Illegal parking and speeders should no longer have it so easy in Munich in the future. On Tuesday, the city council’s district administration committee decided on a reform of municipal traffic monitoring (KVÜ) described as a “strategic further development”. According to the majority of city councilors, this is primarily intended to increase traffic safety.
Complaints about parked sidewalks and cycle paths are part of everyday life in Munich. There are numerous photos of cars on so-called social media that make life difficult for passers-by.
But the KVÜ employees cannot simply arrange for illegal parkers to be towed away. This is solely a matter for the police. Only in certain cases, such as when a fire department access is blocked, are city employees allowed to have the vehicle towed away after consulting the police by telephone. Otherwise, a police patrol must first arrive and request a towing service on the spot. Now Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) should lobby the legislature, in this case the Free State, for more powers for the KVÜ.
In the future, the district administration department also wants to monitor the flow of traffic on 50 km/h streets. Since 1994 there has been an agreement with the police that the city only takes action on streets with a speed limit of 30 km/h. This agreement is now to be revised.
The district administration department then wants to work with the mobility department to develop a concept for stationary measuring systems. The use of semi-stationary speed cameras is also planned: These are systems that can be used around the clock because no staff is required to operate them. The transport authority wants to purchase two such systems for around 600,000 euros.
License plates are not scanned systematically
The district administration department has abandoned the initially planned technical monitoring of traffic through systematic scanning of license plates. The KVR had previously suggested that Mayor Reiter advocate for a change in the law. This point has been deleted. According to KVR boss Hanna Sammüller-Gradl (Greens), it is no longer necessary as the federal government wants to work out a solution from next year.
Instead, the staff for parking surveillance should be increased. 109 of 279 positions in the field service are currently vacant. This is not least due to the moderate pay. Here the administration wants to examine how the positions can be classified higher.
Gudrun Lux (Greens) and Christian Vorländer (SPD) expressed explicit praise for the traffic monitors, who are on duty in all weathers and are regularly insulted by traffic offenders. Evelyn Menges (CSU) also voted to pay KVÜ employees better. However, she rejected most of the points in the proposal. Menges cited the “overall political perspective” as justification. The CSU cannot agree to a green-red policy that, on the one hand, reduces parking spaces across the city and at the same time monitors parking offenders more closely. Menges also criticized the fact that the proposal did not take the “Radl-Rambos” and the wild parking of e-scooters into account.
Not only cars but also cyclists are checked
Richard Progl (Bavarian Party) rejected the proposal completely. While parking spaces and speeds would be reduced, fines would increase. He suspected the intention was to put drivers under financial pressure so that they would get rid of their vehicles.
At the end of the debate, Sammüller-Gradl made it clear that cyclists would definitely be checked, for example in the pedestrian zone. According to Sammüller-Gradl, these KVÜ employees are the ones who are most often treated with hostility.
She countered the accusation that increased traffic surveillance was ideological and motivated by car hatred: Those who check tickets in the subway or in concert halls are not subway driver haters or concert goer haters.