Community radio in Vienna and Zurich

I had arranged to visit some community radio stations as part of my land trip across Central Europe - first, Orange 94.0 fm in Vienna, and then Radio LoRa in Zurich.

Orange 94.0fm
Orange 94.0 fm, 'the free radio of Vienna', has been providing a forum for themes and groups which are underrepresented in the media since it started broadcasting in 1998. Free radio in Austria is relatively new - until 1993 only the state broadcasting organisation ORF was allowed to broadcast and there was much pirate activity to try and change this.

Orange now has a wide range of groups broadcasting across its schedule, in many different languages and from different sections of the community.

I had arranged to meet

In Zurich I visited Radio LoRa

Transport in Europe

Transport in Europe is a dream - in the countries which I visited it was generally clean, cheap (in comparision with Britain), frequent, well publicised and INTEGRATED.

Bicycles
Travelling by coach through Ghent in the small hours of the morning, I noticed the ranks of bicycles parked everywhere - in the town centre squares as well as in gardens and attached to lamp posts outside buildings. Why so many bikes left in the town centre, I wondered.

Then a friend told me that many commuters in Belgium and the Netherlands have two bikes - one to ride from home to the station and one to ride from the station once you arrive in the town where you work. So all the town bikes spend the night by the station of arrival.

Imagine Waterloo or Kings Cross stations (in London) with sufficient cycle parking for commuters to leave their London bike safely overnight! For more information and discussion on cycle parking provision, see this entry on the KonSULT website (KonSULT is the Knowledgebase on Sustainable Urban Land use and Transport, edited at the Institute for Transport Studies at the Universit of Leeds).