As you can probably tell if you’ve been subscribed to my Substack for a while and saw my last post, I am currently in Berlin and it is great, obviously.
One of the best experiences I’ve been having in Germany is with the buses, which have been excellent. In Toronto, the bus service or the “hard” part of the transit provision is pretty good — though it’s slow, and unreliable buses come so frequently (at least outside of central areas where riding a bad streetcar is usually the primary option) that you get moving very quickly from early morning to late at night.
The service in Berlin is arguably quite a bit less frequent — although it’s much faster and more reliable. What I find more interesting though is how good the “soft” elements of the service are, which is what I will talk about in this article.
The good bus experience actually started before my arrival in Berlin, with an older MAN bus being used to shuttle passengers around that reminded me of some of the elements of buses I miss the most in North America — full-length
low-floor sections (much like modern trams), and additional doors to speed boarding and alighting. The fact that even an older European bus has features like this is a good reminder how far behind cities across the Atlantic are — and I dedicated an entire YouTube video to this earlier this year (which has now become my most-viewed!).
Fun story, since I was in town, I decided to quickly hop on a bus and hop back off to grab some pictures of a nice modern Berlin bus interior (“I’ll be one minute”, I foolishly said to my partner). However, of course the second I stepped on the M85 bus at Berlin Main Station, the doors quickly closed and I was stuck onboard. Of course, with so much time spent in Canada, I expected the bus to stop maybe 2-300m away and a quick walk back, but because of my ignorance of the bus route and local geography, it turned out I went much further.
You see, the M85 route hops straight into the tunnel next to Berlin Main Station (which I thought was just a strange underpass when walking by) and then proceeds to run through a road tunnel under the Spree and Tiergarten, with its first stop near Potsdamer Platz like two and a half kilometres away! A good reminder how many tunnels exist in European cities…
Now, more broadly speaking, I will say I am impressed by the speed of the surface transit in Berlin, which doesn’t have universally dedicated lanes or even seemingly amazing traffic signal priority. What it does have are very well trained operators and wide stop spacings that let you fly along.
As you’re flying along in buses, the ride quality is truly amazing, I’d chalk that up to both very good road quality with essentially no potholes, and very good vehicle suspension. While riding down a street in a Canadian city is often a shaky and loud experience, that same experience is much smoother and better in Berlin.
Onboard wayfinding is also better. As far as I could tell, the stop names were recorded audio as opposed to a synthesized voice, and the audio itself was very clear, even the sound design of chimes was very nice. Probably the best feature though were the big bright wayfinding displays that showed the next several stops and the connections that were available at each one, which was very useful.
Another awesome feature of the buses were plug/sliding rear doors like those seen on many trains and trams. The big benefit of these is that since they don’t swing into the bus like many modern bus doors, passengers standing near the doors don’t need to jump out of the way when the doors open. They also do lend themselves to a sense of modernity.
I’ll also note that a very large number of the buses I saw in Berlin were fully electric (both 12- and 18-metre buses), and apparently the plan is for 100% electrification by 2030. While in North America many transit advocates are fighting meaningless wars against battery-electric buses because they are not trolleys, in Berlin they are adopting these much more pleasant vehicles (which have most of the benefits without most of the drawbacks of trolleys) rapidly, including 18m models from Solaris, and 12m ones from the Dutch “EBUSCO”.
There are also a ton of little touches on the buses that I really enjoyed, including additional cameras which let the driver more easily see around the bus; measures like this go beyond just serving the bus passengers and make buses safer for pedestrians and cyclists too.
Some other touches I really appreciated were USB charging (which is still not universal on North American buses) — although USB-C really should be the standard now, and textured hand holds that I found much more comfortable for holding for an extended period of time.
On the whole, the experience riding buses around Berlin is excellent, and is a great example of how good this often-scorned mode of public transit can be. Systems around the world lacking any of the elements seen in Berlin could gain a lot from doing some friendly homework copying!
Stop spacing is a big issue in my city. I have seen stops that are less than 50 meters away from each other! And yes, riding the bus is often an uncomfortable and bumpy experience.