The city of Winterthur has been dealing with area-wide blue zones for a long time. With a standardization, commuters in particular are to be discouraged from parking in residential areas. When the city published its plans for the first three pilot zones in April, there was great resistance. The fronts were so hardened that the responsible city councilor Christa Meier (SP) asked the affected district representatives to come to the round table.
Above all, the neighborhoods fear that the introduction of the blue zone will lead to a lack of parking spaces. Because until now they could simply park their vehicles on the side of the road. The districts filed an appeal against the city’s plans in the spring.
As the governor’s office of the Winterthur district wrote on Friday, it rejected the appeals for the areas of Breite, Neuwiesen-Blumenau and Oberwinterthur-Zinzikon.
Protection of neighborhoods more important than private interests
“The governor’s office has come to the conclusion that protecting the quarters from third-party parking and increasing traffic safety are legitimate public interests and that the introduction of the blue zone is suitable and necessary to achieve these goals,” the statement said.
The positive effects that the Blue Zones would bring would outweigh the private interests of the recourse. The neighborhoods had resisted a reduction in parking spaces. In the contested traffic regulations, however, no parking spaces have yet been defined, only the introduction of the blue zone has been decided in principle. For this reason, the governor’s office, as the appeals authority, could not enter into the number or locations of the parking spaces, it continues.
The definitive arrangement of the parking spaces by the responsible municipal authorities will only take place in a later separate step. The decisions of the governor’s office can be appealed to the administrative court of the canton of Zurich.
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