Thank Hitler

Western Germany is today well connected, in part, due to the efforts Hitler made to transport Ruhr valley war materials to the battlefront. Praise is due this man, yes.

It might seem callous, but hey, I'm just calling it like I see it. I know of no other region of the world that is better and more efficient in the movement of humans today, thanks to earlier efforts to more efficiently kill humans yesterday.



This is a typical view out of any main station. This one is just a small one in the city of Gelsenkirchen -- three tracks supply trains that run into and out of this city every ten minutes or so. Some are express trains, others stop at all stations, and all provide a stunning level of service. Indeed, for the entire week and a half, of all the trains I traveled on, not a single train was off by more than sixty seconds from schedule.

Then, when you're traveling within the city, you have access to an unprecedented level of surface trains and busses:



Now, realize that this city is about the size of my Elk Grove. Three intercity trains...seventy eight bus routes -- compared to Elk Grove which after nineteen years of unmitigated suburbal sprawl is still looking at another nine years to get a single fucking light rail train station. Elk Grove has thirty one bus routes, with half of them express commuter busses that only run weekday mornings and evenings. Less than half as many for a city as big with a quarter the level of service.

The truth is, Elk Grove public transportation can never, never! work. Never. Its low density is insufficient to make any service profitable for competing providers, nor self-supporting for governmental providers. Elk Grove has utterly failed to develop regionally or self sufficiently, so that surface streets, collector roads and freeways are all choke-a-block with traffic...the consequence of which would lead to intense resistance to either convert or sever any roadway to make room for rail. Or it leads to intense costs to shoehorn in rails and stations on top of an existing suburban automotive dominated fabric.

And all on top of a nation that subsidizes gasoline so heavily that car ownership becomes compulsive and mandatory. Why does California not build and maintain roads without federal matching funds? Because without federal tax dollars funding roadworks instead of gasoline taxes, and without state general funding instead of gasoline taxes, California wouldn't have enough money on its own. We end up with a perverted payment system where people end up paying for it indirectly. But so little is ever allocated to rail, bus, or alternatives such as multi-use trails.

Wishing for a transportation system like that in Germany for my little Elk Grovian burg is a fucking pipe dream, and I know this. It's a futile effort to even blog about it, mostly. But I do, because I like to comment on the sad state of our affairs, our environment, our culture...I like to comment on how wretched things are...not as they ever will be.