If you go to the main station by bike, it is not easy to find a decent parking space. Since the station building has been rebuilt, there are hardly any official bicycle parking spaces, which is why birdwild is parked around the station. Wheels are chained to construction fences or to the exits to the subway station or simply stand in the way of pedestrians on the sidewalk. In a survey six years ago, the city counted more than 1,700 bicycles parked around the main station. And when the S-Bahn stop on the second main line is ready at the beginning of the 2030s and the U9 subway station will probably be added ten years later, at least 3000 bicycle parking spaces will be needed – probably even more.
A feasibility study is now available for an underground bicycle garage under Bahnhofplatz. It could be built in the structure of the U1 / U2 underground line. In the second basement there is an area that belongs to Stadtwerke München (SWM) and which was used as an underground car park for 75 cars by Deutsche Bahn until construction work began. Three variants were examined, with the one favored by the administration to provide around 1160 bicycle parking spaces in the future. This Wednesday, the planning and mobility committees of the city council are to decide whether to begin in-depth planning for the underground car park.
Each parking space costs 18,000 euros
The bicycle underground car park would have direct access to the underground station and could be reached via a ramp with an incline of 9.2 degrees. It’s pretty steep, ten degrees would no longer be recommended. But according to the study, the inclination is reasonable. If the ramp is too steep or winding for you, you can push your bike or use the freight elevator. According to the feasibility study, the new bike-and-ride facility will cost almost 21 million euros, i.e. almost 18,000 euros per parking space.
This sum includes an item of around six million euros to compensate for the additional costs that the municipal utilities would incur. Among other things, the operator of the car park would be entitled to a transfer fee, whose lease would also be valid after the construction work at the main train station was completed. The pure construction costs would be around 13.6 million euros, they are to be financed through funds from the parking space fee. Deutsche Bahn is to bear ten percent of the costs. The administration sees the much higher costs as justified, since the garage is an important component of the “central station traffic hub” and another, cheaper location is not available.
It is not yet clear whether the users of the garage will have to pay a parking fee – and if so, how much. The city wants to keep this option open. The city is also planning a parking garage for 1,300 bikes on Arnulfstrasse. In the underpass at Arnulf- / Seidlstraße there could be room for another 350 bikes. As required by the city, the railway itself is building 360 parking spaces.