Exploring Vienna by car can be a bit confusing in the beginning, due to its many one way streets. For larger distances it’s advisable to take the big roads like “the Ring” or “the Gürtel” even if they don’t seem like a detour. Make sure to know what roads you will take or trust a navigation system, if you are not familiar with the city by car. Vienna has a moderate rush hour compared to other big cities, but it is usual to move in queues on the bigger Viennese roads. Vienna is a bicycle friendly city and it is very common, that there are separate bicycle lanes, it is also possible that there are bicycle lanes for both directions on one-way streets, so cyclists require special awareness, while driving in automobiles.

Parking in the City

In most districts, vehicles without special permits are only allowed for short-term parking. During daytime on weekdays car-owners have to get a pre-paid parking voucher at tobacconists or points of advance sale (ticket machines at all public transport underground stations, automobile clubs ARBÖ and ÖAMTC, some gas stations and cigarette vending machines.)

There are 4 types of Vouchers:

Guide to fill in your parking voucher.

Alternatively, there is an app “Handy Parken which allows to buy and activate a digital parking ticket via your phone.

Before you park your car, check the detailed parking information at the area you are parking your car, because the short-term parking regulations may differ.
More Information on the different areas can be found at www.wien.gv.at

For residence and work areas there are permanent parking permits (Parkpickerl) for residents of the area. Companies and firms may also apply for temporary parking permits for company cars.
Alternatively Vienna has many parking garages and park & ride options, which are very well signposted in the Viennese traffic guiding system.
Further Reading at: www.wien.gv.at

Parking at the airport Vienna is pretty expensive. However, instead of parking in the official parking lots of the airport, you can use cheaper parking providers nearby the airport. Private airport parking providers like Panda Parken – Flughafen Wien are much cheaper and provide shuttle services to the terminals (3-5 minutes rides).

Car Sharing

Vienna offers several different car rental options, the quickest and easiest being the established car2go system. Once registered tiny white-blue Smart automobiles can be tracked down via Car2go App and accessed with the car2go membership card. The small auto-geared city-cars are each provided with permanent parking permits and a navigation system, and a quick and mobile option for rental cars. By now car2go also has Mercedes models in its fleet.

Another option is DriveNow, which is particularly useful when you want to move large objects, as they also have BMW SUV available for short time rental. DriveNow follows the same rules as car2go and let you choose between BMW and Mini cars. The costs are similar to car2go.

Both companies provide hourly and daily packages, but for longer periods it might be cheaper to rent a car at a „normal“ car rental.