Parking ban at the barbecue area: City takes action against wild campers!

Parking ban at the barbecue area: City takes action against wild campers!

The parking lot in front of the popular Rohrerbadwiese barbecue area in Hernals is the focus of city measures. Given the high temperatures, people seeking relaxation are increasingly flocking to natural areas such as the Danube and the Vienna Woods. In order to defuse the situation at the parking lot, a night parking ban was introduced, which applies daily from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. This came after MA 49 reported problems with parked campers and trailers blocking the site overnight. There is also an additional parking ban on Tuesdays between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. to enable maintenance and cleaning work.

Ilona Hadasch from MA 46 informed that the measure was initiated by the municipal forestry administration and the district. These steps are intended to ensure that the parking lot is again available to day trippers, athletes and dog walkers. The background to the measures is the disregard of the previous parking regulations, which allowed unlimited and free use of the parking lot. This approach in turn had a negative impact on the fauna and flora in the Vienna Woods, as district leader Peter Jagsch emphasized.

Problems and solutions

“The situation has calmed down noticeably,” says MA 49, which is responsible for monitoring the new parking ban together with the state police department and parking space surveillance. Nevertheless, there was massive contamination around the Neuwaldegger barbecue area that can no longer be tolerated. The district leader emphasizes that there is currently insufficient infrastructure for campsites, such as toilets or water. This leads to additional challenges as many wild campers choose this site without considering nature.

With regard to the topic of wild camping, it should be noted that in Austria, spending the night outdoors away from campsites is just as problematic as in Germany, where wild camping is generally prohibited. Even if bivouacing can be tolerated under certain conditions, the legal situation remains uncertain. So far, storage has not been subject to the bans in most cases, but this leads to fluid transitions between these practices and makes legal assessment difficult. Information about this can be found, for example, at AgrarToday.

An outlook

The city's measures are a step in the right direction to preserve recreational space for residents and all nature lovers. District leader Jagsch hopes that the new regulations will receive only positive feedback from the population and that the parks will soon be able to offer more space for recreation without undesirable conditions such as littered areas or blocked parking areas. The new night parking ban could prove to be a decisive factor in better controlling wild campers and making the parking lot accessible to the general public again.

You can also find out more about the background to these measures at MyDistrict and courier read up.