Transportation is a growing challenge in Saxony for several reasons. I will focus on two reasons here: urbanization and environmental concerns.
Urbanization: Urbanization is when people move from rural areas to cities. Most of Saxony is rural. The state has coal plants, factories, farms, and many Handwerkers (craftspeople, handymen, service people). Saxony also has three large cities, with populations between 250,000 and 600,000. Each city has universities, technical schools and community colleges along with several other industries that create jobs. In other words, while Saxony is rural, transportation is crucial for helping everyone to get to their place of work, to school, to the grocery store, and to hospital.
Environmental concerns: The German government is really worried about how much CO2 the country produces. They want to reduce CO2 emissions, and one major way of reducing CO2 is to limit the number of transportation forms (cars, trains, trams, buses) that use fossil fuels. By committing itself to this goal, the German government must either invest in electrical transit systems or forbid people from driving fossil fuel-burning cars.
