By Layna Hong
Medill Reports

VIENNA – At the heart of one of the world’s most livable cities is an expansive and efficient public transit system, one that has become a global model for sustainable urban mobility.

Car usage has steadily decreased since 2005, due to the city’s concentrated efforts. Sustainable mobility is a key strategy in Vienna’s goal to become carbon-neutral by 2040. In 2022, only 1 in 4 people chose to use a car to get around Vienna, according to city data.

But the Vienna U-Bahn may not be accessible for everyone.

“There’s one problem, and that’s a problem that is always very apparent in Austria,” said Denis Can Teoman, Ph.D., a professor of urban design at Monash University in Indonesia. “It doesn’t account for immigrants.”

Teoman’s research on immigrant travel behavior in Vienna found immigrants from the Middle East and former Yugoslavia in general drive more compared to Austrians without an immigration background. He suggested one reason immigrants might not ride the U-Bahn is because of lack of access.

When it comes to purchasing a public transit ticket, Turkish and Arabic aren’t available as languages on Vienna’s ticket machines as of February 2025, despite Turkish people being the second-largest non-Austrian population and Syrians being the fifth largest, according to city data.

Teoman was born and raised in Vienna with a Turkish immigrant father.

“I’m always very careful not to blame people for using cars,” he said. “Immigrants’ lives in Vienna can be hard, so I understand that.”

Across online forums, travel websites and the country’s residents, Vienna’s U-Bahn is often touted for how safe it is.

But for immigrants, the experience can be very different.

“You see people from different cultures (on public transit), and this is also where people might receive discrimination if they look different to the white Austrians,” Teoman said. “Unfortunately, it can lead to tensions.”

In 2023, nearly 2,000 hate crimes were recorded by police in Vienna, according to a report from the Austrian government. A fourth of these reports took place in public spheres like the street, parks and on public transit.

Many of these reports reference Muslims and Black people as the main targets. Despite nearly half of Vienna’s population having foreign origins, Teoman said Austrians “never really see ourselves as an immigrant country.”

He said he doesn’t believe Vienna will reach its climate goals due to a lack of understanding of its immigrant population.

“Vienna’s strategy in sustainability, it’s amazing, if everyone could just sign off on everything theoretically, right?” Teoman said.

Public transit plays a key role in Vienna’s sustainability strategy. The city’s largest sustainability and infrastructure project is the planned expansion of the U2 and U5 train lines. In the Volkstheater train station, there’s a exhibition dedicated to educating the public about the expansion.

On Susan Reger’s way to a museum exhibit, she decided to stop by the Infocenter U2xU5 for the first time.

“The trains are OK in Austria, but in Vienna, they’re special,” Reger said.

Reger relies on public transit to get around the city. The 74-year-old is a Vienna native and lives in Alsergrund, the 9th district, where she said there’s at least seven public transit stops near her. This is one reason she sold her car 25 years ago.

“I just didn’t use it (the car),” she said.

Reger said you can get anywhere in Vienna by public transportation, and the U2xU5 expansion would expand the Wiener Linien’s system by creating 12 new underground stations. In the 5th district, Margareten, 55,000 residents will have their own underground station for the first time.

As it stands, the city’s most populated districts don’t have as many connections. Favoriten, the 10th district, is Vienna’s second-most populated and historically made of the working class and immigrants. But there are no U-Bahn stations with connections to other train lines in Favoriten.

The expansion also aims to take the ease off heavily used U-Bahn lines, such as the U3, which runs from west to east, and the U6, the only train line that doesn’t run through the center city.

The project won’t be complete until at least 2030. It was pushed back from 2028 due to environmental challenges, according to Metro Report International.

How Vienna became a frontrunner in sustainable mobility

Public transportation is an endeavor that takes time, money and space. Vienna has historically been slow to modernize, which ended up benefiting the city when it came to public transportation.

The U-Bahn didn’t start its underground operations until the late 1970s, when many cities were already prioritizing highway construction over public transportation. In the United States, the Interstate Highway System was formed due to the rapid expansion of suburbia post-WWII.

The London Underground, the world’s first underground railway, started operating in 1863. Other cities followed in the late 1890s and early 1900s, such as Paris, Budapest and New York City.

By avoiding building highways through its city center, Vienna was able to implement parking management as it expanded the U-Bahn.

Parking management and the expansion of the U-Bahn are the two main policies that accounted for Vienna’s decreasing car usage, according to a 2016 case study for the International Journal of Sustainable Transportation. Ralph Buehler is one of the paper’s co-authors and a professor of urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech University.

“If they had just reduced parking and increased its cost, it probably wouldn’t have worked, but having viable alternatives helps people make that switch,” Buehler said.

As of 2025, Vienna has short-term parking areas in all 23 districts. The maximum parking time is two hours with shorter exceptions for main streets and shopping streets. In the city, parking a car would be 5 euros for two hours. But parking outside the city in a park-and-ride garage would only be 4.40 euros per day.

For Bektas Süleyman, it’s a cost-efficient compromise. He moved to Vienna 30 years ago from Istanbul and commutes to work via train after parking his car outside the city.

He points outside toward the historic Schönbrunn Palace. The former royal residence, and now renowned tourist attraction, has its own stop on the U4 line.

“There’s good connection everywhere, with the train, the tram, the bus,” he said.

During the day, trains are promised to come every two to five minutes. On Friday and Saturday nights, and public holidays, they come every 15 minutes.

But in recent years, passengers like Reger have noticed more service delays.

“I left this morning at 6 a.m. and I thought it would be on time, it wasn’t,” she said.

Delays and limited operating schedules have become more common due to aging infrastructure and worker shortages, according to a report last December from the Vienna City Audit Office. Since 2023, hundreds of Wiener Linien workers have been retiring, and they aren’t being replaced at the same rate. Wiener Linien is the state-owned company that operates Vienna’s public transit lines.

In Austria, immigrants play a crucial role in addressing the labor shortage, according to the European Union. Wiener Linien has even offered German support classes for applicants. Other strategies to attract new workers included increasing salaries, offering bonuses and reducing working hours, according to the audit report.

Wichtige Info zur aktuellen Situation: Die vergangenen Monate waren weder für unsere Fahrer*innen noch für Fahrgäste immer lustig. Dafür wollen wir uns nochmals entschuldigen. Im neuen Jahr wollen wir aber vieles besser machen: (1/6)

— Wiener Linien (@wienerlinien) January 5, 2023 

A sustainable transportation model for everyone

Vienna and Wiener Linien have already made strides to bring the U-Bahn to everyone. One of Vienna’s famous public transit innovations was lowering the price of an annual transit ticket from 449 euros to 365 euros in 2012 — which comes out to 1 euro a day to get around the city.

This pricing model is part of what has become known as the “Vienna Model,” which refers to the Austrian capital’s extensive public transportation system that has made the city a leader in sustainable public transit.

The implementation of this pricing model resulted in an increased number of annual ticket holders, according to Climate Action Stories.

At the Infocenter U2xU5, Reger said she enjoyed learning about where Vienna’s public transport sits in comparison with other major cities. London’s annual Travelcard pass costs 4,656 pounds, or $6,016.

At the Parkhotel Schönbrunn, Süleyman echoed the sentiment as he pulled a transit ticket out of his front pocket.

“The ticket is a great deal,” he said     .

Pride for the U-Bahn and Wiener Linien is a common sentiment among Viennese.

According to the European Commission’s 2023 Report On The Quality Of Life In European Cities, Vienna is the second highest rated European city for public transit satisfaction, only topped by Zurich.

“People are really proud of their public transport system,” Buehler said. “A communal pride in having a system like that and using it, maybe that goes a long way.”

Buehler said the issue of financing public transport is always “very dicey” and people feel as though public transport requires too much money. But in Vienna, the attitude was different.

“It’s an accepted thing (in Vienna), that of course public transport needs subsidies, but we get so much benefit from it,” Beuhler said.

He said the culture stateside around public transportation is the complete opposite.

“In the U.S., public transport is sort of the mode of last resort,” Buehler said. “If you can sort of avoid it, you try to have a car, you try to drive. So public transport is a bit stigmatized.”

This phenomenon is well-documented, and many transport advocates connect it to the U.S.’s history of classism and racism. Americans who are lower-income, Black, Hispanic or immigrants are more likely to use public transportation on a regular basis, according to a 2016 report by Pew Research Center.

Having access to public transportation, which nearly half of Americans don’t have, is also a major factor, according to the American Public Transportation Association. Joseph Schwieterman is a professor at DePaul University who has studied public transportation and urban planning. He said public transportation is not part of American mainstream culture.

“In many ways, it’s become a niche offering for people in cities and particularly for people traveling to downtown offices,” Schwieterman said.

Only 3.5% of Americans commuted to work via public transit in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In comparison, almost 70% of people commuted to work by driving.

“It’s not just political support, but it’s also public support and public buy-in,” he said. “And that, of course, is easier to get if you have a good system.”

The city’s walking culture ‘keeps it all together’

Like Süleyman, who gets around by both car and public transport, most in Vienna have multiple ways to get around. For the majority, it’s walking and public transit.

“Most people don’t start their trip in a station and end it in a station,” Buehler said. “Walking is really the thing that keeps it all together.”

According to a 2019 report by the Vienna Mobility Agency, more than three-fourths of Viennese walk distances longer than 10 minutes daily.

The city’s first car-free pedestrian zone was implemented in 1974 in the historic old town. Buehler said this pedestrian zone emerged while Vienna was building the first U-Bahn line. The city utilized the cut-and-cover method, which involves “cutting” open the ground by digging a trench, building the structure inside and then “covering” the trench to restore the ground.

Most of the world’s subways — including in the U.S. — have been built using this method. But cut-and-cover is disruptive because streets can’t remain open during construction.

“Vienna was late to the subway game,” Buehler said. “But in a sense, it helped them.”

He said the inner-city streets never reopened to traffic after construction was completed.

“It was a success,” he said. “People liked those spaces, they went to those spaces and now they are the spaces of consumption, of sales and businesses.”

This is what happened on Favoritenstraße in Favoriten. The cut-and-cover method was used to build the U1 on this street.

Even on a cold Monday evening in February, when you emerge from the Reumannplatz station, you’re greeted with a busy, bustling street filled with people of all ages. They were bundled up and walking freely on the streets, which had few cars. The air was filled with the smell of kabobs and baked goods, like jam-filled krapfens and croissants. Despite the chill, storefronts displayed racks of inventory outside, and an open-air market sold a variety of spices, meats, housewares and other goods.

Vienna up for the challenge

Public transportation is a balancing act, according to Schwieterman. He said people don’t often realize transit has to keep getting better just to maintain its ridership.

“You constantly have to push improvements, new tech innovations, more frequent service, to avoid people diverting to these other modes (of transport),” Schwieterman said.

But the U-Bahn is here to stay — it’s a ubiquitous part of Vienna’s culture and society, and will shape the city’s future.

In the recent years, Reger said she’s noticed more train delays. Not only do the Viennese value punctuality, they are used to Wiener Linien’s frequent and efficient service.

“Everything, anything can always be better,” she said.

Besides working to retain current riders, Teoman said there needs to be greater understanding on why certain people haven’t embraced the U-Bahn yet. He said the city’s diversity isn’t always reflected in the government.

“Having immigrants in these positions would really help,” Teoman said. “It would help in the first step to just get a better understanding.”

This better understanding could be the key to increased sustainable mobility in Vienna.

Layna Hong is a graduate student at Medill in the social justice and solutions specialization. Find her on X @laynanhong or Instagram @laynareports.