Ideas for the tram

Frankfurt has plans to significantly expand its tram service. More lines and longer wagons are planned. But nothing will come of this for the time being, because the planned new lines are waiting for the wagons, whose production during the first years of the corona pandemic will not be carried out as quickly as planned.  But even if they were delivered, things could get tight at the transport hub at the main station. Although the number of tracks is to be increased, there will not be enough space for all lines. In addition, many platforms will have to be extended so that the new ten-metre-long trains, 40 metres in total, can stop at all and the last carriages do not have to stop in the middle of cars. Line 13, which was supposed to run from Heilbronner Straße via the main station to the industrial station, is also affected by the congestion at the main station. However, this would be too much of a challenge for the capacity at the main station, so the establishment of line 13 has been postponed for the time being.

In Vienna they are trying another way to cope with the flood of cars. Those who take the same route as one of the 350,000 parcels or packages delivered each year can take the mail delivery with them and drop it off at a parcel shop. This saves CO2 emissions, but presupposes that enough people can be found who altruistically and only for a small fee will carry parcels on their way to work or from shopping at the supermarket from 2024. Of course, this also requires a bit of bureaucracy, because without the name and contact of the supplier, such a service would hardly be possible, otherwise one could only hope that everyone also drops off the parcels and does not take them along by mistake. According to the Austrian Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, about two-thirds of the 6000 respondents in an online survey agreed to this. It would have been interesting to ask the participants whether they would also be willing to take parcels if they were only returns to the big online shops.

Any idea that reduces greenhouse gases is a good idea. Naïve wishful thinking, however, casts doubt on the sincerity but also on the ability to actually do something substantial for the environment.  If the postmen do not produce exhaust gases with their own cars because they cross an environmental zone and therefore only drive electrically, one could also do without bothering public transport passengers. Even if the environmental zones were to apply not only to trucks and vans but also to cars, the bottom line would certainly be that more exhaust gases would have been saved than by calling on the postal service to do some of the work.