Residents are annoyed Car sharing vehicles block parking spaces in Limperich

Limperich · Vehicles of the car sharing company Miles are currently parked in the streets of Bonn-Limperich - and sometimes for up to two weeks at a time, says a resident. The company sees things differently.

 Many car-sharing vehicles from the Miles company are parked on the street Auf dem Grendt.

Many car-sharing vehicles from the Miles company are parked on the street Auf dem Grendt.

Foto: Benjamin Westhoff

Anyone driving through Limpericher Straße, Elsa-Brändström-Straße or Ringstraße in Limperich can hardly miss the black cars with white lettering and Berlin licence plates. This is because the vehicles of the car-sharing provider Miles are currently parked in large numbers at the roadside. A particularly large number of Miles vehicles, eleven in some cases, are parked one behind the other along the street Auf dem Grendt.

Local resident Michael Schneider (name changed by the editors) has already noticed this. "The whole neighbourhood has been parked up with these vehicles for about three months. On Monday I was at the Beuel cemetery and there were 15 Miles cars parked there," he reports. That is permitted, because Miles offers station-independent car sharing. This means that the vehicles are distributed throughout the city and parked between private cars.

Bonn-Limperich: Parking is free for all

This situation cannot be solved by the City of Bonn either, "as parking there is free for all," informs Isabel Klotz from the press office. "Some parking spaces are signposted with an additional sign 'Only for cars', but that doesn't change anything in the result if the vehicles are cars." However, in Limperich, "they stand around for weeks without being moved," Schneider said.

He believes he knows who parks all the vehicles in the streets, namely the Miles employees themselves. "When the cars are towed away, they go to the yard of a company in Maarstraße. The employees then pick them up there and park them in the surrounding streets, for example on Königswinterer Straße," he describes his observation. "Once I also approached the Miles employees, but they said they were allowed to park the cars in the streets."

139 vehicles towed away since the beginning of the year

According to Klotz, as soon as a vehicle belonging to the Miles company is parked contrary to the regulations, the traffic supervisor takes action. In addition, she points out that according to the Road Traffic Act, motor vehicle trailers may not be parked unmoved in public traffic areas for longer than two weeks. However, this regulation does not apply to passenger cars. Since the beginning of the year, a total of 139 incorrectly parked Miles vehicles have been towed away in the entire city area. A total number of warnings and thus also a corresponding amount against the Miles company cannot be determined, because according to Klotz, the recording of a vehicle label is not necessary for such a procedure.

Actually, Schneider is a friend of car sharing. He calls it a "super invention". However, he questions whether station-independent car sharing is worthwhile. "In Bad Godesberg I haven't seen a single Miles car. In Beuel, on the other hand, there are lots of them," says Schneider. "But nobody drives from Godesberg to Beuel for a carsharing car." Ironically, he adds, "It's better to hire a taxi."

According to Miles, customers park the cars

Miles spokeswoman Nora Goette confirms that Schneider is right with his observation. "There are currently many Miles vehicles parked in the streets in Limperich. It is a common phenomenon that vehicles are parked on the edge of our business area, of all places," she says. According to her, however, it is not the company's own employees who park the cars, but the customers. Schneider vehemently denies this: "I have observed the Miles people doing this.“

Also, "the majority of the vehicles are parked there for less than a day", Goette continues. That is not true, according to Schneider. "One car parked on the Grendt is now so full of bird droppings that you can no longer see through the windscreen. It must have been there for at least a week and a half," he estimates.

City prepares adjustment

According to Goette, the longer parking time is not in the company's interest. "We pay the highest amount for parking in Bonn of all our cities in Germany," she says. She goes on to say that Miles staff are currently in the process of looking at Bonn's business area and thinking about adjustments. She did not say exactly what these adjustments would look like.

The city reveals more: "According to the current jurisdiction in North Rhine-Westphalia, the parking of car-sharing vehicles in public traffic areas is a special use requiring a permit," says Klotz. "The city is currently preparing a corresponding amendment to the special use statutes, in which the corresponding fee tariffs are to be included. The aim is to create the prerequisite that providers need a special use permit for every vehicle." In this, the City of Bonn is trying to influence in the ancillary provisions how and where the vans may be parked when customers are not using them.

Original text: Jill Mylonas

Translation: Mareike Graepel

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