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Most people believe that the purpose of public transport is
to transport people. Not so in Zurich. In my experience, only
one out of twenty tram drivers in Zurich believes that his professional
duty is to help people get from A to B. The rest believes that
their duty is to keep the timetable.
Let me illustrate my point with the following recurring experience.
It was raining, and I was running late on getting to a date. During
the day, I had already got the uncomfortable feeling that my Swiss
precision watch was about 5 seconds behind the precise time, because
appearing as the last person in meetings had raised eyebrows.
Walking towards the tram station, I was wondering whether I had
to check my watch. Then I saw the tram coming. Immediately I started
to run, knowing well that there isn't much time to get on the
tram while it holds at the station. When I reached the station,
the tram had already been standing there for a few seconds. I
was all wet, because I couldn't have both my umbrella open and
run fast. Pressing the push button to open the last door, I realized
that the button wasn't illuminated anymore, meaning that the doors
would not open. With a sinking feeling, I ran to the head of the
tram to knock on the door where the tram driver was located. When
I reached the door, the tram still hadn't left. I used my most
friendly "Please, Please, Mister Tram Driver" facial
expression to move him to open the door. Being a professional,
he continued to stare through the front window rather than at
me, so he would not be distracted by my misery. In response to
my knocking, he switch on the signal lights each tram has on its
sides. These signal lights indicate that the tram will soon leave
the station. It took the tram another 5 seconds before it eventually
left the station. During that time, I continued knocking at the
tram's first door, hoping to be let in, getting all wet, and finally
loosing faith.
So far, so bad. You may now think that it is hard for a professional
tram driver to decide what is more important: an individual customer,
or an anonymous mass of customers relying on trams keeping exact
timetables. My personal opinion is that this does not contradict
each other, but this is not the point, as I recently had to learn.
I was running towards an inter-city train at Oerlikon (Zurich)
that would bring me to Zurich main train station. I wasn't sure
whether my local public transport ticket would get me on this
train, so I stopped right in front of a train door, where the
train conductor was waiting. The conductor was inside the train,
looking out of the window. I asked him whether I could take the
train with my ticket. He calmly answered my question with a clear
yes. Then, after a pause, he continued: "Yes, but only in
principle, because this train is now leaving without you."
At the very second of which the train started rolling out of the
station, forcing me to back off from the train door that I had
already half opened.
I think I will always carry the Zen-like calmness of this conductor's
answer in my heart.
Dirk Riehle, July 1999.
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