Why people sprint in vain to catch a bus or U-Bahn

This topic came up in a discussion I had a while ago. Have you observed how often people kill themselves in Germany trying to run to catch a stopping Bus/Ubahn when they are clearly miles away from reaching it? Maybe they have distance/depth perception problems.

#1: Despite the gripeing about German public transport, it's not often that you have to wait hours for the next one, like you do in some countries like France, UK, Australia, Ireland etc. Usually there is another bus/ubahn in a few minutes, so why kill yourself as if your life depended on it?

#2: People seem to be hopeless in Germany when it comes to judging correctly to run for a bus/Ubahn. People just can't seem to judge too well the distances, and whether they will make it or not. You have about 10 seconds at the most before the Ubahn leaves just as the Ubahn doors are opening. Unless you're within near proximity, you ain't gonna catch it, so why the huge Olympic sprint? And especially, why? if there is another one coming in a mere 4 minutes?

Maybe I'm just a public transport connoisseur, but I always "make it" for any dashes I decide, yet I see these people literally killing themselves to cover several hundred metres within a few seconds. Unless there are no passengers streaming out of the Ubahn's doors and not obscuring the driver's mirror/camera view of you, the driver won't even know you're coming. And only in a few cities, do fellow passengers still oblige by blocking the doors, to keep them open for you either (unless a pram is involved, and even that is hit and miss)

Well I for one will never run for a bus/Strassenbahn cause as soon as the driver sees you running the bastard will take off.

because sometimes the one that goes 4mins later is too late to get you to a connecting train etc. on time and because sometimes when you decide not to run because you think you won't make it anyway, the bloody tube ends up waiting at the station a little longer, just long enough so that you know you would have caught it, had you run but not long enough for you to actually catch it walking. It's too damn annoying.

I run for some train or other most days, I catch my train most days and I won't stop running for the few times I miss it + a bit of cardio is good for you, innit?

I did a 200m or so spring today for a tram (along with 2 other people from my work), though the tram was still coming up to the stop as I started the sprint so it was fine. Another one would have come in 7-10 minutes but I couldn't be arsed waiting 7-10 minutes when I knew I could make it!

Plus a good sprint every so often is good for you!

Well, we Americans grow up playing baseball and dodge-ball, as well as shooting a lot, so we know how to hit a moving target...

My wife's theory is that the Germans aren't really late that much, they just think that they're late!

I always thought they ran to be at the doors before they open so they can barge in before letting the people off. If that was an Olympic sport the Germans would win gold every time

Deccie, clearly you have not used the public transport in India :-). Indians are masters of this game.

It's because the Germans don't jaywalk. By growing up waiting robotically for the man to change to green, as opposed to dodging between moving cars, they have never learned to judge time, distance and speed. This is presumably also why they only leave about five metres between themselves and the car in front of them when driving at 200 km/h on the motorway. It's a well-recognised national illness.

When I was in Japan, I'd be walking with another US colleague at normal speed to an appointment where we knew we'd be c. five minutes late. Our Tokyo office colleagues would literally be doing this weird little slow jog in front of us, so that they arrived huffing, puffing and perspiring, as if they had to prove that they made best efforts to be on time. Unfortunately, they just ended up looking, well, huffing, puffing and all perspired ... and as late as they would have been anyway had they just walked normally.

The only other place I've seen this is Germany ... so I guess its another one of those warlord/feudal fealty things.

The bus chasers are probably more worried that someone will spot them giving up and just taking the next bus than making it look like they care.

I also have a safety issue with people who run in the office I work ... one day I'm going to stick a foot out

Some buses and trains drive every 20 or 30 minutes or even every hour if you live out of the city, I would run only if I am going to miss a connection like that. For a normal every-5-minutes ubahn I could not care less.

I love the people running across traffic oblivious to getting run over and killed just to catch a damn bus when the next one comes in 5 minutes.

It is purely optimization.
They are optimizing their waiting time.
It´s a seniority thing, I´ve been waiting here the longest! HaHa!
Take care,
space

That´s the same way they do it over here in Dortmund. So I take my time and wait for the next one.

Germans are obsessed with efficiency - they just don't 'see' anything or anyone else...punkt...

I commute for hours per day, from north to south munich. Arriving 10 seconds late for a bus can lead to a knock on effect that I get to work 30 odd minutes later, meaning I have to stay there later, by which time the buses are running less regularly, meaning the trip home can be an extra 20 minutes or so. Sum total of 50 minutes of wasted time, purely by being 10 seconds late in the morning.

Hardly a German phenomenon. A few years back I was working on safety for Washington (D.C.) Metrorail. There's one accident report that really dug into my memory: a man who was running down the escalator for a train arrived on the platform just in time to see the doors close in front of him. So he decided to jump between two of the carriages so that he could enter through the storm doors (proper term for the doors at the ends of the carriages used to moving from one to the next). He misjudged the jump and fell on the rail just as the train started pulling out of the station. That was the end of him.

What I don't get is why, when they make it to the SBahn after the sprint, and the door is clearly closed with no little green light, do they insist on trying to push the button anyway??? That drives me crazy (I myself frequently run to catch the tram)...

What an idiot. I have never seen that before and I'm sure I'm not likely to. Jumping in between the two carriages - why on earth would you do that? I saw a car bumper sticker once which said 'better late than dead'.

I used to run for the bus a lot but when I was an impressionable teenager I read an interview with Naomi campbell (or some other supermodel) who claimed she would never ever run for the bus as its extremely undignified (like she'd have to run for the bus anyway), so I stopped doing it.

I do do it now though. My U-bahn only comes every 10 minutes and I find that a long time to wait. And late at night, my tram is once every 20 minutes - no way in hell I'm hanging around for that length of time if I could have made a run for it.

One of my former colleagues (non-German) was knocked over one morning running for a tram. She was tossed by the car and suffered concussion and a broken leg. The woman car driver (German), who had been speeding down the hill, stopped after she hit her but then drove on because (as she argued in court after the police tracked her down) she felt that she had done nothing wrong and that it was my colleague's fault for running across the street.

I observe this phenomenon watching old people(60+) that can hardly walk but once that bus turns the corner, hold on to your hats, they transform into stampeding, cane whipping, elbowing little gnomes that will stop at nothing to get on that bus/train etc. usually standing infront of the door making sure that no one can get off before they haven't gotten on.

I think its a generation thing stemming back to the time they where fleeing from the Russians I usually tell them that the Russians aren't come today and they have all the time in the world especially since there usually "Rentners"

On the same note, what about when there is a sticker on the door stating this door will not open (keine "something"). This happened this morning and folks thought they were oh so smart and not noticing that everyone else is going through an alternate door. No, I will go through this door irrespective of the sign (well they never really looked at it in the first place). Then of course it registers (usually 10-15 seconds on) and they sprint off to another carriage door. Amazing to watch really.

Don't know so much about bus/tram drivers (though I swear the 309 bus pulled out early today just to spite me), but tube drivers always wait for me. Maybe the sight of me running is so pathetic that they want to put me out of my misery.

In general, though, I agree with Rilana - when you don't run the bloody train just sits there and you realise you could have made it after all, so then you start running only to find the doors close a nanosecond before you reach them.

Yeah,
This happens all the time over here. You just made that up didn't ya?
take care,
space

The Metrorail trains are different than German trains. There are connecting doors ("storm doors" as mentioned above) between the train cars which theoretically you could enter into. So I don't think this story is outside the realm of possibility.

EDIT: You can kinda see it on this picture, a door at the end of the car which opens, then you step outside the train and enter the next car through another door.

He probably went to this driving school!

Well, sometimes the 20 minutes later for an S-Bahn means being 15 minutes late for something. And my S-Bahn usually stays in the station for a while (until the one in the other direction also gets there as it's all eingleisig), and one of them is pretty much always five minutes late.

But then I am not that fast a runner, so usually I won't run if I definitely can't make it, and when I do not make it it was very close.

As for my depth perception, as I cannot see with both eyes at the same time, it is indeed a bit off but that has nothing to do with it. I also doubt it is an exclusively German phenomenon.

I commute for 1.5 hours each direction with UBahn-ICE Train-Ubahn each day, so I know the importance of connections.. My point is people just seem to be overly optimistic about their chances at catching the bus/Ubahn. I have made the dash many a time, but I know when I'm licked, and when there's a chance.

I see far too many people rushing for the Ubahn, and you can clearly tell they are miles away, and won't make it. They also don't seem to get the logic that on a 2-sided platform, you can run faster and with less obstacles/people traffic pouring out of the train you are trying to catch if you run parallel to the train along the empty adjacent platform and then cross over at the last minute, catching you U-bahn in time. Maybe they just don't have any cop on about it.

Possibly because its early in the morning or more likely that I'm just an idiot but I really cannot picture this. I don't think I've ever seen a platform where I have the possibility to run across it and cross over at the last minute. Please help me by giving me an example of a station so that I can go and look at it!

I did a bus-run this morning to avoid being late for work as the boss is always in before 9am. Big shoulder bag in one hand, big bulging plastic bag in the other hand running hell-for-leather across Odeonsplatz. The bus driver waited for me, sweet soul. And the boss was already there when I breezed in at 8.58am, a run worth running indeed.

EDIT: re crossing platforms - Try getting from the south-bound side of the Odeonsplatz platform (U3/6) to the stairs leading down to the U5. Ninjas and elderly German ladies might have a chance.

Same thing happened to me on an S-Bahn the other day. There was clearly a sign on the door that said, "This door is broken and will not open" in 5 different languages, and there were 6 or 7 people patiently waiting and staring at this guy who kept pushing the button trying to get it open.

Other weird phenomenon is when I see people sprinting towards the train station, but then they stop at a cross walk even when there are no cars coming. And as soon as it turns green, they're off sprinting again...bizarre.

It's the Invisible Car Syndrom well known to insurance companies:


They don't want to get hit by those invisible cars ...

This has to be the reply of the year!
Hilarious

why? I sometimes do it for fun. Its a bit of a thrill to sprint to catch the ubahn. I intentionally
walk slowely into the station and down the excalator so that you can sprint say 90 meters.
You get adrenaline rush that you want, also, its nice to overtake others and win the race.

I don't run for public transportation... ;-) I would rather pay for a taxi!!!

Solve the problem: work from home. It's easy.

There is such a thing called psychokinetics. One look at me and the drivers speeds on.