Earlier this year, I ranted about Berlin's U8 metro line. It's a metro line that I try my best to avoid. But somehow, there's a part of me that is starting to think that I should avoid the entire public transportation system of Berlin. This, however, is an outcome I do not like.
See, I have been living here for almost 12 years now. And I feel like the public transportation system has been on the decline. First of all, there's the schedules. The buses used to come more often. Now, because of a lack of drivers, the timetables cannot support a frequent one-bus-per-10-minutes schedule anymore. Some areas have been thinned out to one bus every 20 minutes. And sometimes, a thin schedule also happens on an ad hoc basis: last winter, for example, several metro trains were running out of schedule, with the official reason being too many drivers being sick.
And then there's the strikes. The first quarter of the year is strike season. If we as a society wants to save this planet and therefore avoid private cars, I think we're going in the opposite direction right now, given that the reliability of public transporation has dipped considerably.
Oh, there's more. There's the homeless. I feel like every time I ride the metro, I encounter a homeless person begging. They go through the cars, one after another. To some extent, this is the reason why I prefer riding the regional trains nowadays as it's a bit quieter, and there's a lower chance of me encountering such people during my ride.
Sometimes I wonder, am I just imagining it, or has the number of homeless and mentally ill people really have risen in the recent years? Because as a regular rider, that definitely is the feeling that I get every time I am taking the metro. There's always the homeless or mentally ill person begging. If one is lucky, they are quiet and keep to themselves. But sometimes, it's actually quite disgusting.
