I missed one tram and decided to go to work 30 minutes later (as the bus here is every half hour). The tram I wanted was very late. The subway was on time, meaning I didn’t catch it. The next subway stopped for a while before the airport…. and the bus at 9:05 left at 9:03. Result: I am 1h late today, all in all, 30 minutes of which are the [public transportation company's](http://www.rmv.de) fault.
I wouldn’t mind if that was the exception, but it seems to happen about every week. At least.
And all that after they closed down the tunnels in central Frankfurt for a month to fix the rails. You’d think that afterwards things would improve, but that has not been the case. It hardly comes as a surprise.
Two years ago, because the average train was 5 minutes late at the Central station, they added 5 minutes to the planned duration of a train driving all the way from Hanau in the East to Wiesbaden in the West. What was the result? The trains were still 5 minutes late.
I am pretty sure that, if we had competent people working for the company and they wouldn’t use the old trains handed down to us from Stuttgart and Munich, they could manage to be on time at least most of the days.
In the words of Mr. King – “I have a dream.” In my case, I am not even asking for much – I just don’t want to spend 3h a day on the subway.
Can we commiserate on our commutes? I also catch a bus that runs every 30 minutes in morning and afternoon rush hours, then wait for a train to take me several stop south to where I work. Total distance as the crow flies is about 20 miles from my house to my office. If I drive straight there (basically a straight shot down 1 road) it takes 45 minutes on average, best time about 37 minutes. But navigating through neighborhoods to the bus stop then taking the bus/train in order to save gas money, wear on the car, etc., takes about 1 hour 15 minutes, in rush hour it is 1.5 hours. Best time is about 1 hour. But at least we’re saving the planet! And, I won a $25 gift card to Target today in a random drawing of names of folks who take “alternate” forms of transportation for their commute through a program set up to encourage that. So I guess I can’t complain too much!
c.f. http://www.itsMARTA.com