This year, we have a little more snow than during previous winters. Well, to be perfectly honest, there is not really very much snow in Bavaria. The layer of snow lying on the ground is still rather a thin one. Yet, the cold temperatures prevail longer and the light snowfalls occur more often than they did in the last few years.
As a consequence, you come across constantly poorly cleaned railroad platforms all around the region, especially at my station in Ottobrunn. In a way, this is understandable. During my childhood and adolescence, entire units went shovelling snow. Wherever you looked, you saw people working away diligently on the snow shovelling front. There were even service points where you could volunteer and earn a little money.
I understand perfectly well why this cannot work in today’s general situation. The organizations are paralyzed by an efficient (?) economizing policy (consequently, there is no money available for luxuries like shovelling snow or public toilets). Moreover, everything has been rationalized and manifested through processes in such a way as to make it impossible to organize anything.
And you can be sure not to find people who would maybe shovel snow at 5 a.m. for a little money. Not among the jobless, the Hartz-IV recipients or other parts of the population.
Why should they? To be perfectly honest: I, too, would hardly be willing to shovel snow at Ottobrunn railway station in the middle of the night for a little money.
But what about all the people standing ankle-deep in the snow at Ottobrunn railway station and getting wet feet while they have to wait for the train that is often late into the bargain?
Some of them have accepted their fate and suffer the snow stoically. Others complain and grumble and tell everybody what poor service we get these days. Especially if the train is again considerably late in arriving.
Yet it would be so easy …
Here is a proposal from the New World.
As soon as the winter begins, the city of Ottobrunn provides a number of snow shovels for the Ottobrunn railway station, or else the S-Bahn GmbH for the entire region. And people waiting for a train could take turns freeing some square metres of snow. Each person according to their own gusto. I would certainly not consider myself above it.
Now the pessimists are going to say: the shovels will be gone in no time, or else destroyed by vandalism. I think we should just try it and see what happens. Besides, we also have video supervision. Why not set the cameras so they can also supervise the snow shovels.
The cost for 10 snow shovels needed at the Ottrobrunn platforms is not very high. Compared with the entire costs of labourers you would need, it is negligible.
Personally, I can well imagine myself shovelling a little snow away while waiting for the train. And I am sure many people think like me. Shovelling snow as an open project?
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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