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Carspotting and Bicycling in Berlin, Germany

by Peter Dushenski

It’s amazing to see what people drive when they don’t need to drive.

I’ve spent the past two weeks cycling and taking the S-Bahn everywhere I’ve needed to go in Berlin. It’s been punctual, efficient, healthy, and a fraction of the cost of car ownership. Berlin is no small town. With a population of 4.4 million, the capital city of reunified Germany (arguably the wealthiest country in the world today) covers a huge area, about as much as metro Edmonton. Yet, car ownership is far from a necessity. In this expansive cosmopolitan area, bicycles are not only given priority by automobile drivers, but cyclists are granted their own dedicated lanes in the overwhelming majority of the city, demarcated by a red tinged strip of special pavement three feet wide. The S-Bahn (above ground subway), which complements the U-Bahn (uh, underground subway), works in concert to provide a transportation network that whisks citizens and tourists whenever they are too tired or lazy to walk or cycle. So owning a car isn’t weird – it isn’t awkward – it’s simply a luxury.

As a result of this intricate and inspired alternative transportation network, Berliners make do with only 358 cars per 1000 people compared to an average of 570 per thousand in Germany and very nearly the same density in Canada (although personally owning two cars at home skews this somewhat). An S-Bahn pass for 5 days costs around $35, which is on its own less than the cost of the gas it’d take to travel the same distances we did, with none of the depreciation, insurance, maintenance, and interest payments associated with car ownership.

Yet despite, or perhaps because of, the obvious financial, logical, and environmental detriment entailed by car ownership, Berliners have nothing less than an eclectic taste in automobilia. Classic French icons mingle with Autobahn Destroyers, which in turn covort with British Bruisers and limited editions galore. The streets of Berlin alone are worth the trip and being on a bicycle is a great way to see them all up close.

Here are my highlights:

Bad Cars Suck. Luckily, Black Holes Also Suck

Recently Wired magazine ran an online piece about cars that suck so badly they should be thrown in a black hole. The cars weren’t necessarily unpleasant looking, though some had certainly been driven into the ugly tree. The list included such luminaries as the Jaguar XJ-S (debatable), Mustang II (certainly), and the General Motors X-cars, specifically the 1984 Buick Skylark.

Their thinking was that since nature abhors a vacuum, merely destroying these cars wouldn’t really be a solution since some other form of suckitude would immediately take its place. For example, launch a Pontiac Aztek fueled by a Jet-A molotov cocktail off a cliff and its replacement could appear in the form of something even more eye-bleedingly wretched, like a BMW X6.

However, launching a car into a black hole, an anomaly wherein the gravity is so strong it could suck the ass out of the cat light cannot escape, would not technically destroy the car. Therefore nothing would have to take its place. The car would be somewhere totally out of sight (see that light escaping bit) but would still technically exist.

Could something more ghastly still show up? Sure, but it wouldn’t be a foregone conclusion.

This got us thinking about cars that are so bad we’d like them to be permanently out of sight. Here’s what CarEnvy.ca came up with.