Berlin –More staff on the subway – good news for users of the most important means of public transport in this city. The Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) are hiring additional station supervisors. This was confirmed by Markus Falkner, spokesman for the state company, on Thursday. “We’re increasing the number by around 50 percent.” The first new teams will start in summer 2022 on the U8 between Gesundbrunnen and Hermannstrasse. More lines will follow. The picture and the BZ had previously reported.
There are already station supervisors at the BVG. It currently has 136 employees of this type, each looking after a fixed part of the 175 Berlin underground stations. Each base is responsible for six stations. “The colleagues are flexible and mobile, they are in constant contact with the control centers via radio,” explained Falkner. Now the number of positions will increase by 66. The new supervisors should ensure an increased presence in the stations. “They will be working 365 days a year, 24 hours a day for Berlin in a three-shift system,” said the BVG spokesman.
“This is also a traffic turnaround”
There were 140 applications. “The first training courses are currently underway. The training lasts three months,” says Falkner. If all goes well, around 40 new colleagues will come on board this year.
Order, cleanliness and safety – guaranteeing this is the main task of the station staff, according to the BVG. Again and again, passengers complain that waste and dirt left behind by other parts of the customer base are left behind. Customer service and passenger information are other areas of responsibility, said Falkner.
After the BVG had withdrawn the train dispatchers from the underground in the late 1990s because they were no longer needed, there was frequent criticism of “ghost stations”. “More staff at underground stations is a frequently mentioned customer request, which we are happy to meet,” said the spokesman. The security service has also been increased. “Around 250 security forces – our own and service providers – are on duty every day. That’s the number of people who really surf the web every day. Naturally, the number of employees is higher.”
“We have always considered staff-free stations to be a wrong development. Vandalism, drug trafficking and consumption, etc. often make the subway unattractive,” according to the passenger association IGEB. “Therefore unqualified agreement. That too is a turnaround in traffic.”