When Leonore Gewessler hops on the underground trains and street-level trams that run like clockwork across the breadth of Vienna, she appreciates the ease, affordability and time she \u201cgets as a present\u201d instead of idling in traffic. But Austria\u2019s former climate and transport minister is also aware that cars still dominate the capital\u2019s streets. She says good public transport is just the \u201cprecondition\u201d to changing how people move around the city.<\/p>\n
Vienna\u2019s network of trains, trams and buses have long been the envy of other European cities \u2013 let alone car-centric North American ones<\/a> \u2013 but automobiles are still used for a quarter of journeys. In other capitals famed for world-class public transport, such as London, Paris and Prague, even higher use of cars has frustrated doctors and campaigners demanding cleaner air and safer streets.<\/p>\n Transport scientists suggest it shows the limits of what can be achieved by encouraging clean forms of transport without discouraging polluting ones.<\/p>\n Beyond a certain threshold, further improvements to one mode of transport become \u201ca sort of zero-sum game\u201d, according to Giulio Mattioli, a researcher at the Technical University of Dortmund.<\/p>\n Leonore Gewessler, a former climate and transport minister of Austria, on a tram in Vienna. Photograph: Ajit Niranjan\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cThis is what happened in our cities in the course of the 20th century,\u201d he says. \u201cTo make car use reliable and convenient, we made the use of other modes less reliable and convenient, for example by giving cars priority over the use of street space. Moving in the other direction would require taking some of that space away.\u201d<\/p>\n Vienna was a pioneer of urban planning that prioritises people over vehicles, but its famous public transport system has its roots in tram lines that were laid when it was still the booming capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire.<\/p>\n Unlike most European capitals, its early infrastructure has since then faced little pressure from population growth \u2013 the number of inhabitants has not yet returned to its pre-first world war peak \u2013 and it kept hold of many of its tram lines even through the car-centric reconstruction that followed the second world war. The system has since been complemented by a large and growing subway network.<\/p>\n Women strolling along a street while a tram passes by in Vienna, 1892. Photograph: Mondadori Portfolio\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The subway now forms the backbone of the system but trams are Vienna\u2019s \u201csleeping superpower\u201d, says Johannes Kehrer, the head of strategic infrastructure at Wiener Linien, the public company that operates the network. \u201cIt still has the potential to become faster and expand even more.\u201d<\/p>\n Vienna aims to reduce the share of journeys in private cars within the city from 25% to 15% by the end of the decade. While data for other cities is hard to directly compare, only a handful of big European cities have cut car use to below 30% of journeys. Figures in the US are more alarming, analysis<\/a> of survey data shows, with cars accounting for more than 90% of journeys.<\/p>\n Vienna introduced a \u20ac1-a-day yearly ticket in 2012, the price of which was raised for the first time this year to \u20ac1.26 a day. It passed a milestone in 2015 when the number of yearly transport tickets in the city surpassed the number of registered cars.<\/p>\n Gewessler, the leader of the Green party who served in a coalition with the conservative Austrian People\u2019s party (\u00d6VP) until 2025, introduced a flat-rate \u201cclimate ticket\u201d across the nation in 2021 and shifted federal transport spending from roads to rail.<\/p>\n \u201cScience has been telling us for a long time that \u2018one more lane\u2019 will not solve our transport issues,\u201d says Gewessler. \u201cIf you build public transport infrastructure, you get public transport. If you build road infrastructure, you get drivers and traffic jams.\u201d<\/p>\n