I can go pretty much anywhere by the Bahn and it is much faster than driving in many cases. Of the few times I have been in a car here, it only seems to go faster when there is no traffic such as a Saturday morning or after the Bahn closes during the week at 1:30 am.
In planning speak, "I have a high level of mobility in Berlin" - without a car. In an article that discusses the need for promoting place over mobility (http://www.planetizen.com/node/28195), I find it interesting that I don’t feel like I have either compromised here. Perhaps if I spent my days trying to navigate Berlin in a VW Golf I would feel differently after sitting at the same stoplight twice in a row. But I don’t. Instead I take the Bahn, which is located within average of a 10 minute walk from everywhere I come from and everywhere I go. Not only that, but the Bahn runs every 5 minutes during the weekdays, every 10 during the evening and weekends and every 20 or 30 minutes overnight on weekends.
I must say I do feel rather spoiled with that level of public transportation. Not only that, but for subsidized student rate of €180 per semester, it will also be the least I have spent on daily transportation in a year since I got a car at age 16. Regular Berlin Bahn rates are €6.20 per day, €25 per week, €86 per month or €806 per year. Even if you paid for a year, that would still be cheaper than the $100 per month I spent on gas in Minneapolis (to say nothing of the $250 I spent with a Chapel Hill to Durham commute). And that’s without insurance, repairs or the actual cost of a car.
On the other hand, owning a car in Germany is expensive since cars and gas are taxed heavily here. Considering they aren’t really more convenient, the incentive to own one here is low. Maybe that’s why Berlin has 1.4 million cars and about 3.4 million people.
(I got the last fact from an interesting comparison of Berlin and New York here: http://berlin-newyork.hkw.de/index_en.html)
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