Raunheim is known beyond the city limits in several ways.

The municipality is considered to be the most heavily polluted city in Germany by aircraft noise.

House roofs are repeatedly covered by the wake of airplanes landing.

At almost 70 percent, it has one of the highest proportions of migrants in Hesse.

And recently it has parking spaces especially for firefighters, who are now being discussed nationwide.

A few weeks ago, some public parking spaces in the city were specially marked and given a parking lot sign, which they reserved for active members of the local fire brigade. These parking spaces are intended to ensure that the firefighters have a parking space in the immediate vicinity of their apartments so that in the event of an emergency they do not have to walk long distances to get to their car and thus to the fire station.

Like many other municipalities in the Rhine-Main conurbation, Raunheim suffers from a lack of parking spaces.

Mainly because there are several parcel services in the city whose employees park the streets with the delivery vehicles.

So far, the city has not found a way to ban the flood of sprinters from the cityscape.

Hence the idea of ​​Mayor Thomas Jühe (SPD) to reserve parking spaces for active fire brigade members directly in front of their apartments, because every minute counts in the event of an emergency.

Over 200 missions a year

While the fire brigade reports that, thanks to this privilege, the firefighters concerned are now much faster in the fire station than before, there are apparently also envious people.

For example, the Darmstadt regional council received an anonymous report with the request that the higher road traffic authority review the legality of the reservation of parking spaces for certain groups of people.

In the social networks, the parking spaces are largely approved, but there are also critical voices.

From the town hall one can hear that in the meantime municipalities from all over Germany have reported and inquired about this type of parking space and the implementation of the project.

The media reported regionally and nationally.

Raunheim's fire brigade is not just any village fire brigade with a dozen missions a year.

It is not only responsible for the city with around 15,000 inhabitants, but also for the motorways 3 and 67 between the Wiesbaden and Frankfurter Kreuz and between Mönchhof-Dreieck and Rüsselsheim and has just got a new, significantly larger fire station.

More than 200 missions a year are common.

This is another reason why the city considers the parking space reservation for active firefighters to be justified and does not believe that the markings are legally objectionable.