Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Transit Tour - Berlin
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Berlin is one of those cities where you can feel history in the street layout and then confirm it by looking at the transit map. We start at Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the modern central station that finally brings together rail lines that were once split by politics, operators, and the literal division of East and West. From there, we ride our way across the city to answer a simple question with big implications: what does a truly integrated public transit system feel like day to day?
We stop at Alexanderplatz to talk S-Bahn frequency and how a regional rail network can function like rapid transit when the service is dense and the transfers are clear. We walk through Museum Island for a quick hit of Berlin’s layered urban history, then head to Tempelhof, the former airport that played a role in the Berlin Airlift and now lives on as Tempelhofer Feld, a massive park on historic runways. Along the way, we get into a real-world planning tension: preserving iconic public space versus adding housing where the city can actually support it.
If you enjoyed traveling Berlin with us by S-Bahn, U-Bahn, tram, and bus, subscribe, share the show, and leave a review. What city should we ride entirely on public transit next?
Berlin’s Transit Reunification Story
SPEAKER_02We are here in Berlin, a city with two wild histories of everything being separate.
SPEAKER_01We had two U-Bahn networks as well, we had two S-Bahn networks, we had two bus networks, kind of two tram networks, and today they are combined into one really extensive public transit system across the whole city that we are going to ride today.
SPEAKER_02And nothing is more symbolic of that reunification of all of the transit systems here in Berlin than the Berlin Hoffenhof right behind us.
SPEAKER_01Yes, above us you can actually see one of the S-Baum trains on the upper level, and then down two levels below us is where the long distance trains, some regional trains, all meet here in this one station uh that opened not too long ago in 2006. We'll talk more about the station in a second here, but today we are gonna go out and ride buses, trains, trams, S-bonds, U-Bahns, all of the above, crisscrossing the city of Berlin to try to yes, all the bonds to try to give you an idea of what it is like here, maybe try to pull some lessons to be learned.
SPEAKER_02Starting off today, we are here at the Berlin Hoffenhof, which as Lewis said was opened in 2006, and this was really the first grand central station in Berlin. Previously, there were a lot of other uh Bahnhofs from different private rail companies and this legacy of rail kind of splitting off in all sorts of different directions from Berlin. But what the city was really missing was that central station, and so we have now ended up with this impressive, beautiful modern station that is just levels upon levels upon levels of trains.
SPEAKER_01From here, you can basically get not only everywhere across Germany, but also really across Europe. This is kind of like a central train station for Europe more broadly. There are trains here that go to Vienna, that go to Paris, that go to Amsterdam, that go to Prague, that go into Poland, uh to Denmark, so many different places. Uh, you'll see trains from all of those countries present here in the station, as well as the classic ICE trains moving uh through the downstairs level.
SPEAKER_02The really cool thing about this station is what we mentioned, it was sort of one of the last symbols of reunification of East and West Berlin. This area was largely part of the sort of no man's land in the old uh government district that has been completely revitalized. And the reason why this station was so important is that you really had two separate systems that didn't interconnect very well, and that's something that's gonna be a theme of the episode as we move through Berlin and we try to call out what some of that uh transit history looks
Hauptbahnhof As Europe’s Hub
SPEAKER_02like. Yes.
SPEAKER_01So without further ado, uh we're gonna hop on the S-Bahn and head over towards Alexanderplatz.
Alexanderplatz And The S-Bahn Web
SPEAKER_02We travel from the Berlin Hauptbenhof over to Alexanderplatz, which is probably the center of the city, at least when you think of uh history and administrative. It's also really cool because you have like three very distinct eras of architecture all in one plaza. Behind me, you have a church, St. Mary's, that dates back to the 13th century. Uh, also in this area, you have the Red Town Hall, which was built in the 1800s and served as the city administrative center of East Berlin. When the city was reunified, it came together under uh one city government that was housed in this red town hall uh behind me. And then you have the Soviet-era broadcast tower that was also built right here in the city center, which you can see from anywhere and everywhere in Berlin. And all of those history facts were brought to you by the walkative tour that I did when I first arrived in Berlin.
SPEAKER_01So we just rode the S-Bahn to get here, and it will not be the last time we ride the S-Bahn for shore today. Uh, Berlin has an extremely extensive S-Bahn network with 16 lines across 340 kilometers of tracks. It really spiders across the entire city. Uh, and in this kind of urban core area, they're running literally every like two or three minutes because of how many lines kind of meet together and interline uh through the station here at Alexanderplatz. So, from here we are gonna start to make our way to the south of Berlin and try to make our way to a Tempelhofer field, which is a former airport that is now a huge city park.
Museum Island To The U-Bahn
SPEAKER_02All right, we walked over from Alexanderplatz to Museum Island, which is one of the original locations of the settlements that would eventually become Berlin. Uh, Berlin actually was on the east bank of the river, and the original city that was on Museum Island was uh Cologne, I believe. Not that Cologne, different Cologne. But now it is full of these beautiful architectural buildings that date back to uh the 1800s and the Prussian reign or Prussian rule of what would later become Germany. Uh, all of the buildings here were made by one guy, uh Schinkel. Again, something I learned on my walking tour. Every building you look at, they were like, that's a schinkle, and that's a schinkle, and that's a schinkle. So if you want to impress your friends when you come to Berlin and talk about architecture, just say that it was Schinkel. Yeah, and now you you're a good chance you'll be right. We are gonna walk uh toward the U-Bahn station on the island and sort of past some of the old uh Prussian architecture where you had the historic palaces and armories and all that kind of stuff. It's a really cool part of Berlin that you should definitely come and check out, and it's so easy to get to because you can get here by S-Bahn, by U-Bahn, and by Tran. What do you call it? Tram Trambahn? Tram.
SPEAKER_01Yes, there are trams right nearby as well. So it's Jassenbahn, that's what you're looking for. They call them trams here more, I feel like though. But uh, we are gonna hop on the U-Bahn though. We're gonna ride just like up a quick stop or two and transfer onto the U6 down to Temple Hopper.
SPEAKER_02From
Tempelhof Airport History And Airlift
SPEAKER_02Museum Island, we got on the U5 and transferred over to the U6 and came out to the Berlin airport.
SPEAKER_01And this is not the same Berlin airport that Chris flew into though. Uh, this one actually closed back in 2008. It originally opened back in the 1930s and was part of the kind of Nazi regime's infrastructure investment at the time. And then this airport became extremely important uh once the divide of East and West Berlin became official. This is where the beginning of the Berlin airlift actually happened. So, what was at the time a symbol of you know the Nazi regime building up infrastructure eventually turned into a symbol of hope for folks who lived in West Berlin because all of the supplies, from food to medicine to anything you can imagine, uh at one point had to be flown in through this airport. Uh, it really couldn't even handle the volume to the point where during that period they had to build an entire new airport uh at Teagle. Um, if you watched an episode from a couple months ago, I actually talked about the Teagle Airport with a tram proposal as well as a potential maglev proposal that will go through that area. So we'll make sure there's a link if you want to check that out. But today, since closing, this has mostly turned into an enormous park. And we're gonna actually go check out that park. You can walk on the runways and everything. Um, it is unfortunately you can't like walk through the old airport to get there, so we're gonna either go for a walk around or ride a couple more stops down the U-Bahn and go check out uh what is now Tempelhoferfeld.
SPEAKER_02If you are interested in the history of airports in the Berlin area, there is a great podcast series called How to Fuck Up an Airport. I highly recommend it. It talks all about the current Brandenburg Airport and how it was supposed to open in 2011, but did not officially open until 2020.
SPEAKER_01Kind of a wild thing to think about. Like you can tell this was built before our modern day version of what we envision as an airport was because this is like the main entrance. And then when you spin around, it's basically just like city streets and buildings. There's an U-Bahn station, there's no massive parking structure, there's no huge loop. Like this is the loop. The whole thing is right here. Uh, you this was definitely built to like yeah, of course, you just ride the subway, get here, get on your train.
SPEAKER_02Built for convenience. We're only about three kilometers from central Berlin, so the fact that this was in the middle of the city is just wild.
SPEAKER_01Although I cannot imagine how loud it must have been for folks who live near here. So that's maybe a reason why we don't do this anymore.
Runways As Park And Housing Debate
SPEAKER_02We took a very long walk all the way to the backside of this airport, and we are currently standing on one of the two historic runways, which is so so cool. Yes, that you're able to come and just hang out on the airfield.
SPEAKER_01There's people riding bikes, running, there's a basketball hoop out in that direction. Uh, and people are all still out enjoying it despite the rain. I think I did just see a flash of lightning in the background. What better place to be than an open airfield when there's lightning? Uh, one other thing we did want to mention here. So, right now, this is obviously being used as a massive park. Uh, all likelihood is this is gonna continue to remain a massive park. There are some plans to do a bit of development on it. Some of them are a bit controversial. Uh, so we'll we'll kind of put some information in the description if you're interested in learning more about that. Uh, some people are for adding some housing in different areas, some people are saying no, we should leave this uh just as a big park. But we oh go ahead.
SPEAKER_02I was saying if you are interested in aviation though, this is probably one of the coolest places I've ever been. You can see the entire backside of the terminal. You can even see this giant overhang where planes used to physically pull under this overhang so that you could get out and avoid the rain like we're experiencing now. No jet bridges, uh, just very, very cool history of that airport.
The Ringbahn And Orbital Transit
SPEAKER_01From here, we're gonna head over and actually get on part of the S-Bahn network that is like the Ringbahn. So the entire city of Berlin is encircled by this S-Bahn, and we're gonna head over and take a ride on it. So we are currently at Berlin-Südkreuz. We rode the Ringbahn over just one stop up to grab some snacks, use the restroom and everything, and we are gonna continue on this towards Charlottenburg eventually here. But this station is pretty important, both in terms of connecting U-Bahn, S-Bahn, uh, as well as regional and the ICE trains. Uh, it's kind of a multi-level station. On the level we're on, which is upstairs, you have the Ringbahn lines of the S-Bahn headed east and west. And then downstairs, you have uh kind of main tracks where ICE trains headed to Berlin-Hauptbahnhof will oftentimes actually stop here first, allowing for an easier connection if you're headed to places on the southern end of the city so that you don't all have to transfer in Berlin-Hauptbahnhof. The Ringbahn though has a pretty cool history. The actual right-of-way and grade separated rail has existed here since the 1870s. This is wild to me that it's been that long since they've had like elevated an elevated system throughout. Eventually, by the 1920s, it kind of turned more into what we know of today as the S Bahn. But uh to have since the 1870s had rail, at the time it would have been mixed with passenger and freight and all sorts of different things. The frequencies wouldn't have been as high as we're seeing today, but uh the forethought at that point to be building this out was really impressive.
SPEAKER_02So from here, we're gonna hop right back onto the ringbahn, take it a couple stops over to Charlottenburg, maybe find like a little cafe for lunch, uh, and then go see what the neighborhood has to offer. And that train just pulled in, so let's see if we can catch it.
SPEAKER_01Alright, so we rode a couple stops over on the ringbahn, and we are now at the west end station.
SPEAKER_02One of the things we talk about that's missing in US cities that even do have decent transit is that there's no orbital routes. Yes. So the fact that you can connect to sort of not suburban necessarily, but like different areas around the outside of the central city is really cool.
SPEAKER_01Right, without having to go all the way in. Uh, we have talked about the attempts at those sorts of lines on the show in the past. Uh, a good example is the purple line in the DC area, which we need to do an update on because they're getting close. I know, I think they're testing along the entire line now. Um, so we did an episode on that. We've talked about the silver line in Dallas. Um, so you know, there's there's hope towards those sorts of things, but they are a little further off.
SPEAKER_02So
Charlottenburg Palace And Neighborhood Wandering
SPEAKER_02we departed the Weston station and walked through Schlottenburg to the Schlottenberg Schloss. Schloss Schlottenberg. It's a lot of shh shh shh sounds. Uh this is the most prominent and important still-standing royal residence in Berlin. Uh, this was built at the very, very end of the 1600s uh for the royal family. It's actually named after uh the Queen Charlotte of Hanover.
SPEAKER_01And uh, if you're here in the wintertime, there is a cute Christmas market that takes place here that I had the pleasure of visiting with my mom earlier this year. Uh so definitely worth stopping uh in the summertime if you want to go in and take a tour, check out the gardens behind, but also in the winter if you're interested in checking out a Christmas market.
Berlin Buses And The Honor Fare System
SPEAKER_01So we just took the M45 bus from Charlottenburg to Zuilogischer Garten. Uh it was a very crowded bus, uh, full basically all the way, um, but moved pretty pretty efficiently to get us over here.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that was our first bus of the day. Uh, so really happy that we finally got on one. What's really cool about Berlin, it has the largest urban bus network in Germany with about 150 BVG operated bus lines. All that translates to a little over 1,500 buses operating every single day on this line, servicing around 6,700 stations or stops.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and the stop we're at right now is a pretty major transit hub. Uh, you have lots of different bus spays here, uh, you have an U-Bahn station here, uh, as well as I believe some regional rail options too, which has some historical significance as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, during the Cold War and when Berlin was still split up until 1990, uh, this was one of the primary departure points for uh going to the west. So if you were in West Berlin and you needed to get to West Germany or to further west in Europe, this was most likely where you were departing from.
SPEAKER_01While we're talking about the buses too, I think it's a good time to talk a bit about paying for fares here. So uh if you've seen our Munich episode from several months back, this will be uh familiar, but uh the system basically across all Germany is it's essentially an honor system. Uh you will have ticket checkers on trains and buses from time to time. On trains, it's more common, like a regional train or an ICE train, you're almost definitely gonna get checked. But on the subways, on the buses, uh it's kind of rare to be checked. Uh Chris has a pass on his phone that I believe was like a seven-day pass uh for being able to use any of the buses, the U-Bahns, the S-bonds, uh kind of anywhere within the zone of the city of Berlin. Uh, and then something we've lightly talked about on the past is the Deutschland ticket. So uh me having like being living in uh Germany, I have the Deutschland ticket. So I basically pay 63 euros a month, and it gives me access to public transit across the entire country, whether we're here in Berlin, uh where I live in Jena and Munich and Hamburg, wherever, uh, the Deutschland ticket covers uh public transit in those cities as well as all regional trains. So uh makes it pretty good value and makes it very easy to just be able to use transit anywhere you're going and just show a QR code on your phone and you're good to go.
Trams Reveal The East West Divide
SPEAKER_02We took the M10 from the zoo station all the way over to the Berlin Wall Memorial. The M10 is a Strasserbahn or a streetcar tram that you see running along the streets here in Berlin. What's actually really fascinating is that to get to that uh streetcar, we actually had to take an U-Bahn a couple stops up to reach it. When you are in the old west part of Berlin, there's really not any streetcar trams running in that side of town. And it is a clear representation of very different public transit policies that existed for East Berlin and West Berlin. East Berlin they actually doubled down and made massive investments in creating larger tram network and on the western side, even just maintaining ones that were there.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_02And on the western side, due to a lot of American and Western European influence, mostly American influence, they really focused on building a West Berlin that was more car-centric, car-focused. And you absolutely see that today, yes, in the way the transit is laid out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, if you take a look at the transit layer in Google Maps and see where all of the trams are, you can very clearly see where the divide was and where this wall that is behind us was, just based on where there are a lot of trams and where there are like one or two basically. So uh definitely interesting.
Berlin Wall Memorial And What It Changed
SPEAKER_02So we came to the Berlin Wall Memorial to really showcase what that dividing feature looked like for old East and West Berlin. This wall went up in 1961. In fact, the original barrier was created within about two days, so it really cut off East Berliners from being able to move into West Berlin uh nearly overnight. The wall went up to prevent East Berliners from trying to flee to the West. So there's a huge drain of people, and so uh the Soviets built this wall to contain folks in East Berlin. So sort of a crazy, crazy history there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Um, and there's a lot of great uh museums and things here, as well as like resources online if you want to learn uh more about that. But pretty, pretty cool to be able to see parts of the wall that still remain today.
SPEAKER_02And this is definitely probably the most famous feature of Berlin, certainly the most famous wall, but it is not the only wall, which we will talk about a little bit later. Yes.
Frankfurter Tor And The Old Tax Wall
SPEAKER_01So we just took the M10 tram a little bit further along, and we are now currently at Frankfurter Tor. Uh the M10 is super frequent. Uh, there are quite a lot of them running in both directions all the time. I will say it is like in the middle of a street that has sort of its own space for parts of it, but is also shared in the street with a lot of it, and it makes it a fairly slow ride. So it seems like it could get benefit from some dedicated infrastructure along the way.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, yeah, absolutely. But still very nice to be able to take a tram all the way over here. Um, it was a pretty nice, easy ride to get over here. Um, as Lewis said, we are at Frankenfurter Tor. As I said earlier, the Berlin Wall, the famous Berlin Wall of the Cold War era, is the most notable in the city, but it's not the only one that has ever existed. Uh Tor, T-O-R, you'll see that on a lot of the names of the metro stations around Berlin, also stood for gate. Yes. And yeah. These gates uh were part of a wall that existed before the Berlin Wall of the Cold War, and it was a tax wall, which is kind of an odd concept, but basically was a way to control imports in and out of the Berlin area. So you see a lot of legacy uh of the system of uh tax collection around the city through different uh gates. The Brandenburg gate is probably the most notable, and all of them are basically named after the city that the road leaving Berlin was going to. So even back then, a pretty cool wayfinding technique in Berlin. We
Reuse, Repairs, And Ostbahnhof’s Role
SPEAKER_02walked from Frankfurter Tour and we are headed over to uh the old eastern terminus for a lot of trains that were leaving Berlin. But one thing that we really wanted to highlight is just how cool the city is and how dedicated they are to reusing spaces.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's a lot of cool old buildings that have been turned into all sorts of different things. Uh something else we noticed throughout the day is that basically not every train station, but so many train stations have been under construction, uh, work being done on tracks, work being done to buildings, work being done to escalators. So there's definitely been like a lot of work being done to try to improve the system after, from what I understand, there's kind of been like a long period of time. A long period of time where there has been kind of a lack of investment. Uh the government's trying to like step up the spending to improve a lot of the infrastructure now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, something that you've also seen other places in Germany, not even just in Berlin.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Even like where I'm living in Jena, the regional train tracks going in basically every direction have had some sort of construction work done on them in the last year. Lots of it can be frustrating at the time, lots of like detours and delays and stuff as a result. A big one here has been the tracks between Berlin and Hamburg. Basically closed down for six months to be able to update some of the infrastructure there. So it's kind of painful in the moment, but Germany is fortunate that there are a lot of different ways to route around the construction as well. Um, so nevertheless interesting to see a lot of the investment going into maintaining the systems that had kind of been neglected for a little while. So uh hopefully in 10 years from now, you know, the idea that Deutsche Bahn, ICE trains have all these delays and things like that will be a thing of the past once all of the work is done. We are at Berlin-Osbenhof. Uh for many years, this was actually the this area was Berlin-Helpenhof. Obviously, we started the day at Berlin-Helpenhof, and this is not it. It doesn't look too bad on this side, but if you go inside, it does not look like Berlin-Helpenhof. Uh when it was part of East Berlin, this was the main hub. And even for many years afterwards, after reunification, uh, like we mentioned this morning, Berlin Helpenhof did not open until 2006. So this was the central station here for the city up until that point. Um, today it does still see a decent amount of traffic, uh, but not quite what Berlin Haupenhof is seeing at this point.
SPEAKER_02From here, we're gonna head back towards the city center and then find a good place to. End our day in Berlin. So we are on our way to our final destination of the day, but we made a little detour. We have spent a lot of time talking about the famous Cold War Berlin Wall. We did a side trip and we saw the uh lesser-known 1800s tax wall, uh, which we're gonna go and see one of the last remaining gates of that in just a moment. But we made another detour to the first wall, and that one goes back to the 13th century, which is pretty impressive.
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, medieval era wall that you mean you'd find a lot of things like this in other uh older German cities as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but not a lot of evidence of it here in Berlin, so it is really cool to finally you know come across one of the old sort of medieval uh remnants of the city.
Brandenburg Gate And System Takeaways
SPEAKER_02After a very long day of a very long day of traveling all over the city, uh we have made it to our final destination, which is probably one of the most iconic and most visited sites in Berlin, and that is the Brandenburg Gate. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01I had it on the tip of my tongue. Yes. But overall today we rode a bus, we rode a couple trams, we rode a lot of U-Bahns, S Bahns, uh the Ringbahn. I guess I guess that's an S-bond, but uh maybe not super surprising that it's fairly easy to get around Berlin. Uh when we're comparing it to other cities we've been to on the channel. I mean, similar vibes in terms of uh ease of use, as like Paris and Vienna, places like that. Um I think some of the stuff feels a little bit more out of date here. Like things feel a little bit older. Not everything. I mean, we were on some newer U-Bahn trains and things like that as well, but um, you know, nothing like the platform screen doors and things like that we were seeing in Paris, but overall pretty seamless system to navigate.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and something that we talked about sort of before we even started getting into filming today is the fact that the existing German government really isn't that old and sort of inherited a lot of infrastructure, but has also spent the last couple of years, uh, I'd say last two decades, trying to figure out how to continue to build out and rebuild some of the old stations and that kind of stuff. And so seeing all the progress today is still very impressive.
SPEAKER_01Right, for the for the short amount of time, especially with a system that was like pretty split into for you know in the city here, but even across the country. I mean, there was not travel really back and forth between east and west uh during that whole time period. So yeah, pretty impressive to see. And I mean you can still see that they're struggling with a bit of like the legacy of some of that, and like there's a lot of infrastructure work that needs to be done. You hear about delayed Deutsche Bahn trains and all this sort of stuff, and uh it is definitely like related to still going through some of those pains and kicking the can down the road on trying to repair some of the stuff, but um overall definitely an impressive
Density Lessons For US Cities
SPEAKER_01feat. And I mean the whole day I feel like we kept kind of being like, oh, like it's so depressing that like we can't quite get there with so many of these things in the US, but that's not the point of the episode, I guess.
SPEAKER_02But no, but one comparison that we can make the metro area of Berlin is around six million people, and if you want to compare that to something in the US, the city of Houston is actually a really good comparison as far as population goes. We did look up the population density, and it's around 4,000 people per square kilometer here in Berlin versus around 1,500 people uh per square kilometer in Houston, so density really matters, and I know that people in the US, especially those who aren't like the biggest fans of transit, will always say things like we don't have the density to support it. But I would argue that the density that exists here exists because the transit was built and not the other way around.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think in a lot of cases that's there, and I'll also say, like, while the density here is about like two and a half times, or maybe you can correct my math there, but two and a half times more dense, like I would say that we have way less than two and a half times the amount of transit happening in Houston, and I think like oh I mean when we were there, it was it was easier to get around than you would have imagined. You can go check out that episode if you have not seen it yet. It might be a little shocking for any Europeans who are watching this, but um yeah, I mean it's different. The density just it isn't there, but that that is a thing that they're uh actively trying to solve in a lot of US cities right now with their kind of YMB movements and whatnot happening. So um, yeah, well.
Dresden Tease And Closing Requests
SPEAKER_02Hopefully you enjoyed this episode. We did a lot of talking about history of Berlin, the city that has had such a divided past. Um, I this is my first time here. I've loved it and found it incredibly interesting. I've loved the transit experience here as well.
SPEAKER_01So again, hope you really enjoyed this episode. From here, we're actually going to be heading to Dresden and we're gonna be doing the same thing there. Dresden using only public transit. Uh, that'll be an interesting one to do because it's a much smaller city. Um, but I I've been once before and was fairly impressed with the transits that is there. There's also a couple cool historical transit items there that we'll get to check out. So uh definitely stay tuned for that one. It'll probably be coming in a couple weeks afterwards. Um, but with all that being said, if you have not liked this video already, please consider doing so. It helps us out quite a bit. Leave comments, all that sort of stuff. Let us know where you'd like us to go next. Uh, you can support the show via our Patreon, becoming a YouTube member, bias copy link, all of those sorts of things. Um with all that being said, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your Transit Engines Tuesday.
SPEAKER_00I'm saving that go public transit service at watch me go.