Piero Zingariello has been working in the Garching-Hochbrück commercial area for around ten years. Before starting work, he regularly goes for a walk with his dog, preferably along the green area on the north side of Mallertshofener Straße. However, what he encountered there left Zingariello speechless. Empty plastic bottles or plastic bottles filled with urine, often labeled in a foreign language, bags, entire garbage bags, human excrement, and finally also a mattress cover were found in the bushes, which actually enjoy special protection as bird breeding areas. “Since the fall, littering has increased even more,” says Zingariello. He suspects long-distance drivers who unload their goods at one of the numerous freight forwarders in the Hochbrücke industrial park and then park their trucks on the wide sidewalk along Mallertshofener Straße to spend the night there. “The city cannot afford to ignore this pollution,” says Zingariello.
Piero Zingariello points to the garbage problem and says: “The city cannot afford to ignore this pollution.”
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
The problem is well known in the Garching city administration. The bird breeding area is regularly one of the most polluted areas during cleaning campaigns. Hochbrückers have complained for years about trucks that are parked there overnight. The city wants to take countermeasures, assures Klaus Zettl, Head of the Building and Environment department in Garching City Hall. In order to improve the “unspeakable conditions” in the bird breeding area, a specially commissioned clean-up team is to clear the facility of dirt within the next few days and every month thereafter. A few years ago, the city also issued an absolute ban on stopping along Mallertshofener Straße.
The prospect of a warning from the police and a fine in the double-digit range obviously does not deter many drivers – trucks are still often parked on the wide sidewalk. According to the police, they make regular checks there, but the officers at the responsible Oberschleißheim police station are responsible for Oberschleißheim, Unterschleißheim and Garching with the respective industrial estates; In addition, it is not always easy to follow up on administrative offenses such as these when the persons warned come from non-EU countries.
The grove is designated as a bird breeding area.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
The Mayor of Garching, Dietmar Gruchmann (SPD), sees a structural problem here: Especially in the greater Munich area, where space is scarce and expensive, local freight forwarders could not afford any reason for parking spaces next to their warehouses. But they would be necessary so that long-distance drivers, who often have to deliver their goods within a precisely timed time window, can then comply with their legally prescribed rest periods. International subcontractors in particular therefore park in all accessible areas around the commercial areas and pass on the information to each other as to where suitable parking spaces are, Gruchmann suspects. The mayor explains that Garching will in future protect the popular sidewalk on Mallertshofener Strasse from being parked with a massive crash barrier. “But it is also clear to us that this will only lead to a shift to other illegal areas.”
The Green City Councilor Daniela Rieth shows understanding for the situation of the truck drivers. At the same time, she does not want to let the issue go by and calls for more consistent action by the city for nature and animal protection. She suggests getting the international freight forwarders in Hochbrück on board in order to find a solution together – for example, to set up a toilet and shower house in a suitable place so that drivers no longer have to relieve themselves in nature. Rieth suggests that the cleaning costs could be shared between the municipality and the shipping company.
Mayor Gruchmann rejects this. In order to solve the sanitary needs of their subcontractors, he sees the responsibility of the forwarding companies and not the public sector. “It cannot be the task of the municipalities to finance solutions for the free economy at the expense of the general public,” says Gruchmann.
The five spaces at the gas station are always occupied
In fact, there are rest areas in the Hochbrück industrial park where trucks can stay overnight. The Aral gas station on Schleißheimer Strasse, for example, offers overnight accommodation, according to which the accommodation costs five euros for 24 hours; in the gas station there is a toilet, there are no showers; However, according to one employee, the four to five parking spaces are “actually full every day”.
“We have a glaring lack of parking spaces for vehicles,” states Sabine Lehmann, Managing Director of the State Association of Bavarian Freight Forwarders (LBS). “We’ve been pointing out this problem for years and action is being taken, but not yet to the extent needed.” This is also due, says Lehmann, to the fact that truck parking lots are not popular with the general public. Lehmann clearly condemned the disregard of parking restrictions and the littering of the area, as in Hochbrück. But she also asks for understanding for the drivers and the structures surrounding them: “We have just seen during the pandemic how important the logistics industry is. Each and every one of us is dependent on the supply chains working so that we can have toilet paper tomorrow can buy in the supermarket and work can continue in the factories.”
The managing director of the industry association therefore sees the state and society as having a duty to create the conditions for deliveries by truck. Truck parking areas should also have their justification – subject to compliance with certain rules such as noise and environmental protection. Such areas could be created more often along the motorways, but it is also quite possible to create suitable areas in commercial areas in terms of noise and environmental aspects.
Garching’s Mayor Gruchmann also believes that a large, free truck parking lot on the edge of the Hochbrücke industrial park would be a possible way of curbing illegal parking. However, he points to the costs to be expected for maintaining such a system. “And then of course the question is: Are the users also forwarders from Garching or do you maintain a service for the whole of Europe at the city’s expense?” Gruchmann’s counter-suggestion: “I think there could only be a real remedy if freight forwarders relocate to regions where parking space for trucks next to the warehouse building is also affordable.”
Regardless of the parking issue, Piero Zingariello calls for greater awareness of pollution. Behavior like the one seen in the bird breeding area “shouldn’t be the solution, despite everything,” he says. Zingariello also wants the police to take a closer look at the issue of environmental protection.