1mo ago

Munich wants to legalize parking on sidewalks

www.sueddeutsche.de München: Parken auf Gehwegen soll erlaubt werden - welche Voraussetzungen es gibt

München diskutiert über die Legalisierung des Gehwegparkens, um den Parkdruck zu lindern und Anwohner zu unterstützen.

Munich has some issues dealing with too many cars and illegal parking on the sidewalk is common.

The SPD mayor has the solution: change the law so that this rude habit becomes legal.

And what about pedestrians, people with wheelchair, strollers? I guess they'll have to adapt.

Fuck cars!

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36 comments

Two things: this is an accepted practice all over the country and the traffic code has its own traffic sign for it when it is permitted. And the suggested amendment would only make it legal in situations where there would remain 1.6m of space for pedestrians, wheelchair users, and strollers. So the car parked in the image would remain illegally parked.
Munich has made a mistake of tacitly allowing this parking practice in areas where there isn't enough space, motivated by keeping roads accessible to first responders, which is not nothing. They have clearly made a mistake if everybody still owns a car when there s above average public transport. And people will still park like assholes. Under these plans (they haven't been approved yet according to the article), the assholes could be punished though. It would just not give fines out to everybody. This is a compromise solution in a bad situation.
I would amend the plans in two areas: the grumpy people of Munich should be allowed to smear dogshit legally on every car that doesn't leave 1.6m of space on the sidewalk (the article mentions a similar occurrence). And giving up car ownership should be rewarded with free public transport for a suitable amount of time.
- Once you tacitly allow this everywhere with your "yes, but allow 1.6m" rule, you've just actually allowed it everywhere with no qualifiers. No one is going to get a tape measure out and verify when they park. When its utterly common, I doubt police or enforcement officers will check either except very sporadically, allowing it to happen 99% of the time.
  A "yes insane thing, but only when sane" law is always, always a give away to the insane thing.
  
  No one is going to get a tape measure out
  You clearly don't know Germans. Yes they will. They already do. You're not allowed to park within 5m of an intersection, which the people in charge of checking and giving tickets will absolutely measure. There are many other instances where distances are involved like this. They already carry a tape measure (or equivalent) for this exact reason. Adding one more case just fits the theme.
  
  You clearly don’t know Germans. Yes they will.
  and yet, illegal parking on sidewalk is common place in Munich. How is it? (honest question)
  
  Germans love a rule, love pea counting, and they will measure.
  Your insane argument doesn't quite work for me when the mutual benefit of the practice was to provide ample space for fire trucks and ambulances on the roads. This is not a matter of the city just not giving a shit. They weighed their options.
  Another aspect that wasn't touched upon in the article will also play into this: parking fines are a great way to get money into the city coffers. So it will probably pay off to get members of the Ordnungsamt - or the office of public order - who handle these things out in force armed with a tape measure and a camera and chi-ching for Munich's revenue.
  
  when the mutual benefit of the practice was to provide ample space for fire trucks and ambulances on the roads.
  This view weighs comfort of pedestrians against space for emergency vehicles and just takes it as granted that cars will and thus must be allowed to park there. It only asks "who do we discomfort with these cars" and not "can we stop discomforting people with all these cars".
  How about: no parking where there isn't enough room for emergency vehicles left and leave the sidewalk to the fucking pedestrians that deserve not just a 1,5m tunnel of steel and concrete but a sidewalk that is comfortable to use.
  Car owners shouldn't be allowed to discomfort every pedestrian just because of their comfort of parking right in front of their house.
  
  In principle, I agree with you. And do you know why hardly any city government can put this rigorous approach into practice? Because they will be voted out in the next election. Because car ownership is still high. Realpolitik applies here.
  
  The "there will be more car fines" argument is directly disputed in the article. The city is making this change because people are mad about the current car fines. The "centerist" local goverment is siding with their far right on this matter.
  You think car fines going up is a selling point the city goverment is going to abuse? If anything, if the amount of fines goes up the law will just be relaxed more and more until its just whats its clearly set out to be : no actual pedstrian rule at all.
  
  I see your point. I was thinking about fining just the assholes who obstruct sidewalks beyond the tolerated minimum. I think there is a middle way to make that work and maybe even turn a profit. But that's not a great additional argument from me. It might need a federal regulation change. They could introduce a hefty fine for parking in such a manner that a wheelchair user could not safely use the sidewalk as a result. One can dream.
  I don't follow your relaxed law logic. The law was not enforced before and would be more tightly enforced under this plan.
  
  Germans love a rule, love pea counting, and they will measure.
  Nein peas.
  
  No one is going to get a tape measure out and verify when they park.
  Dude clearly has no idea how autistic Northern Europe can be.
- I understand that they need to have it clear for first responders but parking on the sidewalk makes the sidewalk less usable. Also if first responders need to get through a street having the sidewalk available to get the car out of the way is more beneficial instead of street full of cars.
  Then there's the thing where cars will fill up the parking spots when possible and since it's not a metered parking spot there's a good chance it'll not get checked very often.
  In my view the result is effectively making the sidewalk smaller as if they would just remove it up to the 1.6m and replace it with on street parking. Investing in bike paths that can be used by first responders like in the Netherlands is a more effective way to deal with the same problem.
  
  I would argue the space on the sidewalk has already been reduced and this plan would just limit punishment to those who truly deserve it. And if this is policy it should include the staff hours for parking inspectors. They could take note of areas where sidewalk parking often reduces space to below 1.6m and then have bollards or other barriers installed in these hotspots.
  And, as I've also already mentioned, there should be more policies to encourage giving up on car ownership. I suggested free public transport for former car owners. New developments should include the need to build its own parking faculties on the property. Parking fees should be raised slowly but steadily. Resident parking only schemes could maybe push visitors to the area into public transport. There are more tools in that toolbox.
  BTW I'm not a fan of this plan. My sense of what is possible, i.e. politics, just forces me to grudgingly accept this as a compromise. If you reduce the space for parking, say, by planting trees or other physical obstacles (which will probably cost more than this), you'll be voted out. Politicians are more pragmatists than idealists. Nobody will stay in office long with radical anti car policies - as much as I would personally support that.
  In the context of small Munich alleys where space is scarce, where exactly should they build additional bicycle lanes that can be used by fire trucks? The shining examples of fuck cars infrastructure like Amsterdam and Copenhagen tend to be on flat land or the great infrastructure doesn't actually extend into the narrow capillary alleys that have been around since the middle ages. They also took decades to implement policies in increments to get to where they are. Munich is in my estimation probably at least a decade behind that.

36 comments