Hardly any public transport available

Heuriger in Neustift am Walde want a new bus route

Beautiful, but remote: The wine taverns in Neustift am Walde(Bild: Peter Tomschi)

Even now, die-hard Viennese Heurigen fans take the public transport journey to Neustift am Walde, even if it is like traveling halfway around the world. Many school locations would also benefit from a direct connection via Sievering to Grinzing.

Neustift am Walde in the north-western corner of Vienna is a wonderful wine tavern area, as wine tavern connoisseurs know. However, the almost rural atmosphere on the outskirts of the city is both a curse and a blessing: as idyllic as the location is, it is also overlooked by public transport. The local wine taverns no longer want to put up with this.

"You can't find a parking space by car"
Most guests already travel by public transport, despite the poor connections. "You can't find a parking space by car and nobody comes by bike either," says Thomas Huber, junior manager of Fuhrgassl-Huber, alluding to the controversial new cycle path on Krottenbachstraße. So the only option is the bus. And this is exactly where the problem lies, because it takes up to three times as long to get to the local tavern by public transport than by car.

The solution would be a direct connection from Neustift via Sievering and Daringergasse to Grinzing, for which the FPÖ has been campaigning for years. Wiener Linien rejects this for planning and economic reasons.

"That would be a great benefit for us and the entire area," Huber is convinced. He already has to deal with a few problems as it is. "The way people go out has changed, guests come to satisfy their hunger and thirst and then leave again, the coziness has been lost," says the landlord. And for the surrounding eight (!) schools, such a cross-connection would only have advantages.