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It is not easy for Basel drivers. Pedestrians here, streetcars there. And then there’s the never-ending topic: parking spaces. There are too few for drivers, too many for cyclists. There are around 27,000 street parking spaces in the city. Downward trend.
And that’s exactly where the last point of contention lies. Yesterday, the Construction and Transportation Department (BVD) announced that it will close the parking spaces where the distance to the tram tracks is too small. This year a total of 180 parking spaces should be eliminated, followed by another 350. This should increase the safety of cyclists, it says in the BVD press release. Specifically, these are the following parking spaces near the tram lines: on Allschwilerstrasse, Austrasse, Bruderholzstrasse, Hammerstrasse, Leonhardsgraben, Totentanz and Zeughausstrasse.
SVP is outraged by the reduction of parking spaces
If a car is parked too close to the tram track, a lot can go wrong. The car door swings open as a bicyclist approaches. Or the driver of a car wants to exit the parking lot exactly at the moment a bicycle collides. The distances between trams, parked and moving vehicles are short.
A year ago, the Basel political and environmental activist Martin Vosseler was killed in the aforementioned Austrasse in a traffic accident of this kind. I was riding a bike when a truck passed. For reasons that are not yet clear, Vosseler lost his balance and was struck by the rear wheel of the truck; died at the scene of the accident. The government has seized this and other cases as an opportunity to address the parking situation.
Green Councilor Raphael Fuhrer is relieved by this move. You remember a car accident in your family. 15 years ago, his mother rode a bicycle against the rear view mirror of a car in Leonhardsgraben and broke her ankle in a fall. You are still restricted by this today. Today he suffers from osteoarthritis due to the artificial joint. “Even then, the parking spaces should have been abolished,” says Fuhrer. Safety comes before comfort, he emphasizes.
The SVP sees it differently. The party is outraged by the reduction of parking spaces. The red-green government’s arguments are threadbare, it says in its press release. «That is unnecessary and excessive. We want a transport policy that applies to everyone and not one that pits one against the other ”, says the president of the parliamentary group Pascal Messerli. They are eliminating parking spaces precisely where they are in demand, making life difficult for drivers just to make it easier for others. That is not the right solution. The SVP party chairman Eduard Rutschmann sees it the same way, referring to the Riehen community, where he is at home. “There, all road users have the same rights, unlike in Basel,” he says. For some residents, the car is the “devil in the can” and that is the only reason it got this far. The SVP wants to prevent parking spaces from being abolished. On Monday, Rutschmann’s colleague Daniela Stumpf put forward a proposal to halt the action, he said.
“Need of a large part of the population”
The SVP is practically alone with your opinion. Both the SP and the Interest Group for Public Transport Northwest Switzerland (IGöV) welcome the measures. The councilor of SP, Lisa Mathys, evaluates the BVD decision as follows: “There are more and more cyclists on the move. Everyone knows these hot spots. Mitigation is a need for a large part of the population ”. It is a sensible measure that makes cycling safer and more attractive, BVD director Hans-Peter Wessels (SP) tells the SDA news agency.
Stephan Appenzeller from IGöV is of the same opinion. They had been asking for such a measure for a long time. “Now it is finally being addressed. Now you can’t help it, ”he says. Other cities such as Zurich and Bern are far ahead of Basel. “It is a sensible measure that guarantees the safety and at the same time the quality of public transport.” It’s also guaranteed: The conflict over parking spaces will continue to provoke redheads in Basel.
