Toytown Germany

If you read German, make sure you check out Minga.de. This site was launched in December and is very quickly gaining in popularity. In one of their recent articles they asked, "who will be the first to freeze to death on the U6?". This refers to the fact that when the U-Bahn trains wait for 5 to 10 minutes at Fröttmaning the doors usually remain open and the passengers are exposed to the outside temperatures. This affects the daily commuters to the Technical University as well as other residents of Garching. When challenged, the MVG gave the official response that they aim to maintain carriages at 18 degrees. They didn't specify whether that was plus or minus. Interestingly enough, an U-Bahn driver himself has since read the article and has written in to explain his side of the story.

[img]http://www.toytowngermany.com/munich/freezing_dog_big.jpg[/img]

The driver, calling himself "Chris", explains:

"Basically we have the guideline which says that if the train is stationary for a while then the doors should be closed but unlocked. This will continue to happen and it's what I do when I'm at Fröttmaning.

The trouble is: the passengers. I make an announcement which says that in order to keep warm the doors will now be closed but not locked. Boarding and disembarking is still possible. Yet as soon as I close the doors many passengers go into panic. Some jump onto the train in a hurry, others jump out. And thus all the doors are open once again. What should I do? Repeat the whole procedure? But the passengers will just react the same way.

In particular the smokers are a species unto themselves. They like to keep their behinds warm whilst smoking to the front. So they stand in the doorway. They can satisfy their addiction whilst forcing their co-passengers to freeze. I make an announcement for them to move, but they only react negatively. Unfortunately I'm not allowed to squish them."

Read the original in German here: Wer erfriert als Erster in der U6?

So once again the "Smokers" are causing problems somewhere else... I thought MVG/DB banned smoking in the train stations... Perhaps they should actually start enforcing this & collecting the 25Eur fine to support the company, like the 40Eur "No ticket fine"

Yeah, smoking is banned there except for smoking areas, which are certainly not reachable with your butt in the door. I'm for more enforcement. That'd be a great new source of income! A couple of weeks of people on duty right there and the problem should be solved!

Smoking is only banned in the underground stations, surely? At places like Fröttmaning the station is open air - hence no need for a ban.

I'm not one to ever support smoking, but just thought I'd point that out.

@Pedant

It started out that way back in 2004. Effective 1 JAN 2005 this policy was changed to include ALL sbahn & ubahn stations. MVG/MVV/DB have even putup the yellow "No smoking" sign at all stations. If they arn't there it's cause the smokers ripped them down.. ;)

There are no such "no smoking" signs at the Freimann open-air U-Bahn station. In fact, there are even ash-bins provided. I can't for a moment believe that smoking is banned here. Like I say, it's wide open air.

bahn.de doesn't have info on their smoke-free train stations either, only their Pressestelle does:

db.de/presseinfo

They're apparently still working on getting the signs up everywhere.

mvv-muenchen.de didn't have any info that I could find. But yeah, even the wide-open spaces are supposed to be non-smoking except for the smoking zones.