Winterthur city’s free month campaign to combat illegally parked bicycles and e-scooters at main train station

Starting this week, numerous posters with the slogan “must get away from here” can be found on the Neuwiesen side of Winterthur’s main train station. These are intended to appeal to the common sense of those visiting the station to park their own bicycles or e-scooters properly. Because the city has been struggling with the bike chaos at the main train station for a long time. Again Country boats writes, counts from last autumn show that at that time more than a hundred bicycles were parked outside the permitted spaces every day. Paid bike stations or the free bike parking Esse are not popular with visitors.

In order to counteract this problem, more than just one campaign should be used. The three bike stations Rudolfstrasse, Gleis 3 and Stellwerk can be tested free of charge for one month from May to July. Flyers with the code “VELO23” are distributed at HB in the morning and evening, with which you can use the offer. According to the city, the visitors should be slowly introduced to the offer. Normally, the cost of an annual subscription, which allows you to park in all stations, is 175 francs. The city of Winterthur intends to refrain from a permanent price reduction, such as that made by Zurich at the beginning of the year.

The city wants to take stricter measures to deal with bicycles parked incorrectly. From the end of May, label markings should alert cyclists to illegal parking. “A lot of people probably don’t even know that they can’t park their bikes anywhere,” said Mark Vetterli, project manager from the Civil Engineering Office, to the Landbote. Temporarily, the city police had more resources to cope with the consistent towing of the bikes.

So does the police want to tow away more than a hundred illegally parked bicycles every day? With the additional resources, more control can be guaranteed, but as Vetterli notes, the goal is not to tow as many bikes as possible. “People should rather notice that they can no longer park their bikes outside of the permitted spaces.”

The e-scooters are not spared from the city’s plans either. Since May 15, there has been a general ban on parking around the main station outside of five red-marked fields. The no-parking zones are stored in the apps, so you cannot end the scooter rental there. So users also pay for the time until they have parked the e-scooter on one of the five permitted fields. However, since these areas are relatively small, parking is possible within a radius of around twenty meters around the fields. If this regulation is disregarded, the respective provider must pay a compensation of 50 francs.

The campaign lasts until June. An evaluation will then show whether the situation has improved and whether the use of the bicycle stations and the Esse bicycle parking has increased.