The walk with Robert Siedler begins in front of the tracks and ends at the Schillerweiher.

There are barely two hundred meters between them, but the journey still takes two hours.

Meanwhile, an S 4 keeps stopping at the terminal station, terminus: Kronberg.

Florentine Fritzen

Correspondent in the Hochtaunus district

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The walk, on the other hand, is about departure.

The area around the train station is being rebuilt, and an important deadline for the planned bus station and the bike and ride areas is approaching.

Siedler, 61, glasses, brown hair, is an important man: He is the first city councilor of Kronberg, full-time responsible for urban planning, construction, environment and real estate management.

All of these tasks are involved at the train station in the Taunus town with 18,000 inhabitants.

Siedler, independent, took office in 2017.

Before that, he was the city planning officer of Ibbenbüren in North Rhine-Westphalia.

He studied architecture and to this day sees himself primarily as a planner.

Meet in front of the Vienna Hotel opposite the two track heads.

The road between the two has been torn open and a depression has been blocked off.

First of all, we don't notice the hole, but look at the wooden facade of the hotel.

This is one of the few things on the site that is already finished.

Siedler pulls out his iPad and shows a sketch.

We are on construction site III, the station forecourt.

Construction site IV is the historic station building right next to the tracks with the waiting S 4. Real KG, owned by the private investor Frederik Roth, bought it in 2019.

People work behind tarpaulins and scaffolding, inside there is a restaurant, a kiosk, a ticket office.

The councilman points to the other side of the tracks.

The project developer Wilma created six high-priced residential buildings on the gentle slope by 2020, the "Schiller Gardens" - construction site VI.

To compensate for the expensive living space at the front, the city is planning construction site V further back, at the other end of the park-and-ride area, where many construction vehicles are currently parked. When the construction sites were determined in 2015, this was intended as a compromise: in Hochtaunus should not only be lived by people who can spend high six or seven-digit amounts on apartments and houses.

There are currently still trees and bushes where 65 affordable housing units are to be built.

The discussion about Baufeld V is not without conflicts.

Between the area and the Schiller Gardens is the small construction site I. Originally, trade was planned there,

now a student residence is planned.

There is no development plan for this yet.

Next, Siedler turns to the currently most pressing project: Bike and ride.

We walk around the historic train station to Bahnhofstrasse.

The city must submit the application for the bus station and bike and ride to the state by June 1st.

Before that there is another city council meeting.

Although the expert committee for urban development and the environment approved the draft on Tuesday, "but that doesn't mean anything," says Siedler.

The bus station is decided.

The bus platforms are to lie on the road like saw teeth so that the buses can drive parallel to them.

But the 33 city councilors will vote again on May 24th in the package with the bicycle parking spaces.

They are on the other side of the street.

Siedler speaks of a “synergy effect”.

Because the steep slope there is supported by a 210 meter long wall, which will soon have to be renewed for safety reasons, regardless of the bicycle parking spaces.

The facility with around 100 parking spaces will then be built 7.50 meters deep into the slope and 5.50 meters wide.

This also makes the road wider - because of the bus saw teeth on the other side.

Several mobility issues that are related

Siedler reports that when three offices were commissioned to plan the bicycle parking spaces in the mountain, the office that also designed the bus station prevailed.

It has also planned a variable number of lockable e-bike boxes.

So far, there are no such boxes at the train station.

Electric bikes are also popular with younger people in the mountainous Kronberg.