During spring break our METRANS Student Assistant, Griffin Kantz, toured cities of Germany, Denmark, and the Czech Republic, photographing diverse modes of transit infrastructure he discovered along his trek. He found that visions of transit, both new and old, were intensely evocative of local culture and history. Here we share a few of his photos for our readers’ entertainment:

European cities in Warsaw Pact nations retained their tram systems from the 19th and early 20th centuries, whereas most large cities in Western Europe lost them entirely. Communist governments saw communal and populist value in local transit systems such as trams and funiculars, especially in cities where car ownership was scarce, and this motivated public investment and expansion of local transit. The city of Prague now has 549 of these old T3’s in service, all built between 1962 and 1999. According to a city survey from the last decade, T3’s have an operational reliability of 98.9%.

 A Czech Railways class 814 diesel multiple unit passes departs from Krivoklát station in rural Bohemia. These units from the 1970s and early 1980s can hold only 55 seated passengers and have a maximum speed of 50 mph, but during the late 20th century often comprised the only form of transportation to and from rural Czech villages and factories. Trains on this particular route 30 miles west of Prague run once every 90 minutes and only stopped when flagged down from the platform by waving.

Shut down in 2008, Berlin’s old Tempelhof Airport remains open to the public as a vast park. The airport was constructed in 1927 as “Zentralflughafen” (Central Airport), was renovated by the Third Reich during the 1930s, and played a crucial role in the Berlin Airlift (1948-49). The city government of Berlin has since formulated plans to convert the runway space into a well-crafted modern urban park, but these designs were forestalled last year to use the hangar buildings as a makeshift refugee center.

An historic Class 52 steam engine sits at the front of a train waiting in downtown Frankfurt am Main. These “war engines” were produced in Germany at the time of World War II, to support the transportation of arms and the takeover of newly-invaded nations. Now this train is used as an excursion train for cruise tourists travelling the Rhine River Valley.

  Lunchtime at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, the busiest transit center in Germany. Here, tramway, heavy rail, suburban rail, and regional high-speed rail all converge. Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) stations are designed to operate as major retail centers as well as rail stations. The food and shopping franchises promote public transit use and actually generate the majority of the stations’ revenues.

Bicyclists and a bus in downtown Copenhagen wait for a drawbridge to close so they can continue their commute. Due to decades of impressive investment in bicycle infrastructure, 63% of all Copenhagen residents bike to work each weekday. The city constructed a bike-only bridge across the central harbor in 2014 and plans to build a few more to further subsidize active transportation.

Griffin Kantz

Griffin is a third year undergraduate studying Sustainable Planning in the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. He can be reached at [email protected].