There’s no other way to put it, and there’s no more cautious way of putting it: it looks stupid.
Exactly at the point where a freshly laid, stepless ramp meets the sidewalk, a gray junction box blocks progress. An insurmountable barrier on a path to an office, hotel and residential complex that was obviously intended as barrier-free access – what a prank on the street! Created by the department “Planning errors and sloppiness” (PfuSch), implemented by the department “Maximum inglorious ramp construction damage” (MuRKs).
Passers-by wonder why the ramp doesn’t meet the pavement a meter or two further to the right or left, where nothing stands in the way. The box had been at this intersection at Berg am Laim S-Bahn station for a long time; he should have been noticed, at the latest when the area behind him was built on. Didn’t anyone think about circumventing this obstacle?
Oh, what do laypeople know about the well thought-out master plans of experts? At most, an amateur knows that the European Union once issued a cucumber curvature regulation, but he does not know whether there is also an EU directive on the curvature of ramp radii, which inevitably led to this mishap. And not everyone knows how bureaucracy works in this country: for larger projects, involve as many departments as possible with different responsibilities so that responsibility can be passed on at any time in the event of a breakdown.
In any case, the building department of the city of Munich has nothing to do with the matter. Only in the development plan no. 1971 (“Baumkirchen Mitte”) did it specify the public traffic areas and obligated the private investor of the building complex to plan and produce these traffic areas at his own expense. And the investor has now installed a traffic area in the form of a ramp. He can’t do anything about the distribution cabinet – it’s run by a German telecommunications company. Now it is said that the box will be cleared out of the way shortly and moved a few meters further to the west.
Why not now? Why? Why wasn’t it planned in advance so that the box would not get in the way, so it could have stayed where it was? There may be reasons, but the layman doesn’t want to know them anymore: It just looks stupid.