©A. Schwald
©A. Schwald
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Local News Summary of January, 17th

  • People fall and injure themselves on Basel’s icy streets
  • Nonsensical “two-wheel cemeteries” due to initiative
  • Ice rink Margarethen fights for survival despite good 2016/2017 season

People fall and injure themselves on Basel’s icy streets

Several pedestrians have injured themselves after falling on icy pavements in Basel over the last few days.

Two dozen people were treated at the emergency department of the University Hospital of Basel over the weekend while a further nine went to the hospital on Monday after slipping on ice, hospital spokesman Martin Jordan said in a report in the “TagesWoche”.

A poster campaign is to be launched this week by Basel’s civil engineering office to remind home owners to clear the pavements in front of their houses to prevent further accidents.

Reminders have also been put on the side of city cleaning vehicles, a spokesperson for the department said. The campaign was launched independently and not because of current weather conditions and the dangers for pedestrians, according to the spokesperson. If necessary, the city cleaning department will launch an additional campaign.

Nonsensical “two-wheel cemeteries” due to initiative

In the struggle to meet the requirements of the urban environmental protection law, the de facto decreed parking fee for motorcycles and scooters was a mistake.

Plans to limit the parking times for Vespa scooters to a maximum of one-and-a-half hours was nothing short of a masterpiece in bureaucratic administration madness.

The “Zweiradinitiative” (two-wheel initiative) against the ridiculous plan for 400 additional “government” parking spaces has been successfully launched. Now, the government is drawing in its horns as silently as possible with a counter-initiative.

Yet this action did not keep it from already spraying markers for oversized parking spaces on the streets and to temporarily set up new cash machines here and there in Kleinbasel. This behaviour may have been justified by law but it was stupid none the less.

The parking fee for motorcycles and scooters was a typical side stage in the struggle for an environmental protection law for Basel. Nobody really wanted these nonsensical fees, but they were good fuel for making political skirmishes in parliament and smaller blackmail campaigns.

After statements by the government, questions by the parliament, and debates, this modern version of highway robbery was finally approved after an exhausting seven years. Not with us, the “young liberal parties” launched the two-wheels initiative. For them, it is not only more practical but a time-saver and much cheaper to drive into the vehicle-free city with a scooter than to use public transport. So far, the logic is sound. But an approval of the two-wheels initiative would not be without its pitfalls.

The initiators gathered enough signatures against the equally nonsensical and unpopular fees with the slogan “Mer kömme anenand verbyy” (We can pass by each other). At its core, the initiative is about an additional 400 parking spaces for motorcycles and scooters, predominantly at the Bahnhof SBB, in the city centre, and also at the University.

How ridiculous this matter is can be seen in the mere 166,000 Swiss francs of revenue that the city of Basel has so far raised for from these parking spaces. Yet the reason why Basel’s executive power fears the initiative lies in its wording. Reading the initiative text, it becomes less easy to just ‘pass each other by’.

“This demand is hardly executable and has far-reaching consequences that the initiators do not see,” the authorities have said. Furthermore, an acceptance of the initiative would legally bind the city to offerering enough two-wheel parking spaces across Basel. Other public offers would also suffer from this obligation to build “two-wheel cemeteries”, such as street cafes, green spaces, and pavements.

Taxi parking spaces at the German Railway Station or at Bahnhof SBB would disappear, and travellers would have to instead carry their luggage through a desert of bicycles and mopeds before they could continue on to the city. The authorities proclaim the end of the world. Who can still take this seriously?

Therefore, the initiators are relaxed. The young liberals told barfi.ch that they have to analyse the counter-initiative properly before they can decide whether to withdraw their initiative or not. But whichever way you see it: the two-wheel initiative would cause the construction of further two-wheel deserts, as seen already at Meret-Oppenheim-Platz in Gundeli.

Hopefully this stubborn path is neither truly desired by the lazy parliament nor by the rightfully infuriated young liberals. But one thing is clear: a short-term and furthermore fee-based limitation on the parking of motorcycles and scooters forces a lot of drivers back into their cars. An unmatched ecological nonsense. But at least the new government can blame their predecessors and do what is necessary in style: put flowers on the grave.

Ice rink Margarethen fights for survival despite good 2016/2017 season

The “ice rink strategy” is the frosty legacy passed on by Basel government member Christoph Eymann to his successor Conradin Cramer. The fate of the time-honoured but also dilapidated ice rink Margarethen will be decided by this strategy. Meanwhile, the Eglisse ice rink will receive a supported swimming hall this October.

Basel’s artificial ice rinks are profiting from a successful winter. With around 51,000 entries by 8 January, the season 2016/2017 lies 3,000 entries above the five-year-average, Rolf Moser from the sports office of Basel-Stadt said on request by barfi.ch. Generally, the ice surfaces are used to capacity.

This may well be because of the mostly stable December weather but perhaps it is also due to the ongoing debate about the future of Basel’s ice rinks. Both Margarethen and Eglisee near Riehen were in dire need of renovation, in particular with their technical equipment. Meanwhile, the last works have been finished at the Eglisee, and the “Kunsti” Margarethen also received some urgent renovations.

At Margarethen, the canton had to finish restoring the refrigeration plant and to take care of immediate measures regarding the malfunction regulation.

It was only because of this that the ice rink could still remain open. The ammonia installation of the time-honoured “Kunsti” Margarethen is so old and in such a bad condition that it was a serious risk to safety, which is why the safety inspection office of Baselland stepped in.

The first measures had already been taken in 2015. The second phase of renovations is currently being completed, Daniel Hofer of the civil engineering office of Basel-Stadt confirmed. Both ice rinks are therefore functional again – for now.