How Public Transportation Works in Small German Municipalities
Recently, I also mentioned high-speed trains in Germany, but I have another fact about a frequent public transport services in Germany.
When people hear the term public transport, most imagine a large city. Buses, trams or the metro, a dense network of stops, and services running at short intervals. In reality, however, a similar principle can also work in a small municipality.
German municipalities are a good example. For instance, a municipality with just under 4,000 inhabitants may have approaching 40 public transport stops connecting different parts of the municipality. There may even be several stops along a single street, located relatively close to one another, making public transport more accessible to people living in many parts of a relative short street. So public transportation therefore does not function merely as a connection between a small municipality and the nearest larger city or another municipality. Individual routes connect different parts of the municipality itself. Public transport routes pass through numerous local districts, allowing them to be connected with one another.
It is not only the number of connections that matters, although services can also be quite frequent. The density of stops and the possibility of using public transport for short journeys within the municipality are equally important. In some small German municipalities, therefore, stops can be found relatively very close to one another. Public transport is thus not merely a means of travelling to another city or municipality, but functions much like urban public transportation. In other words, the routes run between its individual Ortsteile (districts).
Small German municipalities demonstrate that public transport does not have to begin only in cities with tens of thousands, millions of inhabitants. If a network is designed to connect the different parts of a small municipality as well, it can have a similar importance for its residents as urban public transport does in a larger city.
