A look at alternative transportation

Tano Holmes writes weekly for The Beacon from
Heidelberg, Germany, where he is studying abroad.

The car is not the only way to travel from place-to-place quickly; with the extremely high price of gasoline in Germany, other options are generally utilized for travel. Train lines criss-cross throughout Europe, taking the happy traveler to any corner of the continent. They are comfortable, punctual and fast, many of them traveling more than 200 miles per hour. It is the most common way to travel to another city for young people here.

However, trains are quite expensive. For example, my trip from Bremen to Heidelberg, which took six hours, cost approximately 80 Euros ($110). Having a basic knowledge of German is quite useful for train travel, and one should pay attention to the announcements, as the trains don’t stop for anyone or anything.

One of my friends here had her headphones in and missed the announcement that the train was switching to express. She ended up in Stuttgart, an hour away from Heidelberg.

Strassebahn (street train or tram) is the most used form of public transportation for getting around most cities. Many of the larger cities like Hamburg, Berlin, or Munich have well developed subways as well.

The subways are clean and run 24 hours a day, making them extremely useful for zooming around the big cities. The trams run on a very regular basis, generally every five to ten minutes, and are almost always on time. They cover almost every corner of nearly every city larger than 100 thousand people.

The Strassebahn also runs 24 hours. In the early hours of the morning it runs less often, but one never has to be stranded, regardless of what time it is.

Bicycles are also widely used in Germany. Every sidewalk is about twice as wide as the average sidewalk in the United States, and is divided into two lanes, one for walking and one for bicycles. This makes cycling far safer and easier, as one does not have to compete with automobile traffic, and can simply ride in a two-foot wide paved lane instead. One should be careful not to walk in the cycling lanes, as cyclists generally go pretty fast. If you hear a bell ringing behind you, it is probably a cyclist, and you are in their way!

These modes of transportation not only cut down on congestion in cities, but also dramatically lower carbon emissions. They are socially useful and environmentally friendly. Schnell! Schnell!

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