The Wheels on the Bus

A couple of weeks ago a friend and I did a pub quiz and one of the themes was “school buses”. We both knew nothing about school buses and I don’t think scored a single point…

Because I grew up in Germany where kids simply walk to the closest primary school and because I admittedly didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, the concept of school buses was always a bit strange to me. Having lived here for a few months, I am starting to understand it.  

Let’s take a moment and compare Germany and the US: Germany with its 360,000 km² is 15% smaller than California, the US’s third largest state. It’s half the size of Texas and a fifth of Alaska. Germany is 3% the size of the US or the US is 28 (!!!) times larger. Living in crowded New York, it is very easy to forget how gigantic this country is, but as soon as you get out of the city and into the country side with its beautiful houses and perfectly manicured lawns, it becomes blatantly obvious.

When one thinks about public transport in a space that is so large, scarcely populated and spread out, the idea quickly becomes impractical and cars a necessity. How could a bus service villages in which neighbours live 2km apart? Would each house get its own bus stop? And how could one service such a big distributed network at a frequency and cost that remains attractive to people? My railway engineer father or human-geographer sister might disagree, but I don’t see how it could be done. 

Population density of the US compared to countries in Europe

And once you’ve wrapped your head around the need for a car, a lot of other things fall into place. If you have to get in the car to go to the supermarket, and then again to drive to the bank and then again to go to the dry cleaners… constantly having to look for a parking spot and getting in and out of the car becomes pretty annoying and time-consuming. And suddenly, drive through restaurants, drive-through pharmacies, drive-through cash-machines… become a great idea.

A drive-through pharmacy in upstate New York

So living here, I am starting to understand the fossil fuel dependence of the US and their unwillingness and inability to wean themselves off. Denying man-made climate change is just a too easy and tempting way out of the moral dilemma. I don’t agree, but I have a certain amount of sympathy. Other US habits I have less sympathy for. For example...

Temperatures in New York yesterday dropped from +9°C to -14°C, which – if you take the nasty, icy wind chill factor into account – felt like -24°C. Gushes of wind were blowing through the avenues and I and other shivering people with scarves wrapped around our faces were rushing through the streets, desperately trying to offer the brick-wall needle-pinning wind as little space to attack as possible.

As soon as I get home though, I’m greeted by tropical temperatures of 28°C generously dished out by the centrally-controlled heating system. I like it warm, but 28°C is a tad too hot even for me and so I frequently sit here with the window all the way open while the radiator is pumping away. And I'm no exception: Most of my friends tell stories of overheated houses and gaping wide open windows. Unable to turn the heat down, one colleague even admitted to having the aircon running to cool his flat*.

I have some sympathy for having to use a car to get to work, but being unable to install a knob on the radiator so that people can adjust the temperature is just mind-boggling to me. Even if you don’t believe in climate-change, I would have thought that capitalist Americans believe in having money and don’t like to burn it. Turns out, I was wrong…

* This actually reminded me of the time when I was at the National Treasury working on South Africa’s Carbon Tax Policy while having a heater run under my desk to avoid freezing in the air-conditioned office…