From the Stars and Stripes:
"Pedestrian commuters on base encounter an enemy at the gates"
From the very beginning, Irene Maschke didn’t like them. Then one day, one of them tried to kidnap her. Standing in front of another recently, she looked ready to brawl. She swiped her ID card. A lock disengaged. Then she opened a heavy door and stepped into one of the automated pedestrian gates that have popped up at Army bases in Europe in recent years. It kicked her out immediately “Whoever bought them,” she said, preparing to start the process of entering Kleber Kaserne in Kaiserslautern all over again, “should be fired.” She’s hardly alone in harboring disdain for the Army’s Enhanced Security Pedestrian Gates, which look like displaced elevators and hold many a pedestrian commuter’s chance of arriving at work on time in their hot little circuit boards. For many who use them, the gates’ breakdowns, glitches and inability to handle heavy morning foot traffic can turn a good day bad. But as the number of American soldiers in Europe dwindles, the gates appear to be multiplying, replacing human guards at gates where, according to a response from U.S. Army Europe, “there is not enough pedestrian traffic for it to be financially viable” to pay a guard to do what the machines can do. The first electronic gate was tested in 2006 at Kleber Kaserne. Now, there are at least 22 of the devices on Army installations across Germany and Italy. Each costs anywhere from $270,000 to $490,000 to install and another $18,000 a year to maintain, according to figures provided by USAREUR.
“That’s a lot of money for something that works half of the time,” said Spc. Curtis Thomas, 20, a transportation management coordinator from Atlanta, who uses an unmanned gate at the west end of Kleber about three times a week. Maybe half the time is stretching it; a third of the time, he said, it doesn’t work. From May through August, there were 74 calls for repairs to gates at 22 locations in Germany and Italy, according to an emailed response from USAREUR, which the command credited to an Army Corps of Engineers office in Alabama. Of those calls, 13 were false alarms, 39 were fixed the same day and 12 were fixed the following day. Five other breakdowns took between three and four days to fix, according to the response, while nine took longer. Another breakdown was more serious. “One gate, at Coleman Barracks was down for several days after someone was locked in and a lock had to be broken to let the person out,” according to the Army engineers’ response, which noted the person was “let out quickly” after the gate malfunctioned, “but the repairs took several days.” “As for the repair cost, the records show a technician arrived and cut the lock within an hour after being called,” a spokesman for USAREUR wrote in a follow-up email. “The new lock was acquired and replaced six days later at a cost of $357 for the lock, plus just over two hours labor (the technician replaced the lock and some damaged rivets and repainted the damaged area).” Maschke had a similar encounter with a gate. “One time I was locked up in it,” she said. As usually happens when something goes wrong with the gates — monitored by vehicle-gate guards around the clock — a guard responded when she pushed the button for assistance. That time, though, “the gate guard didn’t know how to open the gate and couldn’t let me out. And I stood there for about 10-15 minutes,” Maschke said. “It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic.”
“That’s a lot of money for something that works half of the time,” said Spc. Curtis Thomas, 20, a transportation management coordinator from Atlanta, who uses an unmanned gate at the west end of Kleber about three times a week. Maybe half the time is stretching it; a third of the time, he said, it doesn’t work. From May through August, there were 74 calls for repairs to gates at 22 locations in Germany and Italy, according to an emailed response from USAREUR, which the command credited to an Army Corps of Engineers office in Alabama. Of those calls, 13 were false alarms, 39 were fixed the same day and 12 were fixed the following day. Five other breakdowns took between three and four days to fix, according to the response, while nine took longer. Another breakdown was more serious. “One gate, at Coleman Barracks was down for several days after someone was locked in and a lock had to be broken to let the person out,” according to the Army engineers’ response, which noted the person was “let out quickly” after the gate malfunctioned, “but the repairs took several days.” “As for the repair cost, the records show a technician arrived and cut the lock within an hour after being called,” a spokesman for USAREUR wrote in a follow-up email. “The new lock was acquired and replaced six days later at a cost of $357 for the lock, plus just over two hours labor (the technician replaced the lock and some damaged rivets and repainted the damaged area).” Maschke had a similar encounter with a gate. “One time I was locked up in it,” she said. As usually happens when something goes wrong with the gates — monitored by vehicle-gate guards around the clock — a guard responded when she pushed the button for assistance. That time, though, “the gate guard didn’t know how to open the gate and couldn’t let me out. And I stood there for about 10-15 minutes,” Maschke said. “It’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic.”
^ This seems like a big waste. It wastes communters' time getting to/from work and it wastes the government's money in having to constantly fix the broken machines. When I lived in Germany I had to wait at the gate while the MPs checked the cars and sometimes when there wasn't a car they waited and waited for one to come rather than walk over and check my ID. A lot of the time I waited, but when there were no cars I would start walking and only stopped when the MPs came running/screaming at me to stop. I would act surprised and said I thought they said I could continue on knowing full well they didn't and they were only trying to use what little authority they thought they had. I have no sympathy for MPs as I have had to deal with so many stupid ones from Germany to Virginia and I don't think I have ever met a smart one. Regardless, I mentioned the story of waiting at the gate because it still sounds better than being stuck in an automated gate. This system seems broken (if it ever worked) and both the manufacturer and the military seem to make countless excuses for it rather than fix the issues or do away with it completely. ^
http://www.stripes.com/news/pedestrian-commuters-on-base-encounter-an-enemy-at-the-gates-1.197616
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