Larissa and Katharina, two nurses in the intensive care unit of the community hospital on Nibelungenallee in Frankfurt, are angry.

You are one of the approximately 550 hospital employees who have to commute to work.

Parking their car in the Nordend is nerve-wracking, expensive and often also: illegal for both of them.

It's a familiar situation.

Because of the high rents in the cities, many move to the countryside.

You then commute to the city centers and need parking spaces exactly where there are few.

The parking spaces near the workplace are either reserved for residents or have a maximum parking time of two hours.

So also in the north end.

During a shift of at least eight hours, the cars of the two nurses quickly come under the scrutiny of the public order office.

"There are very few places where I can park legally," says carer Katharina, who does not want to give her last name because of the illegal parking.

But they have to park the car somewhere.

“I had two parking tickets last week.

Together they cost 55 euros, ”says her colleague Larissa.

The managed parking spaces cost 50 cents per quarter of an hour, i.e. around 17 euros for a working day.

Anyone who parks their car there every day pays 340 euros per month.

With these costs, the two women are more likely to risk a parking ticket.

They pay an average of around 60 euros a month for this.

Public transport is not worth it

But parking not only costs money, it also costs time and nerves. “On average, I look for a parking space for half an hour a day,” says Larissa. Why don't the two women just switch to public transport? Katharina, who commutes to work from Egelsbach, would need more than an hour in each direction by train because she has to change trains. “I drive 16 minutes by car.” The women work in shifts. This is a problem for using local transport. Before the early and after the late shift, the trains run only irregularly. “It just doesn't pay off in terms of time,” summarizes Katharina. In addition, changing several times at night after the late shift is out of the question for them. Illegal parking with the occasional parking ticket is also significantly cheaper than traveling by bus or train.The RMV monthly ticket for the tariff zones concerned costs around 142 euros.

The two nurses doubt that the planned hospital renovation will help.

The Clementine Children's Hospital is to move from Ostend next to the Bürgerhospital to Nordend by 2026.

In the course of this, a new parking concept will also be created.

"As a hospital located in the inner city, we do not have enough space to cover the need for parking for employees on our premises," says the press spokesman for the community hospital.

The hospital is trying to rent parking spaces in the area.

But the offer is scarce.

“We can't find anything,” he says.

The only alternative seems to be a cheaper and faster connection to local transport so that the nurses do not travel four times as long by train as by car.