Europe's traffic is gone dark, all planes grounded and therefore this traffic map most impressively shows the importance and impact of mobility and the impact of the Corona epedemic on our society.
Most of these flights are business flights, most of these flights are not neccessary to have the job done.
Instead of having to be in the office of the client and stressing air routes creating imense pollution by burning fosil fuels the fleet of European business humans well could, after an introducing meet and greet, do the job from within home office or just their local branch. Unfortunately that will kill these bonus miles conversation at their most favorite bar that do become embarrissing when repeated during bar hopping over and over again at least to the low level local right along the tour but not to them...
Corporate world sucks, we know.
I ceratinly will have a blog post about a year after the Crisis on exactly this issue and bonus mile conversations, too.
The left part of the pic shows another interesting situation I wont to point out here.
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| Zoom into GB/BeNeLux/France/DACH |
It shows by indicating most dense traffic the center of Europeans economy.
The blue running character like polygone shows the brightest spots indicating most traffic. This is London in the north to the Alps in the south and does include a lot of vacation traffic, I guess.
The red circles are the very brightest spots and this is London, Paris, Holland (The Amsterdam to Rotterdam regions of the Netherlands) and Frankfurt.
Frankfurt is an international continental european hub that takes, as the second largest human carrier airport of Europe, a lot of intercontinentinal traffic to further devide it into all European regions and the actual centre spots of the European economy.
Despite the believe that Germany and only Germany is the very economic centre of the EU traffic indicates that it is actually a triangle of London-Paris-Amsterdam and all inbetween.
Another map I found using google search from a Facebook group named "Other Europe" shows traffic, even so "traffic" is unspecified this might be most likely the road traffic on Europs' dense road networks and it supports my theory.
Here the Europen Economicle Triangle has extensions along the M1 towards the north away from London to the UKs main industrial region of Manchester to Leeds and Glasgow, and down south to the German Rhein-Ruhr area which is Germanies densly populated main industrial region.
This is where beside business human travel also goods are transported ever day.
Mobility is the backbone of our society, but it became toxic to the overall planet by being based on toxic fuels, transporting goods not needed and done for prestigious reasons instead out of a requirement.
Corona changed that for now. Corona forced all into home office, but we still buy goods and stuff we don't really need and that need to travel for way to long distances. It actually became difficult to understand for oneself what is really needed and what makes sence to buy. Instead we buy based on the maximum we can afford financially.
Have a look at your watch. Is it a smart watch or even a luxurious one? Just for the reference. A watch is a clock that can be carried with you all the time. Initially they were supposed to show the current time. From there they developed into status symbols and little computers, but certainly toys and jewelery.
The worst of those acquisitions is usually the very tool needed for mobility. Our rides. The car.
Everybody wants a car to impress which way ever. While we need a car to be able to move when we need to where we need to, actually.
We need to drive to work, don't we?
We need to transport grocery shopping, don't we?
We need to drive into vacation with Snowboard and luggage, don't we?
We need to also have some fun with it, don't we?
We also need to actually be able to afford it.
Personally, I am actually a petrol head. Being a rather poor citizen of the free western world I only can afford a car to justify the work and transport parts of the list directly connected with my income and therefore base of my quality of life.
If I had home office, contiued online grocery shopping, would be able to use bio-fuels like ethanol or plant based oils I would have a very different ride that I would use for the fun, and vacation is supposed to be fun. I would not ride it every morning and onto tight parking lots and be scared every time the insurance and tax asks for its tribute and actualy worry about scratches. I'd actually would love my car as a petrol head does...
And the roads would have less traffic and provide instead more joy everytime a ride is actually needed.
This would apply for all others too. Especially for all those that buy the car to impress and for emotional reasons.
Less is more. Everybody sais it, but no one gets it.
Instead of spending two days of the work week on a physicle move, or hours inbetween sales meetings and presentations adding up to full days, the business human could make more money by being productive, while enjoying his ride on more empty streets and still have the bonus mile conversation as they will drop the required amount of points for the bonus programm if everybody would travel smarter: Less is more.
Can't wait for the traffic pics after Corona...
