Red Tape Hot Box on blocked emergency access

When a person moves from one country to another, he often suffers from so-called "culture shock." The enthusiasm and novelty that a person feels at the beginning is soon replaced with disorientation and emotional upheaval when reality sets in, before reaching the end stage of acceptance (although not everyone can reach this final stage). However, it is precisely the second stage that is also distinguished by criticism that helps newcomers to point out things that don't work the way they expect them to in the new surroundings in which they have chosen to live.

Fortunately for me, I have never had to pass through those stages of culture shock since I have always lived in my native country. But because of that, I missed the chance to notice those little things that would annoy me if I had been a foreigner. One such issue that I failed to see until it was pointed out by a foreign reader is that emergency vehicle access ways to many of the buildings in Warsaw are always blocked by parked cars. One such place is the parking lot outside the Femina cinema on Al. Solidarności, the lot you walk onto when you leave the movie theater.

Well, that isn't actually a parking lot but rather an access route for fire engines to get to the buildings behind the cinema. The city council says that it can't close the lot because it doesn't officially exist. And it can't block access because it is an emergency route. (Apparently lockable bollards are unknown to them.) The city guard has been asked to come and ticket the cars parked there, but the patrolmen always refuse (though they will ticket a car parked in the designated disabled space if it doesn't have a disabled sticker. An illegal parking lot with an enforced disabled drivers' space? Only in Warsaw.). Thus, the only way to make sure that the city provides the inhabitants of those buildings with emergency vehicle access is for them to buy the land from the city and then hope that nobody parks on the pavement in front of the gate.

This is a difficult issue because on the one hand people need to leave their cars somewhere, but on the other hand safety, as in most other western European countries, should come first. And the faster we learn that, the longer we might live.

Red tape bugging you? Tell Mateusz about it at matdem@poczta.onet.pl.