By Gunnar Schupelius
Citizens have a fundamentally different opinion on motorized private transport than most politicians. They should take that to heart, says Gunnar Schupelius.
Politicians like to talk often about the “transport turnaround”. This means switching from the car to public transport. Bus and train are a good alternative and should replace the car in order to reduce CO2 emissions and stop climate change, according to the official line.
But people see it differently. For the vast majority, local public transport is not an alternative to the car. This shows a current representative survey by the survey institute Yougov among 4042 citizens.
According to this, 72 percent of the population state that the car will continue to “best meet their mobility requirements in the future”. That is five percent more than last year. The survey has been commissioned once a year since 2021 as part of the HUK Coburg mobility study.
Among the very young participants between the ages of 16 and 24, 74 percent said the car was the best means of transport. Of all age groups, 19 percent name the bicycle as the best means of transport, 15 percent the train, 11 percent the bus and 10 percent tram and S-Bahn.
These figures reflect the opinion of the German population as a whole. In the cities with a good range of local public transport, it may differ from the country, where one is much more dependent on the car.
But the numbers also speak a clear language in Berlin. Here, the number of registered passenger cars increased from 1.19 million to 1.24 million in just six years (2017 to 2022). The population grew much more slowly during this period.
This period is interesting because the red-green-red Senate tried to drastically eliminate car traffic and get the population to switch to buses and trains. This effort went unnoticed by the people who, despite politics, are increasingly relying on cars.
The politicians themselves are doing it too, even those who want to “abolish” the car, as the Green Transport Senator Regine Günther (2017-2021) put it very clearly. She had to use her company car, she said, because otherwise she couldn’t do her job. Her green successor Bettina Jarasch (2021-2022) said when asked: “If I made all appointments by bike, I could only attend half of them.”
The incumbent coalition of CDU and SPD is more honest. Now the automobile should no longer be neglected, at the same time one wants to push ahead with the construction of the subway, which was rejected by the Greens, who rely solely on the tram.
The Berlin subway network is still underdeveloped. London and Paris have a much better deal. A well-developed and safe subway is, apart from the S-Bahn, the only real alternative to the car. Tram and bus are not.
The automobile is and will remain the means of transport of the future, together with a comprehensive underground and suburban railway network.
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