Joerg Baumgartner
Sep 8, 2018 · 2 min read

True, rural populations have it hard in Germany, too. But a lot of that traffic is caused by helicopter parents and lack of something as simple as a mix of a taxi cab and a bus, a bus on demand.

Public transport overland is patchy. I know, because I spend about 3 hours a work day on an overland bus for a work commute of just 48 km.

I used to travel that far in my own car, solo, in less than two hours on normal days. For four times the amount of money, risking not only my life but others too in adverse conditions (including me being too tired to operate 1 ton of vehicle).

Services in rural communities are few and far apart. Traveling to the nearest city is unavoidable for most kinds of health service. Getting a haircut, or a fancy nail polish job, or having a nice evening out is impossible in most small places, too.

With enough people using public transportation, the connection services will improve, even in the middle of nowhere.

But that isn’t where most of the waste is going on. Look at metropolitan areas where you will be able to log hours of unnecessary individual traffic that could be handled by public transportation, e.g. picking up children not by one child per vehicle but sending a mini-bus transporting a dozen children at once. Having a similar service available for tipsy party-goers after an evening out would be as beneficial, and way better than public transport offers today. Plus you don’t have to suffer your tipsy friends holding off on drinks as the designated driver…

Limiting car access to heavily urbanized areas would be a good start. You do need a decent form of on-demand public transportation to transship your grocery haul or your holyday baggage to your vehicle, or you could pay for the privilege to enter the area with an exceptional permit.

Nobody thinks of a vertical lift in a skyscraper to an underground garage as a hardship. Why is a horizontal lift in a shared (probably self-driving) vehicle to a not so close parking area so much of a hardship, then?