Did you know that the parking ticket vending machine has an option where you can park for free? Another plus: this option is completely legal.
No one likes paying to park, but what if there was a legal way to do it? Parking ticket vending machines to move? In many cities there has been a trick for years to escape without paying in some cases. And completely legal.
Parking ticket vending machine: pay attention to the “bun button”
Short-term parking can quickly become an expensive affair. Especially in large inland cities, several euros are often charged even for a few minutes, because then parking fines are required for longer periods of time. In fact, this is no longer the case everywhere.
Cities such as Berlin, Cologne, Bremen and Bergisch-Gladbach introduced the so-called bagel button on parking ticket machines more than ten or fifteen years ago. Anyone who uses it can park for free for a certain period of time. The duration of this depends on location. It usually takes between 15 and 30 minutes.
Danger : You still have to purchase a parking ticket to avoid being classified as illegal parking.
How useful is the muffin button?
The specific idea behind the bread button is this: it should help increase the attractiveness of urban centers. On the contrary, this means that the municipality has to give up some of the potential revenue from parking fees.
It depends on the municipalities in which city the parking ticket vending machines will be modernized. According to WDR, Philipp Stempel, spokesman for the association of cities and municipalities of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Brötchenaste at least has the potential to strengthen retail trade and revitalize city centers.
Carina Peretzke of the North Rhine-Westphalia Trade Association adds: “If you just want to jump somewhere for a short time, that's a positive thing.” And older people would benefit too. “There are not always well-located parking spaces,” continues the association's spokesperson.
This goes against the button on the parking ticket vending machine.
There remains a problem with the bread button: it is practically impossible to effectively check the correct use of the parking ticket of short-term parkers who park for only a few minutes. But other aspects also make this bread button controversial.
Dorothee Saar, head of transport and air pollution control at Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH), offers environmental counterarguments: “We already have enough cars in cities. “CO2 emissions are increasing in transportation without us having an immediate program.”
According to her, short errands can also be done by bicycle. However, in her opinion, people with less mobility would also make an exception. However, it is questionable to derive “general rules” from this.
Sources: WDR
By Dana Neumann