New no-parking signs cause confusion: "A prank on the street"

Created: 09/24/2022, 2:00 p.m

New no-stop signs in the home settlement in Frankfurt raise questions.

An absolute stopping ban should apply here recently.

Frankfurt – "My husband looked out the window and said: 'What are they doing there?'" On the edge of the green strip on Unter den Eschen street, signs were recently buried along the entire length, Cornelia Ahlendorf recalls.

As fnp.de reported, she and her husband and the other neighbors in the home settlement in Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen, like Karlheinz Neumann, were quite astonished when they later saw the signs that had been installed there: absolute stopping should apply here.

"People have always parked on the street - there are no other parking spaces in the home settlement," says Neumann.

However, the new signs clearly state: No stopping or parking.

There are no arrows marked on the signs.

It was therefore to be assumed that no one would be allowed to park their car on the entire street.

Luckily no one stuck to it

Karlheinz Neumann, resident

Clerk for new no-parking signs while on vacation

"Fortunately, nobody stuck to it," says Karlheinz Neumann.

He knew right away that things weren't going right here.

And called the citizen phone.

There they said: That is actually not true, that parking is no longer allowed on the entire street.

But the clerk in charge is on vacation.

Just a few days later, after this newspaper had sent an inquiry to the road traffic department about the process, the signs were taped over with orange crosses, making them invalid.

Karlheinz Neumann and Claudia Ahlendorf and one of the 22 new no-parking signs that were put up in the homestead to keep the space in front of three bicycle racks free.

© Rainer Rueffer

It turned out that the signs are only intended to keep a small section, each about one and a half meters short, in front of three bicycle racks that were installed in former garbage can niches.

The road markings are not yet in place everywhere, here the signs came a few weeks too early, explains Ingmar Bolle, spokesman for the road traffic office.

"Until the marking work has been carried out, the colleagues should temporarily deactivate the signs again." Sometimes it happens that the various crews "do not work promptly and the breaks between the trades are therefore too long," says Bolle.

There are several companies at work.

Which can sometimes lead to confusion.

Because the bicycle racks, which are located at regular intervals along the street, have been there for many years.

And nobody parks there, even without the markings and signs.

The neighbors thought that the new signs had something to do with the wheel brackets.

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Nevertheless, she is concerned with the question: Why should a separate no-parking sign with marking be necessary for each individual niche?

What does that cost the taxpayer?

Almost all streets named after trees now have four to six brand new signs per street.

“Unter den Akazien” remains sign-free because parking is not on the edge of the green area, but on the sidewalk by the houses.

"A no-parking sign was arranged for each bay with bicycle parking spaces," explains Michaela Kraft, head of the Office for Road Construction and Development (ASE).

"These are installed in the one-way street direction at the beginning of the bay and the cross marked on the ground."

The marking and signage of an area costs around 330 euros, according to Kraft.

“In the Heimatsiedlung, 22 areas in front of bicycle parking spaces are signposted with no stopping.

The costs therefore amount to a total of around 7,260 euros.” The bicycle racks have been in place since 2013, “so that no costs have arisen for them at the moment”.

Was all this really necessary?

"For me, this is still a prank," says Karlheinz Neumann.

It also bothers him that the residents were not informed, and the signs were not an issue in local advisory board 5 either.

In addition, the same residents always parked in the streets, "they know that they don't park their car in front of the wheel brackets just to avoid scratches." (Stefanie Wehr)

The parking situation is a central topic of local politics everywhere in Frankfurt.

In the north end, for example, there is a dispute about the design of the Oeder Weg because there are no parking spaces there and the pressure is now increasing – as planned.

Cyclists are now given more space there.