Anyone who lives directly on the wholesale market site has to live with unreasonable demands. However, some of these could be avoided: there are still refrigerated trucks with running diesel units on the site at all times of the day and night, although the city has been offering power connections for almost four years at the urging of unnerved residents, via which the cooling systems of waiting trucks can be supplied directly with electricity let.
Above all, directly affected residents from Königsdorfer Strasse regularly criticize and document that the charging stations are either out of order or not used. After an initiative of neighbors and Agenda 21 activists had drawn attention to noise and air pollution since 2017 and put pressure on it, the municipal department had pillars with six connections set up in 2019. Somewhat reluctantly, because the intention was to do the electrification in one go with the general technical renovation of the wholesale market site.
Even if only half of a first tranche financed with 50,000 euros was initially realized due to the difficult power supply, the connections could have alleviated the problem. However, they were hardly marked, installed in places that were difficult to access or out of service. Local residents observed that the two working slots were rarely used by drivers. Municipal consultant Kristina Frank (CSU) promised a significant step towards relieving the burden on residents last autumn, when nine additional columns, each with two connections, were installed and, according to the department, “massively advertised”, including the free electricity.
According to a local resident, none of the 18 new power columns had been used at night
However, nothing has changed in the nocturnal hum and diesel. Resident Thomas Bierwirth recorded that exactly “zero of the 18 newly installed connections were in use” during “absolute prime time” at night, and that for months. The low-frequency noise is particularly annoying for residents in whose houses no soundproof windows could be installed for reasons of monument protection.
The soon-to-be-applicable diesel driving bans in the low-emission zone, which are being reduced to absurdity due to unnecessary emissions, have not helped to understand the situation, especially since cooling units are often operated with separate diesel engines without a soot particle filter. “There are no diesel parking bans (yet),” writes the city council faction of the ÖDP/Munich-List in a current application. Among other things, he also points out communication problems with foreign truck drivers and incompatible power connections on their trucks and calls for a “perspective” ban on diesel generators on the entire site.
According to the municipal department, however, all the forwarders involved were contacted several times and informed about the offer. Drivers would also be given multilingual letters with pictograms when they entered the site, in which the location and operation of the pillars and the free electricity supply would be explained in detail. They also advertised thoroughly to the dealers located on the site. Incompatible plugs should also not stand in the way of use during the presentation, since the drivers usually bring their own cables with them. The adapters offered by the market operator were “not in a single case” in demand.
All in all, the authority does not see the problem on the scale perceived by the neighbors: Around four fifths of the arriving trucks would be unloaded before the drivers wait for their prescribed breaks on the site. They therefore do not need any ongoing cooling. Nevertheless, the administration plans “in the medium term” to remove the legal hurdles that still exist and to make the use of the energy columns mandatory.