Deliberately "extended"

Vienna construction site season throughout the year

Vienna is still saving the lane closures for the summer, but not the rest.

(Bild: APA/Georg Hochmuth)

Construction site summer? - That used to be the case: the time windows for major construction sites in Vienna are being deliberately "stretched out" more and more, as can be seen from the ten largest infrastructure measures in the near future. This is happening for the benefit of the Viennese, it is emphasized.

Vienna still schedules the trickiest phases of road construction in the summer, this year for example on the outer Gürtel, Wagramer Strasse or the Edelsinn Bridge: There is a good fifth less traffic in the city in summer, so closures at least hurt a little less. However, the roadworks season will be deliberately "spread out", confirmed roadworks coordinator Christian Zant at the presentation of the upcoming "roadworks highlights" (see graphic below) in the city.

Everything once, please
Zant does not want to dismiss the impression that the city has become a permanent construction site. However, this is happening in the service of the Viennese, he emphasized: whenever possible, "everything" is now being done in one go: New roadways, new public transport routes, new lines, cycle paths, redesigns, soil unsealing and more. Wagramer Strasse, for example, will be redone in over a year "over a length of 1.1 kilometers from house wall to house wall".

(Bild: Krone KREATIV, stock.adobe.com)

Major projects take time, says Zant, but in return you have "peace and quiet for a while". Vienna's head of road construction Wolfgang Ablinger also emphasized that the redesigns today are much more demanding in terms of construction technology than the "concreting over" of earlier times. Even if it often doesn't seem that way - the reconstruction of the outer Mariahilfer Strasse, for example, will take 18 months - the timeframes are "more ambitious" than ever, agreed Zant and Ablinger.

More construction sites than before? "Not at all"
According to Zant, the impression that there are more infrastructure construction sites in the city than ever before is "not true at all": if you add everything up, there are between 10,000 and 12,000 construction sites in Vienna every year, and the figure remains fairly constant. However, there is now much more coordination than before. "We sit down with Wiener Linien almost every week," says Zant. This also leads to more concentrated and longer construction activity in one place.

Road builder Ablinger and construction site coordinator Zant

(Bild: Lukas Zimmer)

University Road as the biggest challenge
Of all the upcoming major infrastructure construction sites in the city, Zant and Ablinger see Universitätsstraße as the most challenging project: in addition to the complete redesign of public transport lanes, road layout, cycle path, greening and unsealing, there is also the challenge of maintaining at least some crossing options and creating replacement routes for the closure of Universitätsstraße itself.

He had already supervised the conversion of Kärntner Straße and Graben, including Stephansplatz, into a pedestrian zone, Ablinger said. Compared to Universitätsstraße, this was an easy task. The work on Universitätsstraße, on the other hand, was "pretty tricky" for a civil engineer and therefore "exciting - so I'm happy about that."