"Would be more important that the buses run on time": Final end for digital bus information in Unterhaching

Created: 06/12/2022, 11:15 am

By: Martin Becker

The timetable information in Unterhaching will not be equipped with digital information boards.

The council has now decided.

(symbol photo) © Armin Rösl

Contrary to the trend, the timetable information in Unterhaching is not equipped with digital information boards.

The council has now decided.

Unterhaching

– After 7:8 in the finance committee, the vote in the Unterhaching municipal council ended with a similarly tight 13:14.

Either way - a defeat from the perspective of a modern infrastructure: There are no further digital information boards in Unterhaching.

There are already three, nine more were planned for 2023.

The municipal council refused to agree to this "dynamic passenger information system".

CSU, Free Voters, FDP and Neo faction vote against it

With a funding share of 80 percent, Unterhaching would have had to invest almost 50,000 euros to digitally spice up the specially selected bus stops at the cemetery, at the sports park and at the local school, on Ottobrunnerstrasse and Sommerstrasse with information boards like the ones in Munich and have long been standard internationally anyway.

"If we revert to the status of the small Gallic village, that would be embarrassing," Claudia Köhler, municipal councilor and member of the Green Party, campaigned for a digital offensive in the mobility transition.

In vain, because the CSU, Free Voters, FDP and Neo faction saw it differently in the Unterhachinger municipal council with a wafer-thin majority.

"Departure time table alone is not digitization"

"It would be more important for the buses to run on time than for their delay to be reported," argued Peter Hupfauer (FDP).

CSU faction leader Korbinian Rausch saw it similarly: "A departure time table alone is not digitization.

The added value would be disproportionate to the costs.” Alfons Hofstetter (Freie Wahler) outlined a practical example: “If I want to catch an S-Bahn and the bus at the cemetery is ten minutes late, what's the use of that?

I can't even walk to the train station in that time.

The only added value would be that I get annoyed.”

SPD with a different opinion

The SPD saw it differently, parliamentary group leader Peter Wöstenbrink thought, "we should act in a unified way instead of taking a different position from the rest of the district".

Armin Konetschny (Greens) pleaded for the "information society and that departure times are digitized".

But not at bus stops in Unterhaching.

That's what the council decided.