Some people are surprised when they drive along the Bockenheimer Landstrasse.

Because in the middle of the road, a glass elevator now protrudes from a small traffic island.

This is the barrier-free access to the Westend underground station, which was opened this autumn after years of discussion.

With the commissioning, all 27 underground stops of the Frankfurt subway are now barrier-free.

Eight of them, including the Westend station built in 1986 and the Alte Oper, Schweizer Platz and Miquelallee/Adickesallee stations, had to be retrofitted with elevators.

Mechthild Harting

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Of the 84 subway stations for which the Frankfurt Transport Authority (VGF) is responsible, there are only two that do not meet the requirement that the disabled, wheelchair users or parents with prams use them and the subway as a means of transport reachable.

These are the stations Niddapark and Römerstadt.

The elevators required for the Niddapark underground station are to be built together with the new S-Bahn station.

Then, according to the VGF, the stop will become “a transfer station with a high traffic value”.

The station, which was practically built on a green field in 1989 for the Federal Horticultural Show, is currently considered to be one of the least used in the VGF network plan.

The Römerstadt station is different.

The tracks there were lowered last year so that the step between the subway and the platforms disappeared.

This year, the station was extensively renovated and equipped with a guidance system for the blind.

At the end of the new year, the installation of two elevators will begin and the barrier-free conversion will be completed.

According to the VGF, the installation of the elevators is technically difficult because they have to be integrated into the bridge over Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse.

VGF hopes to put it into operation in 2024.

This would mean that 20 years after the municipal company launched its retrofit program, all stations except for the one at Niddapark would have elevators.

Only 60 percent of the tram stops are barrier-free

With the Frankfurt subways, the goal of easy accessibility has almost been achieved.

However, paragraph 8 of the Passenger Transport Act actually stipulated that full accessibility should have been ensured in Germany by January 1, 2022.

Since many municipalities and transport companies have not met the requirement, the new federal government has announced that it will extend the deadline to 2026.

Trade associations are demanding that the government provide financial support for the conversion so that public transport is actually completely accessible.

At VGF, too, we know that there is still a lot to do.

As Karlheinz Lebisch, who is responsible for the infrastructure measures, recently announced, only about 60 percent of the 139 tram stops are barrier-free.

With the 1600 bus stops it looks even worse.

Lebisch points out that barrier-free expansion is only possible in conjunction with streets and intersections.

And that is extremely expensive.

That was also the case with the Westend underground station, which around 11,000 people use every day.

Ten variants were extensively examined before the city applied for the planning approval procedure with the Darmstadt regional council for the variant that has now been implemented.

It consists of a single elevator that leads directly from the subway platform up to the traffic island in the middle of Bockenheimer Landstraße - a solution that will bother some drivers.