Vienna hosts Velo-city 2013.

Vienna will host Velo City the premier international cycling planning conference. I presume this is so that delegates can study first hand how crap road design can be.

Here we are 500 meters form home this morning:

Note that the lights turn green for pedestrians cars and cycles at the same time. So right turning cars have to cross the pedestrian crossing while looking over their shoulder for bikes going straight coming down the bike lane. This is really hard in a car an so it does not happen and bikes get right hooked all the time.

Here we are after another 500m. Here cars travel from a 50kmph 3 lane one way road and have the same issue if they want to turn right but this time with a tram too.

If humans are to be allowed to drive cars then you can not expect them to get this right all the time so the cyclist or pedestrian is going to have to yield to the turning car. Some times car drivers do slow down (but not very often) and they do look properly but this of course only results in a horn from behind meaning that their attention is taken away from the important task that they are trying to do to the wanker behind them that needs to get to the next queue of traffic so they can wait there 2 seconds longer.

IMHO there is so much wrong in the human factor engineering of Vienna's roads. I do not have super computers to model traffic flow and light sequences or accurate traffic volume data and CAD drawings of roads so I do not pretend to be an expert. My skill set is more a Cycling version of Clarkson rant, so this will probably be the first in a series of posts as I download my anger to the Internet. I would love to offer constructive dialog about how cycling infrastructure could be improved but others do this much better than me.