The Federal Administrative Court (BVG) sent the written judgment on surface parking to the Bremen plaintiffs on Thursday. The long-awaited reasons for the judgment are available to WESER-KURIER. It supplements and clarifies many of the findings that were published in short form after the oral hearing at the beginning of June. As a reminder: Residents and owners from residential streets in Findorff, the Neustadt and the district have been trying for several years to take legal action to force more concrete action against sidewalk parking.
At the highest instance, the court reiterates the central message that sidewalk parking is prohibited on the plaintiffs’ streets. A “customary law” does not result from years of toleration. At the same time, the BVG also states in its written reasons for the judgment that the traffic authority does not have to take immediate action against the violations in the relevant streets and is allowed to prioritize its approach. In the court’s opinion, mandatory deadlines that the plaintiffs had demanded would only be considered “if the defendant had to take action against sidewalk parking on the streets in question.”
The concept must be “pursued in a comprehensible manner”.
A crucial point of contention is and remains the city-wide concept with which the authority wants to take action against sidewalk parking. The court recognizes that the authority may give priority to certain roads and that the plaintiffs’ interests are not “unreasonably set aside” as a result. However, this only applies “as long as it actually and comprehensibly pursues the concept”.
Hubertus Baumeister, one of the plaintiffs, doubts that this has happened sufficiently so far. He sees this addition as a win for the plaintiff. Even though, according to his own statement, he would have liked to have been given more details on this point, Baumeister sees the authorities under pressure to act: “After the verdict, I think sitting it out is out of the question.”
It was also already known that the authority would have to reapply the plaintiffs’ original application, which called for action against sidewalk parking on their streets. The court now emphasizes that this decision must be “sufficiently specific”. Baumeister also sees this as a clear invitation to the defendant to present concrete measures.
The written judgment covers many other areas about which the plaintiff and defendant had disputed. For example, the court states that a one-sided no-parking sign may be erected in the relevant streets. The many violations justified such a measure – even though parking on the sidewalk would be prohibited even without signs. To the detriment of the plaintiffs, the court emphasized that the residents could not assert claims against unauthorized parking for the entire street, but only on their side of the street.
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