By Julian Loevenich
Open drug use on the platform, rowdy passengers, penetrating smell of feces and urine: How underground is Berlin’s subway? When it comes to employees of the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG): Extreme!
Now 270 subway drivers have signed a fire letter (BZ is available) to the BVG board and the Senate. Their demand: Act at last, hire more security personnel!
BZ spoke to a driver. What she reports is scary! “I had the last ride on the U6 at around 1 a.m.,” she says. Terminus: Wedding. However, a passenger does not leave the train. “When I got to him, he threw the bottle at me.” At 1 am. The woman is alone, there are no security personnel.
A man sleeps on the subway Photo: private
Another BVG employee has been working as a station supervisor for over 20 years. Their task: Among other things, check the tracks in the subway tunnels. “When I got into the tunnel from the Viktoria-Luise-Platz underground station, I heard snoring,” she says, “I jumped straight away.”
In an alcove right next to the tracks, she finds a sleeping man. A safety risk for both the employee and the man. Others even use the subway tunnel as a spare toilet!
Paraphernalia for drug use lie on a bench in the subway station Photo: private
Another subway driver reports to the BZ that a man has slept several times in the cavity under the edge of the platform at a station in the north of Berlin. Dangerous! “A colleague was shocked after seeing the man lying there when he drove in,” says the driver.
Drug use is also a problem, as at the busy Hermannplatz transfer station. A driver observed a junkie there: “He took a shot while we were driving past.” But “normal” passengers also attracted negative attention. For example, when the train pulls away in front of you. “More and more often they haunt us in front of the driver’s cab to show us their disregard,” says one driver.
The conclusion of the employees: They feel increasingly insecure, left alone in the subway! A spokesman for the responsible Senate Department for Mobility on the BZ: “From the point of view of the state, it remains primarily the task of the transport company to find solutions to the problems in their systems.” But one is in talks with the BVG.
A man urinates on the train tracks Photo: private
The BVG says about the problem: “It is clear that we as a transport company cannot solve social issues on our own.” Therefore, there is close contact with politicians and the security authorities.