My work colleagues and Facebook friends got me to know as the guy who keeps complaining about public transport - even though I promised to the later to stop that. It's just a matter of fact that I have quite some time to do Facebook status updates and such while public transport is not going well - and honestly I have the strong opinion that this happens way to much. My non-German colleagues keep insisting that I should have no reason to complain about public transport in Germany at all as it is way worse in other countries. I don't think that this is a valid argument as on the one hand nothing gets better only because something is worse and also I don't really think that they have a statistical relevant amount of experience to judge on German public transport - especially in the local traffic. ICE trains are pretty good - I need to admit.But let's keep all this away for the moment.
Today I decided to go by car and that is really wasting valuable life time. A lot of small traffic jams all over the place - although everything went reasonable smooth. But still - this time was really wasted. For sure, I could have listen to my favorite music, audio book, you name it, but that actually does not really work if you have so much commuting time. At a certain point of time your favorite music just works at the time you want it not at the time you could enjoy it. Everything beyond listening to something is way out of my reach - being a male I can not really do anything in parallel to the main task being executed. What about the main task? Yep right: Driving a Car. The Prototype of Individualism in our modern civilization. You can decide where to go, which way you take and at which speed you are traveling - Total Bullshit! In first approximation - and I think that is quite valid in this case - it is just about maintaining the minimal distance to the car driving - or rather waiting - in front of you. Pretty stupid but kind of takes pretty much all of your attention.
Pretty much, but not all. So let have a look around. Wow - I couldn't remember a single car - at least of the private ones (which are 99%) - which was stuffed by more than on person. OK - can't be the case. So let's assume that only 10% of the cars are taking two persons and neglect the ones which are actually convey more than two persons. In an average car 4 persons would fit. So over all the efficiency factor is something like 30% (actually less) - insane.
So all together, I will stick to public transport. Although it is pretty crowded in there I still think it would make perfectly sense to get more people on this - given that the infrastructure is improved. Would be a valid opportunity to make individual commuting more expensive and use the money to improve and extend public transport. As there are still areas and time frames where you simply can't rely on public transport like for me today. I have a business dinner tonight and can' go back home after 21:30 with public transport anymore. That's pretty crap - next time I will try to combine public transport and taxi though ...
