrians of necessary sidewalk space. The national manuals have no specific standard for pedestrian travel width, just “enough” (literally). In Munich, engineers work towards a desired width of 4 meters, with a 2.5 meter minimum. He reported that 2.5 to 3 meters is common in Copenhagen.

There is also a 6 to 8 centimeter curb between pedestrians and cyclists in Copenhagen, which can trip pedestrians. In Munich a lower 1.5 cm bump is used. This allows handicapped people to use the curb as a guide to navigate, but can be a hazard for cyclists with wet fall leaves or a thin layer of snow on the ground.

The standard for parking aisles is 2 meters wide, considerably narrower than what we see in most cities in the States, including Davis. (Sacramento has quite a few streets marked with 7-foot parking aisles, just a bit wider than the Munich standard.)

The bottom line with the bikeway planners and engineers in Munich is that the purpose of the system they plan, build, and manage is to promote cycling. (I assume this was meant to imply that strict adherence to the standards and guidelines might have to step aside at times to advance this goal.)

Another approach to make cycling more appealing is to establish bike routes that are on quieter streets but run more or less parallel to busy streets. This is an ongoing project.

Link to additional resources coming soon.