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M. Hoffmann, K. Haselbauer, K. Dieplinger, H. Hasenbichler:
"ASSET MANAGEMENT FOR TOWPATHS - High quality cycling infrastructure as base for interregional tourism and income in the Danube region";
Talk: Velocity 2013 Konferenz, Wien (invited); 2013-06-11 - 2013-06-14.

Bicycle tourism on towpaths along the River Danube has a long tradition and is becoming a growing source of income for sustainable tourism business. Providing safe and comfortable cycling infrastructure with high availability is therefore a priority not only in Austria but in the neighboring countries along the River Danube as well. The added value due to cycling traffic in Upper Austria, Lower Austria and Vienna amounted to an estimated 189 Million Euro, 99 Million Euro and 50 Million Euro respectively in the year 2008. A major part of this income was generated along the highly frequented network with an average width of 3.5 meters and a length of 321 km of paved towpaths. In order to provide high quality standards and an efficient use of scarce funds for this important tourism infrastructure a comprehensive asset management strategy was needed. Thus Managing Director Hans-Peter Hasenbichler and project leader Klaus Dieplinger of via donau decided to develop an Asset Management Tool together with the Vienna University of Technology - Institute of Trans-portation. The developed tool is based on a LCC - framework providing standardized procedures from condi-tion survey to an optimized selection and timing of maintenance and rehabilitation measures. The software tool has a map-based interface allowing a GPS - based survey and a comfortable overview of sections in critical condition together with already planned measures. Since the tool provides a condition prediction with and without measures the necessary budget to ensure a safe and comfortable biking can be calculated for individual measures and the entire network of towpaths as well. After three years of continuous development and application it is safe to say that all objectives from providing safe and comfortable cycling infrastructure to an economic and efficient investment as well as legal certainty could be achieved. Further success factors of the project have been a comfortable user interface and a self-learning system based on previous results. As a modern infrastructure company via donau is committed to ensure an excellent condition of its towpaths in the future in order to strengthen this sustainable mode of transport ensuring continuous growth of interregional tourism and income in the Danube Region.

cycling, tourism, asset management, infrastructure, lcc