With the same regularity as the annual appearance of the Easter bunny, and with the same credibility, Germans churn out reports stating that driving a car is too cheap.
The link takes you to an interview in German weekly Die Zeit (online), but you really don't need to go there.
The reader comments to the piece demolish it by comment number 5.
Comment 5 takes up the claim that every public parking space costs the public 10 000 Euros per year, which would take the total cost to around 400 billion Euros a year, just under 10% of German GDP.
Don't get the blogster wrong: a world without cars might in fact be a much nicer place, but any claim that driving in Europe is too cheap does not stand up to scrutiny.
Basic logic calls for clarification of the conceptual framework, i.e. "too cheap compared to what"?
True, when comparing a car ride to a train ride, we tend to compare the train ticket to the gas price and call it a decision. That's a problem, but it becomes even more of a problem when a "mobility expert" does just that, really evading the question how to get to work, how to do your shopping and how to have a social life.
As an American, with the nearest grocery store 30 miles away, or out the far reaches of East LA or Riverside, you understand this.
But hey, gas in Germany and other Western European countries is so cheap in early January 2015, a mere 6 dollars a gallon. Public parking in cities, if you can find it, comes with airport parking prices minus the airport.
The standard recommendation of the current expert: take the train more often. Which is cool because he is not only a professor of sociology but also a department head at DB Rent, the German railroad company's "modern mobility" firm.
Of the many issues with taking the train in Germany, one is that the country has dug up lots of railroad lines since the 1980s and that the overall trend to more workplace flexibility (where and when you work) completely flies in the face of riding the train or taking the bus.
Since mobility experts are so fond of including "external" costs, why do they usually ignore the extra time it takes to use public transport outside of the biggest cities?
Read a book!
Right, when walking, sure.
Listen to music or the radio!
Do you have an internet connection? Check the news for pedestrians splattered all over because they were doing just that.
If you are a non-German reader, you should also know that this professor is regarded as a moderate car critic because he advocates car sharing and e-mobility.
It is true, other famous German auto critics come with the sort of zeal you have last heard of in connection with some religious fanatics.
Rest assured, the study will be used by the government to jack up the cost of driving. Getting more poor people off the road has at least one advantage besides helping the environment: it makes room for the drivers of expensive fast German cars to get to work and play quicker and safer. Once there, they will have more time to figure out how to reduce vehicle traffic.
Maybe we'll ride the bicycle to work one day and will finally meet the person who left the bicycle tire tracks in the snow.
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