Heavy snow brings travel chaos in Germany

Severe winter weather continues to disrupt travel in Germany, forcing the cancellation of more than 200 flights, and contributing to road accidents.

At Frankfurt airport, 226 flights were cancelled and hundreds of passengers stranded as snow ploughs struggled to clear runways.

Residents have been advised to stock up on enough essential supplies to last up to four days.

Many other countries across Europe have also been hit by the bitter conditions.

Nearly 140 people have frozen to death in the past few weeks in Poland, and in Switzerland, heavy snow has cut the flow of lorries through Alpine tunnels.

The Eurostar service between Britain, France and Belgium ran a limited service on Saturday, with a reduced service planned for Sunday and Monday.

Passengers have been urged to cancel or postpone their journeys if they do not have to travel.

'Paralysed'

Germany's Civil Protection Office (BBK) said heavy snowfalls over the weekend could trigger local power cuts and severely disrupt public transport.

More than 300 car accidents were reported in the south-western state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, with more than 40 people injured, Associated Press reported.

In the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia there were 108 reported accidents, while at the German-French border near Freiburg, hundreds of trucks were stuck for hours when French authorities closed the highway because of heavy snow.

Gale-force winds and drifting snow are expected to bring traffic to a standstill in many parts of Germany, a situation exacerbated by shortages of grit.

Airports have called in extra staff and rail operators have warned of delays.

Berlin's Schoenefeld and Tegel airports, and Munich airport reported cancellations.

On Friday evening, Nuremberg airport was closed briefly after an Air Berlin flight with 133 people on board skidded off the runway and became stuck in snow. No-one was injured in the incident.

The snow is already more than 30cm (1 ft) deep on the isle of Ruegen, off Germany's Baltic coast, ZDF TV says.

German households have been advised to keep three or four days' worth of provisions, including alternative cooking fuel in case of power cuts. Among the essential items listed by the BBK is a battery-powered radio, for checking weather reports.

In cities like Duesseldorf, Red Cross workers were setting up heated tents for emergency accommodation as up to 10 homeless people have frozen to death in recent weeks because of the cold weather.

Icebreakers

In the UK, which is suffering its worst winter for decades, Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged that gas supplies would not run out, and that road salt will get to "where it is most needed".

Temperatures have dropped as low as -22C (-8F) in some parts.

Local authorities have agreed to cut their use of salt by 25% in an attempt to preserve dwindling supplies.

British Airways cancelled 54 flights from Heathrow on Saturday. Delays were expected at other airports and low-budget airline Easyjet said it was cancelling some flights.

In the Netherlands, icebreakers have been deployed to clear shipping routes such as the Twente canal, the harbours of Almelo and Enschede and the Ijsselmeer inland sea.

Northern Spain is expecting more heavy snowfalls while the country's south has been hit by severe floods.

France is also braced for more snow. Meteo France warned: "The amount of snow expected is significant, exceptional even."

Parts of France - notably the south-eastern region of Provence - are without power and suffering transport delays after up to 20cm of snow fell in recent days.

Dozens of flights were cancelled in Toulouse, Lyon, Brest and Paris.

In the south-east, near the Mediterranean, power lines snapped under the weight of snow, cutting power to at least 7,500 homes.

Cities of the future - KL not one of them

Aren't we envious of the people of China whose government (despite being Communist and perhaps with a poor human rights record) is doing everything it can not only to spur economic growth but to make the everyday life of its citizens as easy as possible?

Of course, I am talking about China's new bullet train which can travel 394.2 kph, the fastest in the world, faster than Japan's bullet train (243 kph) and France's (277) kph. The result of which the Chinese can travel fast from Guangzhou - the business hub in southern China near Hong Kong - to Wuhan in the north.

And not so long ago, China also completed its long railway line from Shanghai to Tibet during which some parts of the journey when the air is thinner, passengers would have to wear oxygen masks.

Now that's what I call progress.

Now, what do we have in Malaysia? After 50 years, we have no shame in boasting about our highways, Petronas Twin Towers (which to me look like the Cathedral in Barcelona), the stupid twin-terminal KLIA, the ugly elevated expressways, this and that.

When it comes to public transport, everything is done a bit here and a bit there and in the end our citizens are still wasting a lot of time and spending a lot of money commuting to work especially our female workers who often sleep on the cramped buses.

The former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has to answer a lot for this negligence. He naively thought Malaysia could be another US where everything revolves around cars. Surely enough, cars have now taken over our lives.

Since our roads and space are never enough for the ever-growing number of cars, we have now become more agitated, stressed and suicidal. The only wage-earners who are slightly happier are those who live in other cities outside Kuala Lumpur and leave their families and cars at home during the week and travel by express buses to work in Kuala Lumpur.

We all know that the elevated expressways which grew like spaghetti in some parts of Kuala Lumpur have unavoidably become part of a developed country like Malaysia.

But do we know that the city fathers of Boston in the US have just realised that elevated expressways are a scourge of modern public life because they divide cities and communities. They have just decided to pull them down and replace them with underground roads.

So too the city fathers of Seoul, South Korea who recently decided to tear down a boulevard running right across the city in order to restore a beautiful river running right beneath the boulevard.

Now, do we think that our leaders could see the point? Not in a million years.