Bus

The United States is the land of the Automobile. After all, Ford sent out its Model-T there, the Mechanical Revolution was a product of good-old-american ingenuity. Our society was molded by the car - our cities grew in response to the stretches of highway and the fast speeds of which our cars are capable. Travel time was decreased on average by 700% (average walking speed is 5mph, average car speed during commute is 35 mph from the time somebody leaves the house, sits through traffic lights and rush hour traffic until they arrive at their office). Most people have a speedier commute and the advantage becomes exponentially better the further one is from his/her office. Public transportation in most cities is either non existent or just plain inconvenient. One must walk a very long distance to the bus stop, wait for the dumb thing, wait as it stops every 100 feet for some loser to get on, engage the bus driver in conversation about the places which the bus serves and pays their fare with small coins. And then we have to walk an inconvenient distance from the final bus stop to our final destination. Often, we have to transfer buses. Multiply that inconvenience by 2. Taking the train would be nice, but only a few American Cities (and by that I mean I could probably count on my hands and toes) actually have inner-city commuter trains (subway, light rail, etc.) It's just easier to take our car - if time is money, we save so much by just hopping in and taking an express route to our destination.

Wait. It's the same way in Germany. Inconvenient bus stops, too many intermediate stops, people who can't read a map or pay their fare in the automated machines or with exact change. So why do so many people ride the bus and choose to leave their cars for leisure trips outside of the city? I live in a city of 130,000 people. That is 1/6 the size of Austin, a bit bigger than Amarillo, and nowhere close to the greater DFW area. The city has a commuter train service and comprehensive bus service. I live at the end of a bus route, so I usually get a seat, but after 4 stops, people are usually standing and by the time I get off, I have to squeeze through a variety of grandmas and giggling children. Why?

The difference is density. More people live on the 5-km stretch through which my bus passes than live in most subdivisions of a US city. In the US, apartments are considered "in-between places." One rents an apartment until he or she can buy a "real place." Apartments are no shame here. People buy apartments just as they buy houses in the US. Most "houses" are multi-family with 2 or 4 mailboxes. Only the really rich (and I'm in Bavaria, the richest area of Germany) have their own house (and they are still ugly, by the way.) Germans (and most Europeans, probably) have taken the old-fashioned approach to building: squeeze as many people as possible onto as little ground space as possible. Even before the Elevator, houses were 4 and 5 stories tall and buildings squished next to each other in the row-house fashion. This old-fashioned style of city planning leaves no room for garages or streets wide enough for 2 cars to pass each other comfortably.

So even if you parked your car on the street at home (or rather on the sidewalk, as is customary here), you would go to work, shopping, or school and have nowhere to place your prized hunk of metal. You would have to park in an underground parking garage and pay an exorbitant fee or park way out on the edge of the city and still pay a chunk of dough. Therefore, taking the bus is actually more convenient and cost effective (gas is not cheap here, nor is car insurance, car maintenance or automobile registration.) They save their car to visit grandma in the black forest on the weekend, not to shop at H&M.

So, density. So many people live along those bus routes. That is why busing works in Germany.