In terms of accessibility, there is still a lot of room for improvement in the district of Starnberg: The SPD demonstrates this with a trip from Feldafing to Pöcking.
Feldafing / Pöcking - Doors open, put your feet on the platform - an everyday occurrence at the Feldafing S-Bahn station. You hardly notice that the platform is a lot lower than the train. It is different for wheelchair users Nico Wunderle, chairman of the local association of the Pöckinger SPD. It encounters many barriers in local public transport. These make it difficult for him and others to live in an environmentally conscious way. The SPD demands: The question of a climate-friendly life plan must be considered inclusive.
To draw attention to this, Wunderle took public transport from Feldafing to Pöcking. Also present: Jakob Stillmark, Ameli Erhard, Sissi Fuchsenberger, Christiane Kern, party colleagues from Pöcking and Feldafing, and the SPD's environmental policy spokesman in the state parliament, Florian von Brunn.
“The buses don't go where I need them on weekends,” says Wunderle at Kirchplatz in Feldafing, where the group is waiting for the first bus. He stops at the stop on time at 10.43 a.m. The driver gets out and uses pliers to fold out the wheelchair ramp built into the floor. Stillmark, the candidate for mayor for Feldafing, pushes Wunderle and the wheelchair up the ramp, who in turn skilfully corrects them with his hands. A procedure that does not last long in itself, but delays the onward journey somewhat. "But nobody has complained yet," says Wunderle with a smile.
Inclusion officer: Public transport must be “cool” for everyone
Five minutes later, at the Feldafing S-Bahn station, the group had to wait 15 minutes. District candidate Christiane Kern refers to the low-lying platform. Because the S-Bahn entrance is higher, a barrier is created. Wheelchair users would have to position themselves here and at the train station in Starnberg, near the first S-Bahn door. The driver then gets out to build a ramp, Kern explains. Access to the platforms is also not barrier-free because there are no lifts. She warns: "If access to our region is difficult, people won't come to us either." When the S-Bahn arrives, Stillmark Wunderle pulls backwards on the train.
Public transport has to be “cool” for everyone, the district councilor and inclusion officer of the municipality of Berg, Sissi Fuchsenberger, points out. For a long time, it was thought that a public transport service would only have to be set up on request. Since 2016 you have been trying the other way around. First comes the expansion of the offer, then the demand. Passenger numbers have increased, but many citizens are still adjusting to the mobility offers. Florian von Brunn believes that this insight should have come earlier: "We need a higher-level body that coordinates local transport across the country".
Nico Wunderle was not allowed to go to school with children without disabilities
The group gets off one stop further in Possenhofen to visit the primary school in Pöcking. Since its renovation in 2015/16, it has been a showcase project for climate-responsible building among the local group members. The school got a photovoltaic system, a heat pump and better insulation. It is also Wunderles primary school. The 25-year-old social worker originally comes from the Black Forest, where he was not allowed to go to school with children without disabilities. He was allowed in Pöcking. A lot has to be done not only in traffic for inclusion to arrive in society, says Wunderle. "There are many more barriers, even in the minds of many people," says Fuchsenberger, "if you are not affected, you often don't think about disabled groups of people." The comrades around Wunderle want to change that.
Alice Beckmann-Petey
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