The Passengers Strike Back

Last Friday I had a bit of a panic, because the local public transport system here in Berlin was out of action for nearly two days because of an unexpected strike. Personally it didn't affect me too much (my current commute is to the room next door) but I was more than a little worried that further strikes might follow, particularly on Friday, when I'm due at the airport - which is accessible only by bus or car. Not having a car, the obvious alternative would be to get a taxi - which is what everyone else does, meaning taxis are hard to come by and even if I could have got hold of one, or got someone with a car to give me a lift, it might have got stuck in a traffic jam. As things turned out, the airport ran an "emergency" bus service, and the union has just announced the next strike won't be before Monday, so it looks like I won't have to rely on my emergency last-ditch backup plan which would involve walking from the nearest national rail station (not affected by the strike) to the airport, a distance of about 3km as the penguin swims, but probably half-as-long again taking into account the most practical walking route.

Had I had to do that, I would have been more than a little miffed, and while Berliners took the first strike more-or-less good-naturedly, public transport users have limits too, and though I'm sympathetic to the strikers' cause, I'd just like to point out to the union that if you push the fare-paying passengers too far, you might just end up with scenes like this:

dating from 1973 (about 5 minutes; no translation, but the images speak their own language), when Japanese rail passengers, faced with escalating strikes, took matters (and heavy blunt objects by the look of it) into their own hands, rising up in protest at the complete lack of transport (and in urban Japan, if the trains stop running, there is no viable alternative transport).