Take the SLOW train to Clarksville

I knew I was in for an interesting trip to work when the train had started and stopped four times before clearing the Malmö Central yard. My mind immediately began calculating just how late I was going to get to my office. (Which is actually in Landskrona, not Clarksville.)

Once we were *finally* underway, the engineer came on the public address system and informed us that due to a technical problem, the train could not exceed 8 kilometers an hour. I ride my bike faster than that! It took us almost a half-hour to get to Lund, which is normally a 12-minute trip.

As we pulled into Lund's station, I could see my fellow Quiet Car passengers mulling over their options. Like me, they were trying to decide whether it was faster to continue on the Molasses-in-Winter Special with minimal stops (direct to Landskrona, only two stops before final destination Helsingborg), or wait 20 minutes in Lund to get on a non-handicapped train that would stop in every little podunk village on the line.

In the end, everybody stayed put, though several of the passengers who boarded in Lund were peeved that they were not informed of the problem before the train left the station. (Clearly they hadn't done the math in their heads yet.)

Remarkably, I ended up arriving at my office less than 30 minutes later than usual...but all I can think about is how much I would have preferred to spend that time sleeping-in this morning, rather than crawling across Skåne on a train that my grandmother could have been driving.

tags: commuting  public transportation  

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