Vienna public transport not fully air-conditioned before 2030
Viennese commuters are outraged after the citys public transport agency Wiener Linien said 20 years will pass before all its fleet vehicles have air conditioning.Answer Lang, a spokesman for the company, said today (Weds): “Every new tram or underground is equipped with air conditioning.”Lang claimed it would be an economic mistake to set up old models with air-con systems, adding he could guarantee all trams, buses and U-Bahn trains will have one in 20 years time. He revealed the plan to spend 689 million Euros on new models over the next seven years.The Wiener Linien official stressed that three trams in operation in the city were equipped with air-conditioning systems already.Federal Railways (ÖBB) meanwhile said it will hand out free 20,000 half-litre bottles of cool water, lemonade and ice tea at the Viennese stations Westbahnhof, Praterstern and Meidling to customers today to create more convenient travelling circumstances.Austria is currently plagued by a massive heatwave as temperatures have reached 37 degrees centigrade across the country over the past few days, and ÖBB came under fire as several trains air-con systems collapsed recently.Meteorologists at the Federal Centre for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) in Vienna said the next few days will be as hot as the past few have been, pointing out some Austrian towns registered higher temperatures than holiday hotspots in Greece and Turkey yesterday.