37 Years of Green City Government:
Record crime rates, neglect, traffic chaos
No other city in Germany has as much violent crime, drug problems, neglect and traffic chaos as "EURO's worst City". Frankfurt's decline is impossible to ignore – in public places, in the city centre, on public transport and, above all, in the station district, 'the most dangerous slum in Germany' (The Sun, UK).
"Germany's crime capital"
Statistics that identify Frankfurt as the “crime capital” are generally relativized by political leaders. Allegedly, the airport is to blame because crimes committed at the airport are attributed to the city of Frankfurt. This is an attempt to take Frankfurt citizens for fools. What is relevant to the safety of citizens is not customs offenses at the airport, but only violent crime in the city. If you ask the AI:
“Which city in Germany has the highest rate of violent crime?”
Google Gemini provides the following response:
"According to the detailed evaluations currently available from the PKS, the city with the highest rate of violent crime (i.e., violent offenses such as robbery, assault, and threats) is usually Frankfurt am Main, measured by frequency (HZ)."
Why has Frankfurt been Germany's “crime capital” since the 1990s?
For 37 years, the Greens have been the only party continuously represented in the city government, enforcing their positions on drug and security policy. Consequently, they also bear the main responsibility for the negative developments in the city.
Raising this issue is by no means “Green bashing,” but simply a statement of fact.
Where there is a particularly liberal drug policy, where drug use is openly tolerated, drug addicts and thus also dealers from all over Europe are attracted— drug-related crime and acquisitive crime inevitably rise.
In addition, the police are being denied the means to effectively combat crime. Initiatives for data retention, the expansion of telephone/video surveillance, or the use of effective analysis software such as Pallantir are repeatedly blocked by the Green Party.
The consequences can be seen everywhere where the Green Party has a decisive influence on state and city politics: It is striking that cities such as Berlin, Bremen, and Frankfurt appear particularly frequently in reports on clan crime and “no-go areas” and have been among the frontrunners in police crime statistics for decades.
Federal policy decisions could also play a significant role in the record levels of violent crime. In federal politics, the Green Party is repeatedly criticized because its open-border policy makes it particularly easy for criminal immigrants to enter our country and blocks their deportation. There is a hypothesis circulating that criminals among immigrants prefer to settle in cities where organized crime structures already exist. There is a hypothesis circulating that criminals among immigrants prefer to settle in cities where organized crime structures already exist – where they can find support and contacts.
"Hellhole" Station District (the Sun, UK)
Frankfurt's reputation as “Germany's drug capital” has a long tradition. In the 1980s, the city attracted drug addicts and dealers from various regions of Europe and was considered a hotspot for drug-related crime in Germany – much like today. At that time, an open drug scene developed in one of the most beautiful places in the center of Frankfurt – in the park on Anlagenring in front of the Alte Oper.
Today, Frankfurt's drug scene has shifted a few hundred meters westward—to the station district, which, thanks to its central location and well-preserved buildings, could be one of Frankfurt's most beautiful residential areas.
Instead, this district has degenerated into 'the most dangerous slum in Germany' as the British tabloid “The Sun” writes. “The Sun” has described Frankfurt as the EURO's worst City during the European Championship and warned English fans about the conditions in Frankfurt's city center.
Even headlines like these have so far had little effect on changing political course. Recent decisions could make this district even more attractive to drug addicts, leading to a concentration of drug addicts and dealers from all over Europe.
Thousands of tourists and businesspeople who have to pass through the station district on their way from the train station to the city center take home a very negative impression due to the drug addicts lying around, the dealers standing around, the trash, and the stench, and Frankfurt's negative reputation is becoming increasingly entrenched.
German media regularly refer to it as “Germany's most dangerous place” (FAZ), a “place of neglect” (HR), or a “Europe-wide notorious open drug scene” (Spiegel).
Instead of conveying international flair, Frankfurt's station district is now considered by many observers to be a cautionary example of how political failures can turn an entire city center into a hotspot.
The station district in the morning: mountains of rubbish pile up in all the streets of the district, drug syringes lie around in masses, it stinks of faeces and urine.
For the international press (The Sun, UK), it is a “hellhole”; for any normal person, it is a disgrace and a prime example of Frankfurt's decline; for red-green politicians, it is “multicultural diversity.”
Due to the resigned attitude of many Frankfurt citizens (‘the station district has always been dirty and chaotic’). For certain politicians across party lines, crime, widespread drug use on the streets, dirt, rubbish and stench are all part of ‘multicultural diversity’. Such attitudes find support in Frankfurt, where the politicians responsible for these conditions are repeatedly elected to the city parliament and even given majorities. For 37 years, the Green Party has been part of the city government and has implemented its drug and security policies in various coalitions.
"Hell holes" also in public transport
The decline of Frankfurt is not only evident in the station district, but also in the city center and, above all, in local public transport.
Subway station in Frankfurt
Visitors from Asian, Arab, or Northern European cities who enter a Frankfurt subway station must feel like they are in a Third World country:
Filthy, smeared walls, floors littered with chewing gum, torn-down ceiling panels, overflowing bins, puddles of urine in the corners, disgusting toilets and even mattresses on which homeless people and alcoholics sleep.
If you want to see how to bring about a transport revolution, you need to look to Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, or the major cities in the Netherlands.
Due to the failure of green transport policy in terms of expanding public transport, we are not years but decades behind these cities.
In the world's progressive cities, passengers enter clean stations similar to those found at airports. When boarding and alighting, they hold their EC/credit card or smartphone up to a scanner – that's it, the fare is calculated automatically.
All these cities have an identical strategy: before they started closing roads or removing lanes, they offered motorists a competitive alternative in every respect in the form of public transport.
Subway station Stockholm
This is what a subway station looks like when a city's transportation policy is managed by serious, competent transportation policymakers: safe, clean, competitive, and technologically up to date.
This is the only way to convince drivers to use public transportation. Stockholm has a particularly clever approach. It has introduced a city toll, which gives the excellent public transportation system a significant price advantage over cars.
Frankfurt's path to decades of traffic chaos
Since 2006, the Green Party has been responsible for the transport department, with one exception. In these 20 years, not a single effective measure has been introduced to noticeably curb the ever-increasing volume of traffic that pours into the city from outside every day.
Progressive cities have Park&Ride facilities on their city limits, where you can leave your car and switch to the subway. Oslo, the world's only capital city with a car-free city center, has moved traffic underground with tunnels. Düsseldorf, Heidelberg, and others have created car-free riverbanks with tunnels. All those who have brought about a successful transport revolution have promoted public transport as the most important of all instruments—comprehensive and high-frequency, practical, clean, safe, and competitive.
An article in Stern magazine about the car-free city center in Oslo stated: “Experts agree that if cars are to be pushed back, public transport must be expanded at the same time.”
The Green Party transport officials of the last 20 years have still not come to this simple realization. Public transportation, which is considered the most important tool for bringing about a transportation revolution all over the world, is being expanded only hesitantly, service frequency is being reduced rather than increased, it has not been modernized for decades and is being left to rot.
The Greens' new ‘strategy’: fighting traffic jams with even more traffic jams!!!
After decades of inaction with regard to the expansion and modernization of public transport, citizens should be able to expect that public transport will finally be improved. This is not the case. The belief is that the traffic jams can be eliminated in other ways, without investing in public transport, tunnels, or park-and-ride facilities, using the so-called “push strategy.”
This means nothing other than the systematic harassment of society's high achievers through the withdrawal of traffic areas, increased traffic density and the deliberate creation of traffic jams. The aim is to force a so-called ‘traffic evaporation’ (switch to other modes of transport), a change in the ‘modal split’. These terms are intended to suggest that this is a serious transport policy.
Hundreds of thousands of commuters keep our city running with their daily work. Decent people who need to be mobile in order to feed their families are forced by politicians who have never had a relevant job and lack any expertise in transport science to switch to a dilapidated, uneconomical public transport system due to constant traffic jams. Instead of following successful practical examples such as Oslo, Stockholm, etc., they rely on pseudo-scientific traffic space reduction ideology.
Hundreds of thousands of craftsmen, logisticians, service technicians, transporters, delivery service employees, who depend on a functioning transport infrastructure, are prevented from doing their jobs when the transport infrastructure is paralyzed.
Ironically, it is a Green Party transport minister who is implementing this anti-social ‘strategy’ of creating traffic jams and emissions. One lane after another is being removed, traffic is being squeezed onto half the road space, and congestion – and with it noise and emissions – is reaching ever new heights.
Frankfurt lacks the “perfect alternative”
The green advocates of this “push strategy” dream that commuters will immediately abandon their cars and switch to other modes of transport if traffic space is taken away from them and traffic jams are created.
However, this so-called “traffic evaporation” takes place over many years and only to a limited extent (10 to 25% in the best case, see SACTRA report from the UK). To achieve 25% “traffic evaporation,” a so-called “perfect alternative” (perfect public transport) must be provided, and we are decades away from that. If you want to achieve more than 50% (like Oslo), you have to combine the “perfect alternative” with additional measures such as city tolls and tunnels, and we are also decades away from that.
If commuters are not provided with a “perfect alternative,” cars will return as soon as traffic jams become tolerable again, because cars are more convenient, practical, cheaper, and safer than public transportation. Even the cycling lobbyists, who hold almost all the relevant positions in the transport department, have recognized this. They write on their website that traffic jams should not be eliminated, “because otherwise people will switch to cars.” A city center permanently covered in traffic jams so that cars don't return—that's the last thing we need.
Policy of Self-harm
The damage to the economy is enormous: According to AI calculations, five minutes of additional travel time due to traffic jams on the way to and from work for the 70,000 tradespeople in Frankfurt alone result in annual losses of more than EUR 120 million in lost revenue, assuming that 70% have a customer assignment every day (charging rate EUR 65). This does not prevent the Green Party from deliberately causing hundreds of millions of euros in damage to the economy by reducing traffic space and creating traffic jams.
Emissions protection or the “quality of life in the city center” repeatedly promised by green politicians cannot be achieved with policies that cause traffic jams, but rather the opposite. According to KI, an additional 5 minutes of driving time due to traffic jams on the way there and back additional 20,000 tons of CO2 per year – just for the 220,000 commuters who travel by car!!! This is the result when Green politicians allow the cycling lobby to dictate policies that reduce traffic space and create traffic jams. How does Frankfurt intend to achieve its environmental protection and sustainability goals when one measure after another is being taken that leads to higher traffic density and thus to a disproportionate increase in traffic jams and traffic-related damage to the environment?
We asked the AI platform Google Gemini: "How long will it take for the desired ‘traffic evaporation’ to occur and for 50% of road users to switch to other modes of transport if 50% of the space in the city center is taken away from them?" The answer:
Reducing traffic volume by 50% or more (as in Oslo) requires the following in addition to space restrictions:
1. Perfect alternative: A superior, fast, and comfortable public transport infrastructure with high frequency and affordable prices.
2. Financial incentives/barriers: An effective toll or congestion pricing system (city center toll) that makes car use expensive.
3. Elimination of through traffic: Bypass solutions (such as tunnels) that filter out traffic that does not necessarily need to stop in the city center.
Only the combined effect of restrictions, pricing, and a significantly improved alternative can lead to a modal shift of 50% or more. Without these accompanying measures, land withdrawal alone would likely lead to a prolonged traffic congestion problem without achieving the desired modal shift rate. "
Another consequence will be the desolation of the city centre.
In Oslo, you drive underground to the city centre and go shopping in the car-free city centre above – trade remains intact despite the transport revolution.
In Frankfurt, however, trade is being deprived of its livelihood because traffic jams are permanently shifting shopping behaviour to shopping centres on the outskirts of the city. According to a 2020 analysis by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, around 40% of shoppers came by car in 2020. If you deprive retailers of almost half of their sales potential by driving residents from the outer districts out of the city centre and forcing them to shop in the shopping centres on the outskirts, they have no chance against Amazon & Co.
The beginnings can already be seen on the Zeil and in Oeder Weg. Shops are closing down, new ones are opening and then closing down too, and in the end all that remains are lowered shutters.
What can Frankfurt's citizens do about this?
Of course, we must withdraw our votes from those politically responsible at the ballot box. If Frankfurt wants to avoid economic collapse, if Frankfurt wants to become Frankfurt again – a safe, clean city and the preferred business location in Germany – then this is only possible with a fundamental change of course in city policy.
A fundamental change of course is only possible if the Greens are voted out of office after 37 years in government and are no longer part of the coalition. Black-green or red-green – it makes little difference in terms of drug and security policy, because the Greens will not budge from their positions. The past has shown this.
If the Greens prevail again in the 2026 local elections, young people would be well advised to heed the call of Green Mayor Eskandari-Grünberg and move away. She has urged Frankfurt citizens who are concerned about their children's educational opportunities due to the high proportion of migrants in their schools to move away from Frankfurt.
If Eskandari & Co. continue to be given the mandate by voters to pursue their drugs and security policies, then young people can only be advised to seize the first professional opportunity that comes along to get away from Frankfurt. Raising children in a crime and drug stronghold is not a good option.
The risk of them coming into contact with crack dealers from the station district, who have no qualms about luring even children into addictions that are almost impossible to treat, cannot be dismissed. Every other major city has overtaken Frankfurt in terms of the criteria relevant to citizens: safety, cleanliness and transport infrastructure. Even as a staunch Frankfurt resident, one has to acknowledge this with envy.
Those who want or need to stay here must adapt. Many Frankfurt residents have long since adjusted to the circumstances. Those who can afford it send their children to private schools. They accompany them to school and pick them up to avoid dangerous situations in public spaces. Public swimming pools, where criminal gangs like to demonstrate their power, are often avoided in favour of neighbouring communities. At night, many drive their children home from clubs and events to protect them from potential risks on public transport or in public spaces. Those who live on the ground floor barricade themselves in with bars and alarm systems.
Come here or stay away?
The example of the missed Brexit opportunities makes it particularly clear how damaging green drug and security policies are to the city's economy. Without the Greens, Frankfurt could have become the leading financial metropolis in the EU.
Moving to Frankfurt as an entrepreneur?
Companies should also carefully consider whether Frankfurt is a suitable location in the long term. A city with a disastrous image, the highest crime rate and a political establishment that is prepared to accept considerable economic damage for minimal transport policy effects does not send a positive signal to investors or skilled workers. International airports and good transport links are also available in Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Munich – cities that are considered to be significantly safer, cleaner and more liveable. Frankfurt, on the other hand, has one of the highest trade tax rates in Germany, a largely paralysed transport infrastructure, regular traffic chaos and a run-down, backward public transport system.