#Transportation - Kicking off the Series

Hi everyone.

I want to try out something new, so here we go, my first blog series - the subject is Transporation.

It’s a subject that’s really heartfelt to me since many years. I first got in touch with the incredible relevance of private and public transport to the economy, the environment and many other things that matter to us as human beings, in 2011. I don't think most people actually ever think about it. So that is why I think this blog series is necessary, both to get things off my chest but also to make people aware and provoke a debate here and there. 

The amazing thing is that the transportation industry is like a spider web, nothing can be touched or changed without impacting a number of other components. Many see this as a problem - a showstopper even. But I personally think that this is just the effect that is so great: the chance to just tip one of the domino stones and see the rest fall in place all by themselves. So, if more employees would take the train instead of the car, the railways companies would have to increase their quality, hire more people, increase their capacity (build more trains = happy Siemens / Bombardier) and punctuality (happy IT companies) to not put the economy at risk. For example.

In this #Transportation blog article series I want to - at least - cover the following subjects in a discrete article each: 

Future of Public Transport in 2011

The actual inspiration for this blog series was that I got reminded of that university project we did in 2011 and I wanted to dedicate a blog entry to those months of hard work and passionate combination of IT, media design and business thinking. Looking back, it was one of the pillars of my work LAUFBAHN up until now. It was great fun to watch that video we produced and see what we considered visionary stuff back in those days - and compare today against that vision. 

Company Cars - there goes your productivity

In my personal view, the trigger to start the car (r)evolution in the German market especially is not by political-agenda rubbish, advertising or subsidise purchase of new (!) electric cars. What moron really thinks that'll make any difference? What could be a great trigger though are company cars, which ranges from shared pool cars to dedicated company cars, basically all vehicles a company owns or leases that are not a truck. Look out for that entry, it'll be quite crisp and aggressive. 

Fuel based and human operated cars must die

... and the same goes for busses and trucks. This will be a more generic point of view on fuel based anything on the streets today. We all know they are bad for us, for our children, for the environment. They are deadlier than any other transport method. They are occupying millions of people every day, keeping them away from both work and life. They destroy families. They destroy this planet. Get away from them. You love your car? Well, it doesn't love you back. Get a dog. 

Air Travel - Keep your feet on the ground

Think about how pointless most of the business travel is that you take a plane for. I think flying anywhere for work is an almost ancient way of doing business. But also in private life: why do you have to fly to anywhere to relax? Why do we have to go to a beach in Thailand, when we live on a continent that is almost entirely surrounded by water? I know, different culture and climate, beautiful beaches. But is it your hunger for beautiful beaches that justifies environmental destruction Really? This article will look at the questionable habit of flying. I mean it. 

3D-Printing is the death of Cargo Shipping

Another lovely subject. Did it ever occur to you that with 3D printing, the need for cargo ships might drop significantly within the next years? Why would you ship anything made of plastic from Asia to Europe, if you could just 3D-print it right here in your own town? Over and over. Carbon footprint zero. This article is picking up on what I discussed some time ago in another article here - the impact of 3D-Printing on the supply chains of this world.

(German) politics on #Transportation
To be clear, I am not a political expert. And I am not trying to root for any party in particular, as none of them is worth of being supported these days. When it comes to environmental questions, even our green party has somewhat lost their teeth since they achieved the abolition of nuclear power. We need to up our efforts here and push our political leaders to focus on the subject of public transport, of electric and self driving cars and of environmental impacts of any kind of transport. No answers, no questions, just a huge complaint in this article. 

Europe is not enough

For years I wondered about this one factor that almost every vision of future of transport lacks: what about the rest of the world? What about the majority of the people on this planet? We, as europeans, tend to think that all will be good just because we ban coal or nuclear power. That's not the case at all though. I guess that even if you would jam Europe with solar panels and completely abandon fuel based transportation - the world would still go down the drain soon. Because we are too few people compared to the entire 7 billion of our global population. So this entry will not give any answer, because I have none. It is asking a question. I hope some folks have ideas. 

In the long term I think we all should re-think our posture in this matter. Some of us are mostly sustainable already, others talk but don't do anything and some don't care at all. We need to change that, dramatically. There is not future for us and for those who will come after us, if we don't work together to solve these issues.