[HN Gopher] Klimaticket: All public transport in Austria with a ...
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Klimaticket: All public transport in Austria with a single ticket
for 1095 EUR/y
Author : the_mitsuhiko
Score : 230 points
Date : 2021-09-30 14:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.klimaticket.at)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.klimaticket.at)
| rob74 wrote:
| Er... sounds good, but first they say "All public transport in
| Austria with a single ticket", and later "...in a specific area
| for a year: regional, cross-regional and nationwide". And after
| that, there is only one price (with various rebates) listed for
| the "Klimaticket O". Are there cheaper versions planned which are
| limited to e.g. one ("regional") or two ("cross-regional") states
| (Bundeslander)? I checked the German version, it's not a
| translation mistake.
|
| EDIT: Ok, found out myself, thanks Wikipedia! All but one
| (Karnten) states already have a yearly public transportation
| ticket, with prices ranging from 365EUR (Vorarlberg and Vienna)
| to 695 EUR (Oberosterreich). I guess these will be called
| "Klimaticket" too in the future. Might have made sense to mention
| this in the FAQ though...
|
| BTW the introduction date, 26.10.2021, is the Austrian National
| Day.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I spent one year (gap internship) in Vorarlberg, the yearly
| price was about EUR400.
|
| They had a 50% discount if you were under 26
|
| And a (cumulable) 50% first-time only discount if you already
| had a driver license
|
| I ended up paying EUR100 for a card that allowed me to ride any
| train or bus in the region for one year, whenever I wanted. I
| ended up biking most of the time, but I did commute by train
| for a while. In the end I didn't use it that much, but buying
| it was a no-brainer.
|
| I should also mention that some of the train lines you could
| take crossed the Swiss and German borders.
| bmicraft wrote:
| The original idea by our green party was a "1-2-3 Ticket" which
| means 365EUR for one state, double for two states, and triple
| for all states (per year for all public transport).
|
| They just renamed the "3" ticket to climate ticket when they
| introduced it, meanwhile work on "1" and "2" is still ongoing
| in some places afaik.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| In Germany you can buy a Bahncard 100 for roughly 4k, which
| allows you to take any Deutsche Bahn train at any time.
|
| Not sure if the cost should scale with size of counrty, but I
| guess 4x is roughly reasonable between Austria and Germany.
| Austria probably is more expensive to build railroad in, since
| it's mostly mountains.
| adrianN wrote:
| The Bahncard 100 doesn't include _all_ public transport though.
| Austria also invests about twice as much (per capita) into rail
| infrastructure as Germany.
| w-m wrote:
| Which is a bit silly, but more a theoretical problem, right?
| I'd assume (I can't actually find a map of the coverage),
| that people for whom a BC 100 makes sense travel mostly by
| train, thus live near a train station with a good connection.
| Which will then be in one of the 130 cities that include the
| public transport with the City Ticket.
| adrianN wrote:
| Everybody I know who has a Bahncard 100 uses it for
| commuting. While they generally live "close" to a train
| station they need public transport on both ends of the
| journey and buy additional tickets, e.g. another
| ~60EUR/month for a Berlin ticket.
| w-m wrote:
| Berlin A+B is included (one of the 130 cities). Or do
| they live outside, in zone C?
| pvitz wrote:
| Just for comparison: For commuting 40km to a city in Germany
| including public transport in the city, I have to pay around
| 1.800,- EUR per year. It is expected that the Austrian
| 'Klimaticket' will include also the public transport in the
| whole Eastern region (i.e. Vienna and all surroundings). This
| is much better than what you could get in Germany at the
| moment.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Very expensive. AFAIK it's under EUR150/y in the neighbor Czechia
| (but it doesn't include inter-city trains).
| awestroke wrote:
| Not really comparable then, is it?
| bmicraft wrote:
| We do have many regional tickets and only the most expensive
| ones (over 26yrs and not senoir) even cost 365EUR per year. You
| also have to take cost of living / pay grade and quality of
| service into account.
| shimonabi wrote:
| I used to live in Austria before Covid without a car and travel
| to my home country by train on weekends.
|
| I have the feeling they are doing this because they lost a lot of
| passengers during the epidemic. Maybe I'm wrong...
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Thats how it worked in Chicago: everyone stopped riding due to
| sars-cov-2, the Transit Authority started selling 1/3 price
| passes, ridership picked right back up.
| sk7 wrote:
| You are wrong, the idea is much older and the idea for the
| current version (initially called 1-2-3 Ticket) was suggested
| by the green party in 2013 already.
|
| More Infos in the history (in German):
| https://kurier.at/politik/inland/gruene-spoe-oder-oevp-wer-h...
| holri wrote:
| They are doing this because the green party is in the
| government now. This is a long-standing demand of the green
| party to lower CO2 emissions. They first did this in Vienna a
| few years ago, when they were in the city government. Now they
| are in the federal government and are rolling this out for all
| of Austria, since it was a huge success in Vienna, car travel
| was dramatically reduced.
| tyingq wrote:
| Interesting. The "family supplement" feels like it could use some
| work though. You pay EUR110 extra, and up to 4 of your children
| (<15 years old) can travel with you. But your partner isn't
| included...they would also have to pay the extra if they ever
| planned on being with the kids, and without you. And the kids
| have to buy a ticket if traveling alone. It's not expensive per
| se, but it seems like a narrow set of uses.
| Archelaos wrote:
| In Germany the "Bahncard 100" has been available for years. It
| costs 4,027 Euro/yr (2. class) or 6,812 Euro/yr (1. class) for
| infinte train rides with Deutsche Bahn and a lot of local
| transport associations.[1] Since Germany is about four times as
| big as Austria the price is comparable to the Klimaticket, if one
| is really travelling a lot of long distances.
|
| For smaller areas the situation is very complicated. Almost all
| local transportation associations have yearly tarifs of their
| own. Sometimes they are valid in adjacent destinations, sometimes
| not or only for a limited time (such as during the summer school
| holidays). More consistency would be desirable here.
|
| [1] For a list see:
| https://www.bahn.de/angebot/bahncard/vorteile/verbuende (in
| German)
| bkfh wrote:
| In the Klimaticket, _all_ public transport is included. Cities
| as well as inter cities
| fisian wrote:
| To add to that, until now there is the OBB Osterreichcard
| which allows infinite train rides on all OBB trains. It's
| about 2000EUR. Now it will be replaced by this Klimaticket.
| bluGill wrote:
| This should be the preferred way to ride all local transit
| systems. One price for the whole family, ride as much as you want
| for the month (I think month is better then year - easier to
| budget, and if you move you are not out as much). If people
| aren't willing to pay for the pass, your system isn't useful and
| you need to fix that. Because it is unlimited rides people are
| less likely to think about using the car for trips that could go
| either way.
|
| Note that I said local. For trips to other cities it might (or
| might not) make sense to charge a different price - such trips
| are not as common.
| toshk wrote:
| Hmmm, problem is if it would be the dominant way of buying
| tickets the transport organisation would loose even more
| incentive to be customer oriented. Many public transportation
| companies, for instance Deutche Bahn, are awful and rude. They
| are often semi-public and semi-monopolistic, imagine paying
| them a year budget up front, would make things even worse.
| bluGill wrote:
| People do have options, if service is bad enough they can buy
| a car. (I don't want them to, but they can). Or vote for
| politicians who will do something about it (I'd prefer
| transit was entirely private, but for a number of reasons
| that isn't possible anymore)
| welterde wrote:
| DB already offers something similar in the form of yearly
| discount cards with three different levels: 25%, 50% and
| 100%. The latter being pretty much the same thing as the
| above mentioned card (although 4x as expensive).
| southerntofu wrote:
| > One price for the whole family
|
| Why not make it free? It's a public service after all, and it's
| hard to "abuse" transportation like one can use "too much" free
| water/electricity.
| bluGill wrote:
| Because then politicians will rob the budget for whatever
| their pet project is. Fares should at least cover all
| operating costs (including maintenance), so that politicians
| can't slowly kill the system via neglect (they will kill it
| by others means, but at least budget won't be one)
| mongol wrote:
| Every passenger wears on the system. It is fair that you pay
| a part of things you use.
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| Re the other reply: this'll vary by country, but the UK
| effectively charges a road-usage tax (fuel duty) that nets
| about twice as much (20Bn) as the annual spending on roads
| (warning - source = two minutes of googling)
| bmicraft wrote:
| Every road user also uses roads paid for by every tax payer
| so there's that.
| southerntofu wrote:
| Well that's good, isn't it? I mean if i had to choose
| between my taxes financing public roads/trains, and my
| taxes financing cops to beat up my neighbors and silence
| political dissent, i would without any form of hesitation
| choose the former.
|
| Unfortunately, we don't live in a democracy so there's
| not exactly a choice beyond what brand/color of corrupt
| overlord we'd like to see ruin our lives for the next 5
| years.
| alibarber wrote:
| But everyone uses roads, driver or not. The food in the
| store was not grown there, your mail was probably brought
| along the road at some point...
| [deleted]
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| Most public transit systems are already bankrupt and have to
| be propped up by taxes collected from other services. Making
| it free will most likely not increase ridership and will
| almost definitely make the quality of service lower.
| southerntofu wrote:
| As you have pointed out, public subsidies are already the
| main financing source for public utilities. If you're
| worried about bankruptcy, you may be worried that
| ticketing/controlling equipment and personnel has a
| substantial cost for transportation agencies (also:
| environmental cost).
|
| French law already has obligation for your employer to pay
| (at least parts of) your travel fees. You could also have a
| tax on hotel rooms and airbnbs for tourists to help finance
| it. There's already cities across the globe practicing free
| public transport and so far i haven't heard any complaining
| or finding unexpected difficulties.
|
| Also, specifically about quality of service, we could argue
| having a service orientation driven by workers and users (a
| sort of coop if you like) would yield better results than
| what David Graeber refers to as "manageurial feudalism"
| sucking public services dry through dehumanizing
| micromanagement techniques, absurd salaries for the higher-
| ups, and various forms of corruption such as "private-
| public partnerships".
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| > Most public transit systems are already bankrupt and have
| to be propped up by taxes collected from other services.
|
| Hold on, this is a pretty odd way to frame a public
| service. By this logic, you could equally say:
|
| - Most road systems are already bankrupt and have to be
| propped up by taxes collected from other services.
|
| - Most schools are already bankrupt and have to be propped
| up by taxes collected from other services.
|
| - Most fire departments are already bankrupt and have to be
| propped up by taxes collected from other services.
| ghaff wrote:
| Many people use the transit system associated with the local
| city on a very occasional basis. Cost has nothing to do with
| it. It just doesn't go where I normally travel day to day and
| the commuter rail is just too infrequent and to slow to use
| outside of commuting hours.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Depends, I used to have a flatrate, high speed train about for
| commuting for a couple of years. I needed to city abos on top.
| Monthly costs were around 300 Euro, still cheaper / on par with
| a car (fuel only). That Austrian offer is the way to go, IMHO.
| I would even consider it for private purposes only for that
| price.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Holy shit that's cheap. The same thing in the Netherlands costs
| me EUR4500. And that's a much smaller country.
| schnevets wrote:
| As miserable as public transit is for us in the US, I could
| actually see this kind of deal succeeding in New York (and
| neighboring areas of Connecticut and New Jersey). Those in the
| city are constantly perplexed by the various county-run transit
| lines and costs, but some kind of single pass would actually make
| bus lines approachable to visitors (whereas they are only used by
| those who can't afford a car today).
|
| Also, could this model be a response to a decline in ridership
| due to COVID? I don't know how these commuter lines fared in
| Europe, but I can only assume there were less folks traveling to
| a different area due to lockdown/remote work.
| bmicraft wrote:
| This ticket (in Austria specifically) is not a response to
| covid-19, it has been in the works by our green party for many
| years now (2013 I think) and negotiations for the country-wide
| ticket have finally been concluded.
| la_fayette wrote:
| I am commuting from Germany into Austria on a daily basis. It is
| 4 stations in Germany, last station in Austria, around 30 km. The
| yearly ticket is 1.200 EUR. Germany has absolutely crazy high
| ticket prices, but cheap diesel cars ;-)
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Some context here: previously there was no single ticket you
| could get for public transport in Austria like you could in
| Switzerland. There was a yearly ticket for the national rail
| services but that was it.
|
| With this ticket you can hop into any public transport now from
| long distance rail to local city trams.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| > _from long distance rail to local city trams._
|
| That's the part that makes a system like this subjectively
| unfair.
|
| If my daily commute is a handful of bus stops and that guy's is
| a train for an hour from another city, then I am basically
| funding his commute by overpaying for my pass... even if it's
| cheaper to ride my bus with a pass than to buy a ticket for
| every ride.
|
| Edit - I read the website as saying that this is going to be
| the only pass available in Austria. It looks like it's not,
| which, of course, makes far more sense in comparison.
| mellavora wrote:
| Hmm, I wonder what I am 'overpaying' by having close to 1/2
| of the land area of my town dedicated to cars instead of
| trees and grass, just so other people can live in the
| suburbs.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| But if you only require local travel, why would you buy a
| national pass?
| huhtenberg wrote:
| It sounded like it's going to be the only pass available in
| Austria. I must've read the site wrong.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| > If my daily commute is a handful of bus stops and that
| guy's is a train for an hour from another city, then I am
| basically funding his commute by overpaying for my pass...
|
| In that case you would not buy this pass, instead opting for
| a local or regional pass or one tailored to that specific
| commute.
| hng wrote:
| I am pretty sure that you still can get a monthly/yearly
| ticket for your local area. These are usually between 50-100
| EUR in Germany. In Vienna you pay 1 EUR per day, so around
| 350 EUR for a year.
|
| The idea here is that you have one ticket that can be used
| everywhere in the country, so you probably would only get it
| if you travel more than a local commute on a regular base.
| [deleted]
| ginko wrote:
| >If my daily commute is a handful of bus stops and that guy's
| is a train for an hour from another city
|
| If your daily commute is a handful of bus stops for instance
| in the Vienna metro, then you can buy a yearly ticket just
| for the Vienna public transport for 365EUR.
|
| https://www.wienerlinien.at/web/wiener-linien/jahreskarte
| mmastrac wrote:
| I mean this is Europe, and there's much less "this is unfair"
| versus "we are in this together".
| joeberon wrote:
| Maybe compared to America, but really, no, there's still a
| LOT of individualistic thinking here
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| People living far from city centers usually live in bigger
| house/flats and less dense districts. That's usually what
| pull people to move to the suburbs. Some do this because of
| the cost of renting/buy a big place in inner city but it's
| the same argument.
|
| The problem is, living in a large place and sparser
| environment has a HUGE social cost
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_sprawl#Effects which is
| a major contributor to the ongoing biodiversity collapse
| (which is at least as big of a threat as climate change).
|
| "We are in this together" but not just to get people to
| drop private cars. We must commute much less (however clean
| your mode of transport) so how is it compatible with cheap
| transport in the long term?
|
| Or we put hard limit on urban sprawl but that will increase
| the cost of living in suburban/rural places even further
| than having people pay for their commute distance.
| rory wrote:
| Even on public transport, longer commutes are relatively
| environmentally unfriendly when compared to shorter
| commutes (in the medium-to-long run). So regardless of
| individualism, it would generally be a public benefit to
| encourage shorter commutes.
| southerntofu wrote:
| Yes, but it's not exactly that you have a lot of choice
| for where you work, for example.
| rory wrote:
| I suppose it depends on the job and the market, but many
| people do have a lot of choice where they work (and where
| they live).
| southerntofu wrote:
| I think we disagree on the "many". I would say "some"
| instead. Most people i know don't have a choice: they're
| employed in a shop somewhere or work from specific
| offices. Of course, the HN crowd may be more exposed to
| work-from-home, but that's still alien to a great part of
| the population, especially those who work the most
| precarious jobs.
| rory wrote:
| I'm not sure how it is in Austria, but here in the US,
| people on the more "precarious" end of the spectrum (non-
| management retail and hospitality workers) have a quit
| rate of (very roughly) ~50% per year. So generally they
| do seem to be aware that they can choose a different
| place to work. Do you live somewhere very rural?
| pvg wrote:
| A look at this classic Viennese ticket machine would convince
| most people that paying more to never touch it again is not
| only fair but necessary and effectively a discount:
|
| https://live.staticflickr.com/1096/1427525859_9f6fcf046f_k.j.
| ..
| delroth wrote:
| Pretty much all local city transport networks in Europe offer
| yearly subscriptions. If you just need that, that's already
| an option.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| If the Kilmaticket is not the only pass now available in
| Austria, then it makes far more sense.
| md_ wrote:
| I mean, yes, but that's like saying "all you can eat" buffets
| are unfair.
|
| The only "fix" would be to never offer fixed-rate pricing.
|
| It's a strange complaint, to me.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| If there's a buffet that serves a caviar and I only eat
| unpeeled cucumbers, then I'm not likely to go to that
| buffet.
| md_ wrote:
| Agreed. Many consumers will still pay-as-you-go. I fail
| to see the problem.
| jessaustin wrote:
| I've never been to Austria, but I suspect this more limited
| pass you prefer has been available for a long time in all
| relevant locales. Certainly that is my experience with other
| public transit systems.
| LittleNemoInS wrote:
| If your daily commute is only a few bus stops, you'll find it
| way cheaper to get a pass from the local transportation
| company. This is for people who are travelling a lot (like
| commuting between cities on a daily or weekly basis).
| malthaus wrote:
| And for comparison, the Swiss equivalent costs around USD 4k a
| year per person 2nd class
| LittleNemoInS wrote:
| Just to clarify : In Switzerland, one can buy a CA Travelcard
| (for CHF3860 a year, approximately $3850). With this card, one
| can travel on (nearly) all public transports in Switzerland
| (trains, coaches, subways, trams, etc.) free of charge. Since
| the public transportation system is very good, it's a good way
| to travel.
| rob74 wrote:
| Ok, so the Austrian version costs less than a third of that
| for a considerably larger country. And the public
| transportation system is pretty good in Austria too...
| herbst wrote:
| As Austrian living in Switzerland there definitely is a x3
| value given here. It's unfair to directly compare given the
| price difference, but Austrian public transport is simply
| not on the same level in terms of: quality, speed, timing,
| connections, reliability (dozens of backup tracks), ..
| dheera wrote:
| I mean, when I was in the area in 2005-2007 pretzels cost
| USD 2.50 in Germany and USD 7 in Switzerland ...
|
| There were also steep discounts for students and youth for
| almost everything -- I got a public transit pass for 50%
| off because I was under 23 at the time.
| herbst wrote:
| I love the Brezel example. A freshly baked Brezel at the
| Trainstation Bern is like 3$. However if you need a human
| to cut it open and spread butter on it it costs $8.
|
| Products ain't that much more expensive here, human time
| is.
| antoinealb wrote:
| The rail network appears to be only 20% larger in Austria
| than Switzerland (5000 vs 6000 km Google tells me). Then
| the salaries of the people operating those transports are
| also higher in Switzerland. The GA is a pretty good deal
| already.
| Certhas wrote:
| ... it's Switzerland. Everything is 3x more expensive and
| salaries are 4x higher. Just don't travel there.
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| ... and only a third of the salary deductions you have in
| Ausria. Plus, you can choose your own health insurance.
| Seriously, don't travel there.
| ratww wrote:
| In Germany it's also around 4k. EUR 4,027 for the BahnCard
| 100. We're much bigger than Switzerland, though.
|
| https://www.bahn.com/en/offers/bahncard/bahncard_100-condit
| i...
|
| EDIT: I can't find info on whether the German one covers
| city transportation... maybe it doesn't! - EDIT2: It does
| according to reply!
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| It covers most local transportation, but not all.
|
| > The BahnCard 100 is also valid within the City-Ticket
| zone of all towns and cities covered by the City-Ticket
| offering
|
| City ticket coverage:
| https://www.bahn.com/en/offers/tickets-for-local-
| transport
| ratww wrote:
| Oh that's actually a much better deal, then. A Berlin
| monthly ticket is 86 a month (ok... or 63 with a 1 year
| commitment), which is already 1/4 (or 1/5) of the 4k...
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Is there a bus to every tiny village the way there is in
| Switzerland? The long distance stuff is all well and good,
| but I suspect the expensive part is the rural last-mile
| which is heavily subsidized by the denser (heavier used,
| cheaper to run) city transit.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'm an American who studied abroad in France for a bit a decade
| ago and did a little traveling around Europe, including to
| Austria. The Austrian train system was the best by far even
| without Klimaticket. Specifically, you bought a ticket that
| entitled you to a set number of kilometers and you could use it
| any time in the month. Moreover, the trains actually ran on time
| and customer service was helpful. By comparison, under the French
| system, the trains were often late, the customer service was
| almost hostile, and your ticket was for a specific train and if
| you missed it for whatever reason you were out of luck.
|
| This was a really big deal for me because the French government
| had just reneged on their commitment to pay my ~650 euro/month
| rent just a week or two before I arrived and consequently I chose
| to skip meals to save up a bit to make a couple of trips to
| Austria to Austria to visit my then-girlfriend-now-wife (I went
| from 175lbs to an unhealthy 140lbs over my 5-month stay).
|
| As a parenthetical, when I was planning to fly to Austria from
| Paris, I put my luggage in a 24-hour locker in Gare du Nord the
| evening before the early-morning flight, but _the room the locker
| was in_ was closed from 10pm to 6am and the flight left CDG at
| 7am, so I was devastated when I had to eat the cost of the flight
| ticket. I begged the staff to unlock the door for me in my best,
| most polite French, but they would invariably say "c'est
| impossible" (in my experience, this is what almost all French
| employees would say to any request which wasn't strictly in their
| job description, including asking for directions which made it
| all the more shocking when I would ask an Austrian employee in
| English for some help and they were positively _eager_ to assist,
| even if their English was not very good).
| frereubu wrote:
| Just as a counter-anecdote to "c'est impossible", when I was
| young and naive I went on a cycle tour from La Rochelle to
| Toulouse, thinking I could just book a train ticket with a bike
| from Toulouse to Paris and put my bike in the luggage carriage
| as you could at the time in the UK. In fact, technically, you
| had to take apart and box your bike before they'd allow you to
| put it on board. I arrived on the platform with my bike and
| spoke to the guard who told me what the rule was, looked up and
| down the mostly empty platform, and gestured towards the
| guard's van. Sometimes you get a Gallic shrug rather than
| "c'est impossible". (The difference may also be to do with
| Paris vs the rest of France, as tends to be the case with
| capital cities vs everywhere else in a country).
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Thanks for the counter-anecdote. I certainly don't think that
| all French employees are difficult, but the distribution of
| difficult employees certainly seems to vary from country to
| country. FWIW, I was studying in Rennes, not Paris, although
| I had bad customer service experiences in both locations.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| My experience from living in Paris is that "non, c'est pas
| possible" isn't "no, that's against the rules", it's more of
| a "that sounds like it requires effort on my part, please go
| away".
|
| One of my first experiences when moving there was before I
| got my travel card and was using the paper tickets, but all
| the ticket accepting machines on a metro entrance where
| closed. I asked a staff member what to do, he looked up and
| down the barriers and just shrugged and said "jump".
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > My experience from living in Paris is that "non, c'est
| pas possible" isn't "no, that's against the rules", it's
| more of a "that sounds like it requires effort on my part,
| please go away".
|
| This captures my experience as well.
| pjerem wrote:
| I'm sorry for your experience in France. French people are not
| really friendly to strangers (not in a racist way, more in a "i
| don't even know what language this stranger is talking"). I'm
| 50% sure the locker staff didn't even understand what you
| wanted from them and just reacted with stress.
|
| But Paris have the reputation to be pretty hostile, even to the
| rest of french population. Our other cities are much more open
| and friendly. Our countryside is also pretty friendly but don't
| expect anyone there to understand you but at least they'll
| friendly try to fake that they can.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > I'm sorry for your experience in France. French people are
| not really friendly to strangers (not in a racist way, more
| in a "i don't even know what language this stranger is
| talking"). I'm 50% sure the locker staff didn't even
| understand what you wanted from them and just reacted with
| stress.
|
| To be clear, I was speaking French, and by that time my
| French pronunciation was good enough that everyone could
| understand me without extra effort (probably no longer true).
| In my experience, the French were quite warm when they
| weren't "on the job". For example, my French classmates (even
| those I didn't know well) were happy to help me navigate
| campus and answer questions and so on.
|
| > But Paris have the reputation to be pretty hostile, even to
| the rest of french population. Our other cities are much more
| open and friendly.
|
| It could definitely be regional, but most of my experiences
| were actually in Rennes and Nantes (not Paris)--although on
| one visit to Nantes, there was a big protest by farmers over
| the construction of an airport which probably had people a
| little more aggravated than normal: the farmers were
| deliberately blocking traffic with their tractors, including
| dumping large piles of dirt in certain intersections which
| was an interesting sight to behold until some anarchists came
| and started setting fires and otherwise behaving dangerously.
|
| > Our countryside is also pretty friendly but don't expect
| anyone there to understand you but at least they'll friendly
| try to fake that they can.
|
| My school was actually in rural Rennes (ENSAI) near the
| village of Bruz--I only spoke French because I had quite a
| few experiences where people would be angry or annoyed if I
| asked if they spoke English. Almost every time I tried to
| call and order a taxi in English (when I first arrived,
| before my French was very good), we would make the
| appointment, but the taxi wouldn't show up (very stressful
| because I was poor and very worried that I would miss a train
| or flight because the taxi didn't show up). One of my English
| classmates suggested I start making the appointments in
| French, and then the taxi showed up every time!
|
| But in general I didn't mind having to speak French--I know
| if you walked up to an American and started speaking French
| they would probably be annoyed as well, and generally I feel
| like if you're living in a country you should make every
| effort to speak the language (and I wanted to learn the
| language better anyway--that was one of my goals for studying
| abroad).
|
| Even though I had bad experiences, I still like France and
| the French, and my wife and I have since gone back and
| visited Paris once because we now have "fuck you" money
| (which is to say, we don't have to beg and plead for help, we
| can afford to miss a flight here and there). We also ate
| breakfast at a charming little cafe near our AirBnB in the
| 17th every morning, and contrary to my other anecdotes, the
| staff were very friendly. :)
| hagbard_c wrote:
| > As a parenthetical, when I was planning to fly to Austria
| from Paris, I put my luggage in a 24-hour locker in Gare du
| Nord the evening before the early-morning flight, but the room
| the locker was in was closed from 10pm to 6am and the flight
| left CDG at 7am, so I was devastated when I had to eat the cost
| of the flight ticket. I begged the staff to unlock the door for
| me in my best, most polite French, but they would invariably
| say "c'est impossible"
|
| Hm, was in a very similar situation at a Greyhound station in
| Merced when I returned from a hike through Yosemite. I had
| parked half of my luggage in a locker at the bus station when I
| took the shuttle serve to the park (which ended up with me
| having to put the snow chains on the shuttle bus since the
| driver had never performed that task...). When I returned to
| the station and wanted to retrieve my luggage to take the
| Greyhound which would eventually take me to the airport so I
| could catch my flight back to the Netherlands the station was
| closed, and would remain closed until past my bus department
| time. There was a cleaner in the station who I eventually
| managed to persuade to open the door... otherwise I would have
| missed the bus, which would have made me miss my flight. Since
| then I have made sure to check opening times on buildings
| containing luggage storage to avoid these problems.
| ghaff wrote:
| Luggage check in most places (other than hotels with 24 hour
| desks) is pretty hit or miss. Even if I'm traveling light as
| I usually am I have a large enough carryon that I can't
| easily schlep it around a city especially if I want to go
| into a museum or something like that.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Jesus an SF Muni pass costs $1176 per year and doesn't even get
| you out of the city of San Francisco.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's similar to what it would cost in Boston without commuter
| rail. I assume NYC is at least as much.
| athenot wrote:
| Impressive. It's like the care-free feeling when having a city
| pass and using whatever transit whenever needed, but scaled to a
| whole country.
| cutler wrote:
| That's PS936 which buys you 5.5 monthly Oyster travel cards in
| London for zones 1-3. Rip-off Britain, anyone? I've been to
| Austria 3 times in the last 10 years and every time I come away
| with the impression that the UK is a backwards, impoverished
| nation in comparison. The sense of civic pride in Austria and
| Germany is the first thing you notice, especially the management
| of rents and planning standards.
| dorianmariefr wrote:
| What if you lose it?
| whiterock wrote:
| and I live in Austria and will get it soooon. Actually for 699EUR
| for people under the age of 26!
| logifail wrote:
| This weekend I'll be travelling from Innsbruck to Vienna, a good
| chunk of the entire length of Austria.
|
| I'm not here enough (and not travelling around enough) to be
| interested in the Klimaticket, but here's how public transport vs
| car stacks up:
|
| Innsbruck to Vienna is 476km (~300mi) by road.
|
| It takes about 5 hours to drive, assuming no delays. The way the
| world is right now, there will certainly be delays.
|
| On the fastest route you exit Austria just after Kufstein and
| enter Germany at Kiefersfelden, drive through Germany on the A93,
| then on the A8 towards Salzburg, then cross back into Austria.
|
| Pre-2015 you'd typically have crossed both those international
| borders at standard motorway speed(!), but since the refugee
| crisis, and even more since Covid, it's checkpoints (=delays)
| galore.
|
| By train the journey is scheduled at ~4h15m. The train also
| enters Germany but doesn't stop there, so no border checks.
|
| A standard ("2nd class"/economy) walk-up train fare is EUR74
| ($85), but if you buy an annual railcard for EUR66 ($76) that's
| halved, so EUR37 ($43). This is a completely flexible ticket
| valid on any service that day, so if you are late (or early) you
| just get on the next train, and there's basically one every hour
| pretty much throughout the day. The railcard pays for itself in
| the first return trip.
|
| Maybe it's just me, but EUR37 for a 300mi journey, with a
| completely flexible ticket, just seems like amazing value.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think your car is completely flexible too? It can also leave
| and arrive anywhere you want.
|
| Cost may be a bit higher though. You're liable to burn through
| 30ish liters of fuel at a price of around EUR50.
| junga wrote:
| Prices for travelling by car should contain way more stuff
| than just gas. There's taxes, insurance, repair and all that
| nasty stuff that really makes very high costs per mile or
| kilometer if you do the math.
| [deleted]
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Here in the US, a shorter trip of NYC to Boston (~364km/226mi)
| is about 4.5 hours to drive or a little faster by train (faster
| train "acela" is 3h45m, regular is 4h20m). I'm assuming a
| "walk-up fare" is just day of, when you arrive at the station.
| That's generally not something we can do here as trains sell
| out, but for tomorrow tickets are $170 for the longer train,
| and between $140-$220 for the faster train (depending on
| departure time). Prices are one-way. Flying is often cheaper
| even at these distances, which is infuriating to me.
|
| I'd love to have that $85 full walk-up fare you're getting. I
| really wish we cared about rail travel here, it's far
| preferable for me to flying or driving on trips at this
| distance.
| jahnu wrote:
| Even during the lockdowns there were times of no checkpoints on
| the borders again. It was such a relief to finally see them
| gone. I hope they aren't back again.
|
| But yes that is amazing value and travel by train is just
| nicer.
| herbst wrote:
| The border between Germany and Austria near Salzburg is a
| special case. Since the refugee crises there are regular big
| controls.
|
| Locals avoid it whenever possible, even thought this is the
| most direct way for many connections.
|
| Avoid taking a bus over that border, and if you do don't
| panic when they enter with dogs and machine guns and expect a
| 2 hour delay
| logifail wrote:
| > Even during the lockdowns there were times of no
| checkpoints on the borders again. It was such a relief to
| finally see them gone.
|
| Unstaffed, or actually gone? :)
|
| Last time I drove into Austria from Germany there were no
| border guards there to actually check anything, but all the
| traffic calming measures, warning signs and speed
| restrictions were still there ("cars use left-hand lane,
| larger/freight vehicles right hand lane").
|
| As one might expect from Homo sapiens behind the wheel, the
| frantic changing of lanes by vehicles approaching the
| (unmanned) checkpoint caused an enormous queue and resulting
| delay almost as bad as if there had been border guards
| actually checking every single vehicle.
| jahnu wrote:
| Just the usual slow down to 60km and 80km which are always
| there if I remember correctly.
| yarcob wrote:
| I still think it should be cheaper. The rail card thing is just
| a scheme to overcharge casual riders and tourists. It's
| reasonable for people who regularly go by train, but for people
| like me who do just one or two trips a year it feels like a
| rip-off.
|
| Especially if I want to take my kids, I need to get a different
| rail card for families, and when you add it all up it's a lot
| more expensive than taking my car.
|
| For some reason, public transport is always priced in a way
| that makes it really expensive for occassional usage. If you go
| everday, then an annual pass is a good value.
|
| If you only ride on public transit occasionally, and you have a
| car, then taking the car is almost always cheaper. It shouldn't
| be like that.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I have a family of 6, and with that it's almost always going
| to be cheaper to drive than to take any other form of
| transportation. Before kids, the math was very different.
| ljm wrote:
| Better to have full cars using the roads and all of the
| otherwise solo drivers in their largely empty cars
| attracted to public transport.
|
| There'll be various reasons why a large family can't take a
| train, but drastically fewer reasons why a person or a
| commuter travelling alone cannot (or, a group of friends,
| or a couple, etc.)
|
| Maybe one day that'll change again, but at least now it
| helps reduce the amount of pointless traffic on the road.
| xyzelement wrote:
| > really expensive for occassional usage. If you go everday,
| then an annual pass is a good value.
|
| That probably makes sense. If your goal is to increase
| ridership / reduce emissions, you want to appeal tho those
| traveling every day. Each person you convert gives you 500+
| trips a year. And of course people are most price sensitive
| to something they do every day.
|
| On the flip side, if I travel a few times a year, on one hand
| I am "less important" because capturing my business won't
| lead to that many trips and on the other I am less likely
| price conscious. If I do something once a year, I might chose
| to drive regardless of train cost, just cuz I want to drive.
| Or, I may want to avoid driving so I am happy to pay the
| higher ticket cost anyway.
| yarcob wrote:
| That's one way to look at it. Another way:
|
| Every sunday hundreds of people drive from all over Austria
| to visit the zoo in Schonbrunn. They take the car because
| the train is way too expensive. If taking the train was
| cheaper then some of those people would take the train.
|
| Yes, for each of those families it's just one trip. But in
| aggregate it's also a lot of people.
|
| Why is it more important to get one person to use public
| transport for 500 trips rather than getting 500 people to
| use public transport for one trip?
| logifail wrote:
| > They take the car because the train is way too
| expensive
|
| OEBB (Austrian Federal Railways, the state train
| operator) does offer a family railcard ("Vorteilscard
| Family"), and it's hardly expensive:
|
| "The Vorteilscard Family offers you a particularly
| inexpensive option to travel together with children. For
| only EUR19 a year, up to 4 children under the age of 15
| can accompany you for free."
| yarcob wrote:
| It sounds cheap, and it's probably a good deal if you
| ride long distances or frequently.
|
| But when I recently planned a trip from Linz to Vienna
| for our family it would have cost around 120EUR for the
| train (not including tickets for bus or subway to get
| to/from train station). Driving costs around 40EUR for
| gas (not including parking fees).
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I suspect you'd get a different picture if you include
| the additional depreciation/wear on the car.
|
| It's 184 km one way. German tax authorities assume 30
| cents per km (~110 EUR for a round trip), Austrian tax
| authorities use 42 (~154 EUR for a round trip). Now, the
| actual marginal cost may be lower if you already have the
| car, but it's far from obvious once those hidden costs
| are considered. Especially as you have to actively drive
| for those 4 hours instead of reading a book, watching a
| movie, ...
| [deleted]
| barbazoo wrote:
| > For some reason, public transport is always priced in a way
| that makes it really expensive for occassional usage. If you
| go everday, then an annual pass is a good value.
|
| At EUR1.32/l for gas in Vienna and 10l/100km this trip would
| cost you EUR63 in gas alone with an ICE car. This doesn't
| account for wear and wasted time so it's actually not that
| unreasonable at all and actually pretty cheap if you're going
| by yourself. With a family, I agree, it's more expensive.
| Although I'm starting to see the appeal that traveling by
| train has with a family, being able to walk around, entertain
| the kids more easily, etc.
| logifail wrote:
| > The rail card thing is just a scheme to overcharge casual
| riders and tourists. It's reasonable for people who regularly
| go by train (...)
|
| At least for me, _one return trip_ at the reduced rate pays
| for the price of buying the railcard (which is valid for 12
| months).
|
| It's not like one has to sit down with Excel to figure out
| where the break-even point lies! If I don't make _any_
| additional rail journeys in Austria over the next year, I 'm
| still not out of pocket...
| mattkevan wrote:
| Not really the same scale, but I loved having an annual travel
| card when I lived in London. It was so freeing knowing I could
| basically get on anything or go anywhere without having to worry
| about getting the right ticket or making sure I had enough money
| on the Oyster card. Plus the ticket gave a third off travel
| outside London.
|
| It was expensive-up front, but ended up saving so much money,
| especially as I could buy it via salary sacrifice before tax.
| Definitely recommended.
| fouric wrote:
| I see a detrimental incentive here. Let me explain, and then
| someone please show me what I'm not getting.
|
| We're trying to incentivize public over private transit because
| the former emits less carbon (in general).
|
| However, public transit still costs carbon, so taking less trips
| _total_ seems to be better for the environment (the "reduce"
| part of "reduce, reuse, recycle" - kind of). If the marginal cost
| to a public transit user per trip is zero, then that incentivizes
| taking small, useless trips (e.g. "I could wait until the weekend
| to pick up a few small groceries, but transit is free, so why not
| go now").
|
| Wouldn't it be better to add a *small" fee per trip, e.g. 1 EUR
| (much smaller than private transit), to incentivize people to
| make fewer trips in the first place?
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Taking a trip on public transit to pick up groceries (or any
| similar task) still consumes time and is not convenient. I used
| to live in Manhattan, go to the shop on foot, and carry my
| groceries home. I would absolutely buy as much food as I could
| carry and use, because it was 45 minutes out of my night that
| could be used for something else, whether I bought 4 days of
| food or a single head of lettuce. People don't generally
| joyride public transit unless they have no other options.
|
| In fact, having lived both ways, I'd say you're far more
| incentivized to do this in a suburban setting with a car, since
| you're sitting in a private bubble with your own music and
| climate for every part of the trip except the store itself.
| pjerem wrote:
| > People don't generally joyride public transit unless they
| have no other options.
|
| I think this really depends of the network you are talking
| about. In some European cities, public transit networks are a
| blast to use. If frequencies are high enough, and modalities
| are well connected, you can "ride" the city as easily and
| naturally on a metro/tram/bus as you would have done by
| walking. I've took a lot (a damn lot) of bus/trams just
| because they were there, passing by, and allowed me to save 3
| or 4 minutes (with my annual ticket, price was never my
| mind).
|
| (But I'm lucky enough to live in one of the lowest CO2
| emitting countries in terms of energy mix.)
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Fair, not every city has public transit as "gritty" as NYC.
|
| I do remember an UberPool trip I took. We got another
| passenger along the way. The driver ended up having to go 8
| blocks out of our trip's path to pick up the passenger. She
| went _1 block_ and then got out. At least when you take a
| bus or tram out of convenience you are not being so
| wasteful.
| [deleted]
| bjourne wrote:
| Yes it would. But fees incurs overhead for managing tickets and
| is a hassle for passengers. A lot of European cities have good
| mass transit systems but people are lazy so they still drive
| which causes pollution and congestion. So the first priority
| must be to make mass transit as convenient as possible to
| motivate people to stop driving.
| fromeroj wrote:
| Nope, for most ppl the 1EUR is negligible anyway, and also
| people values its time, so, it's not free to go now, it costs
| time. the only thing you want to punish is to be poor, as in
| that plan, only poor people would have to minimize movement for
| economic reasons.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| But the public transit lines would already be running, you are
| just hopping on a bus that is already going to be spewing some
| climate change gasses. Adding a car for a small trip would be
| detrimental because that car isn't already on the road spewing.
|
| NOW you are correct though, better for all would be for people
| to walk to their local shops and stuff and only grab transit
| when they need to go beyond the 2-4 mile radius that is
| considered walkable, and that would pull some of the public
| transit off the road/rails.
| bmicraft wrote:
| That's the best way to make people switch back to cars imho.
| Not only does constantly paying a fee increase friction
| significantly, the same is not the case if you were to use a
| car you only need to refill every other week or so.
|
| At the end of the day the total number of trips are probably
| not very elastic, because the price (if it isn't a very high
| one) usually isn't even a consideration if you want to go
| somewhere (if it's not that far away anyways).
| snakeboy wrote:
| The marginal cost is basically zero per additional public
| transit user, no? If a city bus runs every 15 minutes, the
| ridership volume changes nothing up until some critical point
| is reached where another bus gets added to that route, or a new
| route is added.
| anchpop wrote:
| The enlightened big brain politically impossible is to
| internalize as much as possible. For example, everyone could
| have a device on their car that records how much carbon they
| emit and reports it to the government so they can be taxed. The
| amount they should be taxed is not trivial to determine, but an
| upper bound would be the cost of offsetting or capturing the
| same amount of carbon they emitted. (you don't actually have to
| spend it on that, the point is just to incentivize people to
| avoid emitting carbon)
|
| Then increase train fare so it's at least as expensive per-
| carbon-emitted as driving. Since trains emit much less carbon,
| it will end up being cheaper to get from point A to point B by
| train.
|
| Driving or taking the train has another cost, congestion. (more
| drivers means it takes everyone longer to get to where they're
| going, more riders means some people might not be able to fit
| on the train. that second one used to be a common occurrence to
| me.)
|
| Now that might seem hideously unfair to poor people. The
| solution is to take all the revenue collected this way and
| redistribute it throughout the jurisdiction where the law is
| enforced. The poorest would actually see an increase in their
| purchasing power. That's because poor people emit less carbon
| on average, so if e.g. a poor person emits 1 ton per day and
| the average is 2 tons per day (making up numbers), they would
| pay the tax cost of emitting 1 ton but receive the tax cost of
| emitting two tons. The money would come from wealthy people who
| emit 3 tons but only receive the cost of emitting 2. That way
| everyone is incentivized to emit less without it unfairly
| burdening the poor.
| bmicraft wrote:
| The amount of carbon emitted by a car is directly
| proportional to the amount of fuel used, so what you really
| are talking about are fuel taxes which are very common
| already
| nerd_light wrote:
| I think that your consideration is a good one, but I think it
| comes down to numbers. Will a no-additional-cost-per-ride pass
| increase the "unnecessary" load on the system so much that they
| need to start using additional transit vehicles, thus
| increasing emissions? What percentage of trips are
| "unnecessary"? Will the growth of the system for "necessary"
| trips be able to handle the "unnecessary" load anyway?
|
| Aside: for "unnecessary" trips, I'm setting aside the
| possibility of other options, such as "I already own a car and
| will now use that instead of paying 1 EUR".
| fnordsensei wrote:
| Well, presumably the bus is going to go its route whether
| you're on it or not.
|
| If there's an increase in utilization of public transport, to
| the point where they need to run each route more often, or
| introduce additional routes, that'll be seen later on, when the
| impact of the ticket is evident. At that point, it can be
| weighed against any changes in private transport behavior.
|
| It's probably premature to take upfront action against
| overutilization of public transport.
| mongol wrote:
| Yes, from that point of view it would. Maybe not better from
| all points of view, but not travelling, or travelling by foot
| or bicycle is better than travelling by public transit, from
| CO2 point of view.
| netfortius wrote:
| I like what Montpellier (France) is doing, which is a phased
| approach towards all public transportation free. For now it's for
| under 18 yo and 65+ yo, and all weekends for everyone, with a
| phase 3 total gratuity in 2023. I prefer to choose and
| accordingly pay for my long distance travels, but in the city
| trips consume a lot of money, on a personal / family level, which
| is nice to see reduced. And who doesn't want to travel with the
| nicest tram in France and for free??
| mellavora wrote:
| I like what Luxembourg is doing, which is all public transport
| free for everyone, across the whole country. No phased
| approach, they just did it.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >but in the city trips consume a lot of money
|
| I'm a big proponent of affordable public transport, but I don't
| understand the benefit of gratuity.
|
| As far as I know, the threats of the ongoing biodiversity
| collapse are bigger threat than that of climate change (see
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/10/climate/biodiversity-
| coll...).
|
| It's crucial to both increase density (to limit urban sprawl,
| which requires that people travel less) and leave the
| individual ICE car area.
|
| Gratuity of public transport incentivizes taking the bus/train,
| but it also removes the cost barrier of long-distance transport
| when deciding where to live and work. If it costs the same to
| commute:
|
| 1. 15 min by foot from work if you live in a small flat
|
| 2. 40 min by public transport if you enjoy in a nice little
| home
|
| We may get more people in buses but we'll eat the Earth faster.
| Destroying/framgmenting natural habitats will have to bear a
| market cost, or we must put a hard limit to urban sprawling
| (which ends up having the same impact on people's finance as it
| will increase the cost of living far from city center).
| flemhans wrote:
| The BahnCard 100 is 3000 EUR in Germany, giving you full access
| to all trains.
|
| Austria is 1/10th the size of Germany. By this logic, the ticket
| price should be 300 EUR, not 1095 EUR.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| Not that it changes much, but the BC100 is 4000EUR for second
| class, not 3000. Both is too much to make it really popular,
| while I'd say Austria's pricing is extremely attractive even if
| the country is smaller. I pay more than half of that just for
| public transportation in my city in Germany.
| egeozcan wrote:
| All trains plus many local transit options as well. It's
| usually valid in most bigger cities. My ex-ex-employer had
| given me one and I've used it many years. Incredibly liberating
| when you have the ability to hop onto any train and just sit.
| Reservations were sometimes problematic because popular trains
| had little amount of not-reserved free seats but Bahn.Comfort
| seats usually saved the day.
| FabHK wrote:
| You could argue: If it's 1/10th the size, then it's about 1/3
| the length and width. So, average distance (if you pick two
| points uniformly randomly) will also be around 1/3. By this
| logic, it should be around 1000 EUR.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| And Switzerland is also small but way more expensive, but,
| that's not how things work. That's not how anything works.
| mongol wrote:
| Size is irrelevant.
| cschmid wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand that logic -- Germany has far more
| potential customers than Austria. And it's not like the average
| German travels ten times as many miles by train as the average
| Austrian. Also, the BahnCard can only be used for some, but not
| all local transit options, which looks like a hassle.
| [deleted]
| lm28469 wrote:
| 1/10th of the size doesn't mean 1/10th of the
| costs/usage/maintenance/&c
| boshomi wrote:
| Long journeys are rare, everyday journeys have short distances.
| A larger area therefore only causes a small jump in costs.
| bmicraft wrote:
| Since most public transport is pretty localized the difference
| should be negligible - you're rarely going to travel a
| significant distance in relation to the size of the country as
| that would be unfeasible for a daily commute.
|
| In practice it's not much different from a yearly local
| transport ticket plus the occasional long distance trip
| included
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| Next stop: Just make public transport free for all reasonably
| permanent residents (for example, you could get a free ticket for
| next year when you file your taxes).
|
| Anyone who rides public transport instead of expensive and
| polluting cars is doing a service for the environment.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Tom Scott did a great video on Luxembourg's switch to free
| public transport. They were already covering 90% of the cost,
| so upping that to 100% was easy. London's network, on the other
| hand, gets roughly 50% of its funding from fares.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feCQPD9DSOA
| hadlock wrote:
| San Francisco city council voted in favor of making public
| transit free, even Muni was on board. Total cost was
| something like $20 million a year (city budget is measured in
| the Billions) to get rid of fares completely, forever. That
| happened about two months ago.
|
| Mayor vetoed it, on the grounds that "it would be too popular
| and overtax muni's capacity". I'm not sure I buy that, my
| guess is that the local tour bus/tourist bike rental industry
| disapproved, but that's just speculation on my part. I would
| personally use Muni about 50% more but I have a chicken-and-
| egg problem; I don't use it enough to justify a monthly pass,
| and since I don't have a monthly pass, most times I'd rather
| just walk than catch a bus.
| Animats wrote:
| It would have turned buses into homeless housing.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| This is already a problem as the homeless just don't pay
| and no one forces them to pay. Actually you can hop on
| the muni today and no one will force you to pay either.
|
| But it might have exacerbated the problem.
| ketzo wrote:
| God, that's so infuriating, particularly given that for
| many people I know, the concern with Muni/BART is that it's
| oftentimes _too empty_ , which can be a little freaky
| particularly as a woman.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| This would not cover BART, which is not an SF run system.
| It would not cover SAMTRANS. This is just SF muni (busses
| and a handful of trolley lines) -- I think trolleys also
| were excluded as these are for raising money from
| tourists.
|
| Honestly they rarely bother even to ask for fares. The
| problem with SF Muni is that the buses are dirty, smelly,
| and travel along at an average speed of about 8 miles per
| hour. This, combined with the fact that the buses always
| appear at random times and can never be ontime creates a
| very unpleasant experience that is only marginally better
| than walking.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| > most times I'd rather just walk than catch a bus
|
| Which honestly is probably the best outcome any way, at
| least from an environmental and personal health
| perspective.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| The area of Luxemburg is 2500km2 and the estimated population
| is 633k. For comparison: the area of London is ~1500km2 with
| population of 8m+. Do you think that Luxemburg's system can
| be scaled up?
| mellavora wrote:
| Luxembourg resident here. Free public transport is a game-
| changer. You don't have to think about it, you just step on
| the bus, or tram.
|
| This also means the bus driver doesn't have to worry about
| checking tickets. There aren't guards to check if people
| are jumping over turnstiles, etc. Moving to 'totally free'
| eliminates all kinds of overhead.
|
| There is no reason it couldn't scale.
|
| And the question of scaling hides an interesting
| assumption: what is the purpose of charging fares?
|
| If it is to reduce usage (to thus ensure that the system
| isn't used past capacity), then why do you want to limit
| the usage of public transport? If people don't take public,
| they will take private transport (cars, etc) which have
| much higher social cost (you can move many more people by
| bus than by car).
|
| If it is to 'raise revenue to pay for the system', does the
| same argument apply to use of roads? What is a fair road
| tax, given that this method of transport has such high
| social costs?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| > why do you want to limit the usage of public transport?
| > If people don't take public, they will take > private
| transport (cars, etc)
|
| This ignores two elements:
|
| - congestion differs by time of day, and
|
| - capacity is constrained differently by mode
|
| In London:
|
| - it's cheaper to take a bus than to take an underground
| train, and
|
| - there are ticket types that are only valid after the
| morning rush hour
|
| Both of these decrease peak congestion on the transport
| system.
|
| The differential pricing would not push people to private
| transport, but might push them to buses (whose capacity
| can more easily be increased) or to postpone their
| journey to later in the day.
|
| You know what _might_ push people to private transport?
| Severe congestion on the underground. If you are not fit
| and aggressive, then trying to get on a Central Line
| train in the morning might mean waiting for 2-3 full
| trains to pass before you can get on one.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Yes, there are also weekend tickets, zone 1, 2, up to 6
| tickets. It's pretty complex.
|
| Increasing bus capacity might not be easy either. That
| requires more busses, more staff, more service, more
| whatever the source of power is for the busses. It all
| costs PSPSPSPS.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Shouldn't it be easier in London due to higher density?
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| I was considering this but higher density also means more
| transportation is required, more people have to employed
| and so on. It gets very expensive very fast.
|
| In theory population size 12x of the population of
| Luxemburg would make it easier to distribute the cost of
| free transport. But this glosses over the fact that
| London is huge and only zone 1 and maybe 2 are a pain to
| drive. Not everyone in London works in zone 1 / 2.
|
| I wonder if there's anyone here able to give an answer if
| free transport in London would be financially realistic.
| msla wrote:
| The simplest way is to do what my city (Missoula) did years ago
| and make the public transportation zero fare for everyone. No
| more tickets, no more swiping cards, no more concern over who
| "doesn't deserve" to ride a public resource. This succeeded so
| well they've even upgraded a number of their buses to be zero-
| emission as well.
| Mirioron wrote:
| Did it come with a tax increase? Was everyone happy about
| that? If it didn't come with a tax increase then what funding
| was cut for this public transport? It's easy to look at a
| success when you're only looking at the beneficial side, but
| don't look at the cost.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > It's easy to look at a success when you're only looking
| at the beneficial side, but don't look at the cost.
|
| Which is why part of the "funding" for such systems comes
| from the reduction in the cost caused by private vehicles
| (on the roads, on the atmosphere, on the neighborhood and
| more).
| m463 wrote:
| If I were a homeless person, that would be great -- just get a
| seat on a warm, heated train, and I have a bathroom to shower
| in any time I want!
| JFKKFJ wrote:
| It's almost my situation. For 1039 Euro/y I can access all
| public transport in Lombardy, Italy. Train is my 'office':
| warm heated place, bathroom, wi-fi, 220V for my old PC :)
| lbriner wrote:
| Because it doesn't necessarily solve the problem of car
| journeys but costs a load. It might be fine for e.g. London but
| where I live, there is no public transport between my house and
| work (well, perhaps over about 3 hours compared to 30 minute
| drive) but even though my wife lives on a bus route, the times
| are less than hourly so she can't get to work for the right
| time, would get there an hour early or an hour and a half
| later!
|
| If people still need to use their cars, it doesn't really work.
| cannabis_sam wrote:
| Good luck with that as long as our society is based around
| subsidizing the fuel cost of those polluting cars (not to
| mention the externalized cost of pollution), and any
| politicians that tries to change that will lose their next
| election..
|
| Our economic system ensures that we keep the gas pedal to the
| floor both figuratively and literally.
| scarby2 wrote:
| > our society is based around subsidizing the fuel cost of
| those polluting cars
|
| I think you mean being subsidized by the fuel cost of the
| cars?
| [deleted]
| lbriner wrote:
| Just remembered another consideration. When Ken Livingstone
| introduced free transport for school age children in order to
| remove cars from the school run, it simply meant a load more
| children who would have traditionally walked or cycled didn't
| need to because the bus was free.
|
| Commuters were angry as anything that they couldn't get on the
| buses any more that were picked with children.
|
| Societies are very different around the world and I'm not sure
| how much this is factored into ideas that could work really
| well in some places and not so much in others.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I lived in London when Livingstone did that, and I do not
| recall that being the reaction of commuters. The afternoon
| school "rush" doesn't really overlap with commute hours
| either. Lots and lots of kids in London had travel passes at
| that time anyway, because the UK has never had a separate
| school bus system.
| wazoox wrote:
| From what I've read about similar experiments in various
| cities, in fact it's not an unmitigated good thing. Most
| augmentation in public transport usage comes not people
| switching from driving, but people that used to walk or bike.
| scarby2 wrote:
| making intercity public transit free or cheaper - as per here
| 100% will augment public transit as very few people walk or
| cycle more than 10 miles each way.
| KronisLV wrote:
| Maybe introduce a gradual shift instead over 50 years or so:
| with each next year taking the originally expected profits of
| public transport and gradually add those as taxes for cars
| while at the same time also reducing the current public
| transport ticket prices?
|
| At the end of those 50 years public transportation could be
| free and the stubborn car owners or businesses would simply
| help subsidize more efficient ways of transportation.
|
| Maybe allow reduced taxes for electric vehicles at the same
| time.
|
| In the end, it wouldn't be much different than the subsidized
| meat production with artificially lowered meat prices in the
| US, nor would anyone care much about small increases like that
| on a year by year basis.
| Lekoit wrote:
| Longer you wait more generations are getting used to it
| slower.
|
| I agree with the other commentir: let's stop talking let's
| start doing.
| erdo wrote:
| Except we don't have anything like 50 years!
| KronisLV wrote:
| Disagreed!
|
| Private individuals are becoming less and less able to
| afford cars in the first place (not even talking about real
| estate). If legislation around predatory lending schemes
| would be tightened, the demand for cars would decrease.
|
| If at the same time you'd invest aggressively in actually
| making sure that there is enough public transportation in
| place (as is the case in many European countries already
| but not the US), then it'd help with displacing them in the
| background as well.
|
| Couple that with a remote working culture, a few decades of
| employee pushback and quitting their jobs if they're asked
| to return to the office in careers where that's not
| necessary, better postal services and ride sharing apps,
| food delivery apps or a push for cooking meals at home and
| you'd see even more significant changes. Even more so if
| the road networks and infrastructure cannot support rush
| hour traffic with most of society living in a single shift
| mode, rather than morning and afternoon shifts.
|
| In contrast, if any initiative comes out today that calls
| for immediate and drastic change, it will get shot down.
| Real change takes a lot of patience and dozens if not
| hundreds of compounding factors over decades.
|
| Either that or going out into the streets with guns in
| hand, but that has historically worked out horribly time
| and time again and humanity should be past that savagery.
| Protests could happen, of course, since that's a bit
| different.
|
| Regardless, with more initiatives to limit heavy industry,
| global shipping of goods that could be locally manufactured
| and an overall push for less consumerist lifestyles,
| humanity might even have a few hundred years left to kick
| around on this rock before the long term environmental
| consequences actually start becoming visible!
|
| Edit: phrasing
| mellavora wrote:
| I like this, but let's make it 50 days instead of 50 years.
| Or maybe weeks. I could see 52 weeks.
| newsclues wrote:
| Free public transit for people who file taxes makes so much
| sense. The time and money costs of collecting fares is far to
| high.
| lbriner wrote:
| In the UK, most people who are employed do not file taxes,
| they are handled by the employer. Other people whose only
| income is benefits also do not file taxes.
| ratww wrote:
| I think it's safe to assume that GPs suggestion includes
| people who are paying taxes via the employer or receiving
| benefits. Also, in lots of countries employers already
| subsidize public transportation costs.
| oneplane wrote:
| It's also possible the suggestion is based on the concept
| of a country where 'filing taxes' is some optional or
| culturally odd thing so people need to be incentivised to
| do it at all. Or perhaps it's more thinking along the
| lines of 'someone who is a citizen' and measuring that by
| using tax filing as proof.
| lbriner wrote:
| I read it as a "reward" and incentive for filing taxes in
| places like the US where everyone has to do it so it
| wouldn't translate to somewhere that taxes are paid via
| the employer or people on benefits because then there is
| no reward.
| newsclues wrote:
| Adjust it based on the country's tax system, but in Canada
| it would work because the employed and those on benefits
| tend to file taxes.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If you go that far, why stop there? What's the reason to have
| all the expenses and effort of fare collection if you're only
| going to collect fares from the occasional users of the system
| and not the daily users?
|
| If you're going to make it free for all residents, you might as
| well just make it free for everyone.
| fnordsensei wrote:
| If you really want to charge tourists for the use of public
| transport, you could perhaps find ways of charging that at
| the border of the country. A daily tariff, either on entry,
| or on exit.
| eptcyka wrote:
| This isn't tenable in the EU due to the freedom of movement
| across borders.
| pedrocr wrote:
| This is already done today. A lot of touristy cities
| already charge a daily fee per night you stay there.
| Hotels bill you for it so compliance is complete too.
| Between that and taxes for residents there's really no
| point to charging separately for public transport.
| RhysU wrote:
| I like this idea better than most local government UBI
| proposals. E.g., instead of suggesting UBI in NYC just make
| the trains free. It's not straight currency but it's
| unlimited transportation on high capacity, environmentally
| nice(r) systems. Then people can argue over who can make the
| experience nicer vs who is going to raise the fares.
| Ridership-wise, many heavy users already have unlimited
| cards.
|
| (Still, however, not a UBI fan in general).
| pomian wrote:
| That and free education and dare we mention the topic -
| free health care. Then we don't need UBI.
| Fargren wrote:
| Well, and free housing and food. Possibly clothes. And
| some modicum of entertainment. Then we don't need UBI.
| southerntofu wrote:
| That would indeed cut quite a cost (monetary and
| environmental) due to barriers, tickets, validation machines,
| selling points, controllers...
| whiterock wrote:
| I don't think the cost is so high here, we have covert
| ticket inspectors, none of those fancy electric gates.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| And if you're prepared to spend that much money, I'd
| rather prioritise spending it on improved service first.
| Fargren wrote:
| Aren't inspectors more expensive than gates? You don't
| have to pay a salary to the gates.
| southerntofu wrote:
| Well, gates need people to install/maintenance them. And
| they're also pretty pointless unless you have
| controllers, too.
|
| Fun fact from history: here's a photo of former French
| president Jacques Chiraq jumping the metro
| https://cdn.radiofrance.fr/s3/cruiser-
| production/2019/09/904...
| southerntofu wrote:
| Tickets may be cheap and somewhat eco-friendly if made
| from whatever recycled paper and a drilling machine like
| in the old days. But i doubt that's the case, so you have
| to account for the financial and ecological costs of all
| the electronics and magnetic tapes, and all the
| replacement parts you need to keep that system of control
| operating. Also, if your tickets are sufficiently
| unsophisticated to be eco-friendly, then they may well be
| very easy to forge.
|
| That is, without mentioning that controllers have to be
| paid without providing any service. If you additionally
| take into consideration the social cost of the
| criminalization of something as banal as using public
| transports when you don't have money, the benefits of
| doing away with these systems of control arguably are
| even more evident.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Fully unionized with a (publicly funded) pension?
|
| Ass soon as you see a human it costs a fortune.
| lbriner wrote:
| When I visited Germany, they had cleverly ditched most
| "gateline staff" like you say but then had a reasonable
| number of ticket inspectors who would check you had a ticket
| and it was stamped for the current day. Best of both worlds?
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Italy does this and I've always wondered how much they must
| lose over it. Even as a tourist, every time I saw a ticket
| agent get on the bus/tram, a good number of people would
| instantly get off.
|
| I do like the system better, it's faster in every way. But
| lost fares would definitely be a concern.
|
| Also not sure how that has anything to do with making
| public transit free honestly.
| bckygldstn wrote:
| I've lived in a place with a system like this. The people
| who jump off were mostly students and people for whom
| tickets represented a significant expense.
|
| The lax rules and clearly uniformed agents were seen
| partly as progressive price discrimination, giving free
| access to public transport to those who really need it.
| djrogers wrote:
| That sounds like the worst possible outcome - you're
| literally teaching that poor people either don't have to
| be honest or are expected to be dishonest.
|
| I would hate to live in a society formed by that ethos...
| GuuD wrote:
| In a more broad way -- it's also a tax on conscience.
| Bonkers.
| hobofan wrote:
| In Berlin, they usually enter the train in groups of 3-4,
| so they are able to check every person in one wagon in
| between two stops. You also see them pretty often at a
| station collecting the details of someone who didn't have
| a ticket.
|
| I think both of those factors push most people in Berlin
| to buy a ticket. With a fine of 60 EUR the staff already
| pays for itself if they pick up ~2 people/hour, which
| sounds very realistic. If they then on top also have the
| effect of increasing the percentage of paying riders by a
| tiny amount, the whole program is quickly turning a
| profit.
| csunbird wrote:
| That is what I see as well. Not sure why they just don't
| give free passes to students and people with low income
| instead.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| You forget the cost it incurs when someone gets caught
| (and sometimes jailed!) for chicken-shit like this.
|
| Edit to add some context:
|
| https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/haft-nach-
| schwarzfahren-u...
|
| Consider this article from Berlin where a sizeable number
| of people in jail are there for riding without a ticket.
| The cost of that needs to be taken into account here.
| hadlock wrote:
| In germany, they'll put you in jail for fare evasion?
| I've always seen it done as a fine and they kick you off
| the train at the next stop.
| sveme wrote:
| It's extremely rare that that happens. It's typically
| considered a criminal offence if you are caught twice in
| two years, but rarely anyone is following up on that.
| Only really frequent repeaters are really prosecuted.
| bmicraft wrote:
| The ticket usually covers only a fraction of the true
| price while the rest is subsidized anyways, so it
| shouldn't matter much
| mbg721 wrote:
| The downside is that visitors who are unfamiliar with the
| system--especially if they don't speak the local language--
| can end up riding illegally by mistake.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm convinced that many transit/rail systems give Minimal
| thought to the use of the systems by occasional users
| some of whom may not speak the language natively.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| The easy way is to make it legally free for residents and
| charge tourists but don't actually enforce it. Just put up
| ads in the airport and all over the tourist hotspots, run a
| few fake stories in the media of tourists being fined etc.
|
| You get your money for nothing and your travel for free
| djrogers wrote:
| Having laws or rules you intentionally don't enforce at all
| can't be good for society. Why would people conditioned to
| steal from the state in one way not be expected to
| eventually steal from them in others as well?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| In Europe, a tourist bed tax is collected from commercial
| establishments that cater to tourists.
|
| Just increase that bed tax by 2-3 eur daily and use those
| 2-3 eur towards the public transport budget. Then let
| anyone use public transport for free, locals or not.
|
| You will miss some people who will seek out couchsurfing
| opportunities at their friend's home, but you will still
| earn a lot from all the hotels, pensions and legal AirBnBs.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It seems you'd still need tickets, ticket machines, ticket
| scanners, ticket sellers, people to put more tickets in the
| machines, fix the ticket machines and scanners, people to
| pick up the discarded tickets, etc.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Portland, Oregon has free light rail in the downtown area.
| Feels great just casually stepping onto a train.
| iammiles wrote:
| If you're referring to Fareless Square that was
| discontinued in 2012.
|
| With the way the MAX stops are designed, it's still very
| possible to just hop on without paying.
| [deleted]
| m_ke wrote:
| I've been saying this for a while. I used to live in queens and
| would take a practically empty bus down a traffic packed
| metropolitan ave to a coworking space in bushwick. There was no
| way the bus was breaking even with the 5-10 people that would
| get on during my trips.
|
| Instead NYC spent $250 million to crack down on fare evasion
| [1] and installed huge ticket machines at a bunch of bus stops
| that probably cost >300K each to install.
|
| [1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/11/14/mta-will-
| spend-249m-o...
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| Here in Berlin the idea floating around is to make yearly
| tickets very cheap (365EUR), while keeping prices for single
| travel (2.80EUR) or daily tickets (9.50EUR) more expensive.
| That's probably the easiest, least bureaucratic route to go.
|
| For poorer households, the yearly ticket will still be
| subsidized, but the public transport companies (fully owned by
| the state) will still have direct income to maintain a
| corporate-like structure.
| aloe_falsa wrote:
| Considering that single travel tickets cost 3EUR at the
| moment, and yearly ones 730EUR, that would be a godsend. One
| can also hope that one day they'll allow traveling on a
| single ticket for the full two hours, not just for one
| journey. However, it's unlikely the BVG will ever budge on
| pricing.
|
| Earlier this year, there were rumors of a cheaper
| "Homeoffice-Ticket" which would only be valid on certain
| days, and in the end nothing came out of it either.
| pedrocr wrote:
| It would be much easier and less bureaucratic to just make it
| free and adjust taxes for residents and overnight fees for
| turists accordingly. Just the savings on all the ticketing
| and compliance systems and staff should be significant.
| danr4 wrote:
| SaaS pricing infiltrates real life
| JFKKFJ wrote:
| All public transport in Lombardy, Italy for 1039 Euro/y:
| https://www.regione.lombardia.it/wps/portal/istituzionale/HP...
| penguin_booze wrote:
| Meanwhile in the UK: yearly train season ticket for 1+ hr
| journey: only GBP 5600.
| Zenst wrote:
| With random delays, strikes and a selection of standing room in
| which you can share body warmth - all thrown in upon some
| commutes (no luck involved).
| mistrial9 wrote:
| When the San Francisco Bay Area tried to move to a single means
| of payment, a digital card Transit-Link or whatnot, it was
| delayed more than a year by BART due to arguements over who holds
| the cash payments from ticket sales, and when those funds are
| released, exactly. The funding of MUNI, BART, Alameda County
| Transit and others, have different histories and cash control, so
| they fought about it.
|
| source: public news story at the time
| rsj_hn wrote:
| They are different systems. Bart is a regional transport agency
| funded by ticket sales and sales taxes in the Northern CA bay
| area. SF has regional bus lines but a few bart stops. SamTrans
| is the San Mateo bus system but they go all the way to Marin
| County and have a few stops in SF. Caltrain is a completely
| separate agency and funding unit that runs down the peninsula
| but also has two stops in SF.
|
| You can say they should all be consolidated but these are
| overlapping areas - BART can't have SF running it in the one
| area, Oakland running it in another area, etc. So consolidation
| means moving upward -- e.g. the state of California would run
| it. But _no one_ wants to lose local control of services they
| are funding. Why would the city of SF cede control of its bus
| system to the state? So the control is where the funding is,
| and you have these overlapping and competing transit lines, all
| of which operate in San Francisco, but do not accept each other
| 's ticket or payment systems.
| IkmoIkmo wrote:
| Not sure I'm a fan. Certainly very interesting and I'm happy to
| see a significant country run the experiment, it's going to be a
| useful data point.
|
| But at the end of the day, what does it solve? And what does it
| leave unsolved?
|
| A single public transport marketplace is of course great, but
| many countries have those without the 'single ticket' system. For
| example, in the Netherlands I use one public transport card for
| bus, train, tram. I don't have a single ticket with one annual
| price, but I don't have different subscriptions or different
| cards for different transport methods (e.g. bus vs train), nor
| for different providers of the same transport method (e.g. two
| bus companies), it all happens on one card.
|
| So what does it solve? Admissions checking? No, you still need to
| present your single ticket. The thing it solves is billing, from
| individual subscriptions or individual tickets, to a single
| annual payment.
|
| But billing doesn't seem to be that big of a deal in modern
| systems, and it doesn't seem like it attacks the biggest issue in
| billing.
|
| For example in the Netherlands I'm simply billed by use. If I go
| 5x as far, I pay roughly 5x as much. That's all done automatic,
| once a month. I don't have to load prepaid money on my card, I
| just use the card and it's billed after at the end of the month.
| Really no different to a variable-usage mobile phone
| subscription.
|
| By introducing a single (e.g. average) payment amount per year,
| you're overcharging everyone who uses less than average, and
| undercharging power-users. Usage-based billing seems a much more
| fair approach. And the billing tech isn't all that complex.
|
| Moreover, the fact a substantial number of people will get a
| single-ticket (e.g. say it's 60% of the users), doesn't change
| the fact you'll still need to upkeep billing infrastructure for
| the other 40%. It doesn't allow you to make billing/admissions
| infrastructure redundant.
|
| It also doesn't allow you to differentiate at all in pricing and
| operators. I don't think this is a very big issue because I like
| public (i.e. not private) transport to be very egalitarian. But
| there's something to be said for allowing differences in
| quality/convenience etc in public, transport, too. e.g. business
| workers ride trains in the Netherlands in 1st class and do an
| hour of work on their laptops in quiet, comfy chairs, and pay
| extra, such that non-business users can ride cheaper in 2nd
| class. Having a single ticket removes any room for such
| differentiation, which can be useful to a point.
|
| Very interested to see the results and I'm happy they're trying,
| but not convinced yet.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Leasing a car is going to be at least twice that plus you have to
| pay for gas, parking, etc.
| locallost wrote:
| If it's really also for long distance rail, that's a lot of
| value. For comparison, the German Railway has something similar
| (but I think only for the railway) and it costs easily 3x as
| much. It's a bigger country but regardless. I live and work in a
| smaller city where I don't really need public transport, but when
| I was working in a city near me, the monthly ticket for the two
| cities was more than this. I don't know much about living in
| Austria, but in my mind it should be a no brainer for a lot of
| people.
| lonesword wrote:
| Deutsche Bahn's BahnCard 100 [1] is around 4k euros per year
| and gives unlimited access to all DB trains as well as a city
| pass to around 110 towns in Germany. The city pass does't help
| if you have to commute to a suburb, but it's still pretty
| useful (though pricey) IMO.
|
| >but when I was working in a city near me, the monthly ticket
| for the two cities was more than this
|
| I commute between Cologne and Aachen, and the monthly ticket
| would have been around 288 (per month) euros if I had to fund
| it myself. My employer got me a "job ticket" that made the cost
| of this commute to around 98 euros per month. However, for your
| employer to apply for a jobticket they should employ a minimum
| number of people who would avail that offer (15 in Aachen, if I
| remember correctly). I have no idea why a regular person can't
| apply for this ticket if they really do commute the same route
| daily.
|
| [1]
| https://www.bahn.com/en/offers/bahncard/bahncard_100-conditi...
| locallost wrote:
| I live in a city way smaller than Cologne or Aachen and my
| commute was only 20 mins so it's not surprising that the
| price was much cheaper in my case. I've never heard of the
| job ticket so it maybe doesn't exist everywhere or at least
| not back then.
|
| But anyway that's one of the things that annoy me, all these
| options that I need to know. I went with my son, we got
| normal tickets and then somebody told me to get ticket X
| instead which is more expensive, but I can take kids for
| free.
|
| So this type of a ticket would solve a lot of problems and
| make it real easy for people to just ride.
| woodlander87 wrote:
| I lived in Austria for a couple of years in the late 2000s. They
| had an under 25 years of age ticket that was similar to this, but
| was very inexpensive. I think less than 50 Euros. It may have
| only been during the summer months though. Either way I traveled
| all over Austria and it cost me almost nothing. Wish I could be
| 25 again just for that.
| abendstolz wrote:
| Yes, it was/is for only the duration of the summer (school)
| break.
|
| Has some very weird constraints regarding borders when
| combining with the eurorail/interrail though.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I recently discovered that there was such a plan for TER
| ("slow" regional trains) in France.
|
| https://www.ter.sncf.com/nouvelle-aquitaine/offres/cartes-ab...
|
| 29EUR/month, for july and august. Not sure if they offer it
| every year, or if that was a 2021 special.
|
| I also recently turned 26...
| scrollaway wrote:
| I really want this to exist for Belgium. Right now the public
| transport prices are absurd here... An all year pass for just the
| train in all of Belgium ranges in the 10k eur/year, and there is
| no national metro+bus+tram access (just Brussels is 700 EUR /
| year for that with no access to other cities).
|
| It's absurd and caused by fragmentation of services between
| Flanders, wallonia and Brussels with no coordination between
| them.
| FlyingSaucer wrote:
| I completely agree. I used to live in Liege and would travel to
| NL, Brussels and Hasselt regularly. The juggle between
| different public transport subscription was difficult on top of
| the constant outages.
| tralarpa wrote:
| > ranges in the 10k eur/year
|
| That's brutal. But I just visited (out of curiosity)
| www.belgiantrain.be and it says 3286 Euro for an "Unlimited
| Season Ticket" that "can be combined with other transport
| networks (STIB, TEC and De Lijn)" (I guess those are the local
| transport networks).
| scrollaway wrote:
| Season ticket is newish and it's just a few months iirc.
|
| Stib is the Brussels bus service, de lijn is Flanders, TEC is
| Wallonia.
| adventured wrote:
| As an American I had always heard that public transportation
| was super inexpensive in essentially all of Western Europe. Is
| that not the case generally?
| Leherenn wrote:
| It's hard to answer, it depends on a lot of variables, but it
| is rarely "super inexpensive", just usually cheaper.
|
| On a trip basis, i.e. no fixed costs included, no reduction;
| public transports are often the most expensive form of
| transportation (when compared to car or plane for longer
| distances). However, few people pay the full price,
| especially not those taking the train regularly, and cars
| have massive fixed costs. So if you can do everything with
| public transports and don't have a car, you can save a lot of
| money. If you still need a car for whatever reason but want
| to use public transports for some trips, then it can become
| the worst of both worlds (high fixed costs of the car plus
| high per trip cost of public transportation).
|
| The car has one big advantage (in term of price), is that it
| can scale to a few people with basically no extra costs,
| whereas public transportation is usually linear. If you put
| four friends in your car and drive a few hundred kilometres
| to go on holidays abroad, the price of public transports will
| be ridiculous in comparison.
| FabHK wrote:
| > whereas public transportation is usually linear
|
| With "usually" being an important proviso: In Germany,
| there are weekend tickets for up to 5 people. A student
| ticket (covering the entire state, included in the tuition
| fee of around 700 EUR/year) often allows the holder to take
| someone along after 7pm or on weekends.
| Leherenn wrote:
| Yes, and plenty of countries have some family stuff as
| well.
| akiselev wrote:
| It's cheap relative to $2/liter fuel, huge taxes and
| registration fees on vehicles, parking, and so on. It's still
| scaled to the relative cost of living which can be high in
| major cities.
| bmicraft wrote:
| It may not be much cheaper in absolute terms, but the service
| you get for that is usually much better (more lines shorter
| intervals and such)
| wongarsu wrote:
| 700EUR/year is about 60EUR/month, which is fairly typical for
| a regional monthly public transport pass. Considering we pay
| around 7 USD/gal for fuel (1.6EUR/l), if your work is more
| than about 30 car-minutes away it's cheaper to commute by
| public transit (assuming you park for free). And that's not
| even considering that you might be able to have fewer cars in
| the household: just owning the car is a lot more expensive
| than the transit pass.
| ghaff wrote:
| That seems pretty cheap TBH. Boston is something like $90
| per month. Adding commuter rail or ferry would add several
| hundred dollars plus parking.
| frereubu wrote:
| Train travel in the UK is absurdly expensive unless you're
| willing to book a few months in advance and travel off-peak.
| Train travel in Spain is much better and cheaper. AFAIK in
| terms of price it mostly has to do with how much governments
| are willing to subsidise rail transport.
| Zenst wrote:
| Oh it's more complicated than that for cheap tickets and
| most tips covered here:
| https://www.which.co.uk/money/money-saving-tips/getting-a-
| gr...
|
| Sadly when there was a plane option instead - that always
| tended to be way cheaper (London to Scotland for example).
|
| Personally I'd subsidise it more on less used routes just
| to push people out of cars more, sadly London commuter
| routes have kinda hit the wall in capacity ad legacy
| limitations of the old layout/station platform lengths,
| rail gauge, bridge heights etc of which much was planned
| for in an era 100 years ago.
| bjourne wrote:
| It used to be cheap. But prices have increased massively in
| the last decades. For example, in Stockholm the inflation-
| adjusted price has increased by over 200% since 2000. The
| price has increased much more than the price of gas which
| drivers complain about all the time. Politicians in Stockholm
| motivate raising prices with "well, it's still cheaper than
| in other cities so be happy!" But I suspect politicians in
| other cities use the exact same argument to raise their
| prices.
| dagw wrote:
| No, not really. Public transport in the cities in the US that
| I've been to that had public transport (NYC, Chicago, DC,
| Seattle) cost about the same or less then I would expect to
| pay in most major European cities.
| cletus wrote:
| Why should public transport cost anything at all? I mean, what's
| the point? You might say the service costs money. It does. The
| ticket prices never cover that so you're already running at a
| loss. You spend money on enforcement, payment and ticket machines
| and you reduce usage of the service.
|
| But here's the more important point: cars are already subsidized
| to a huge degree pretty much everywhere through roads, parking,
| etc.
|
| Let's also start by removing free street parking from any area
| reasonably serviced by public transport. Or just removing it
| entirely.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Free public transport means worse service. In the long term,
| subsidies < subsidies + fares, so there would be less money to
| fund the operations. At the same time, many people who would
| otherwise walk/cycle or not take the trip at all would be using
| public transport, and the reduced service would be crowded.
| Because the quality of public transport would be low, people
| who can afford it would prefer driving. That in turn would
| lower the subsidies, because people are always looking for ways
| to lower taxes and reduce public spending in services they
| don't need.
|
| Sometimes the fares are also higher than costs to discourage
| using public transport, because capacity is limited and
| increasing it is effectively impossible. London zone 1 is a
| good example of this. People who won't use public transport
| will walk/cycle or not take the trip at all. They won't switch
| to driving in any significant numbers, because that would be
| physically impossible.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > The ticket prices never cover that so you're already running
| at a loss.
|
| London Underground usually runs at a profit. Not entirely from
| tickets, but also including other sources like advertisement.
| But ticket revenue is an important part of the income.
|
| Public transport also includes privately-owned transport that
| is run for profit, like private buses and trains, which also
| make a profit (or go bust).
| richwater wrote:
| Because people don't value free things.
|
| It's why public restrooms are always disgusting.
| m463 wrote:
| I remember having an electric car when they were new.
|
| Some places offered free electric car charging, and there was
| always someone parked there abusing it.
|
| Meanwhile with only the most nominal cost, people would make
| better use of the resource allowing it to become available to
| others.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > It's why public restrooms are always disgusting.
|
| Not really. It's not a question of value that causes public
| restrooms to be less pleasant, but simply one of cleaning
| frequency.
|
| Most people clean their own private
| restrooms/bathrooms/toilet (or have them cleaned) reasonably
| frequently. Increase the usage load for a public facility and
| you'd expect it to need to cleaning more frequently than a
| private one.
|
| And so, one does indeed find public facilities with sensible
| cleaning intervals that are often no worse and sometimes
| better than private ones.
|
| Most humans also have a somewhat instinctive distaste for
| urinating or defacating in a context where they can smell
| another human being (even one's own family!). Without very
| good ventilation, it's hard for a well-used public facility
| to avoid this, and that adds to the sense of "eergh, it's
| disgusting!" This is an issue, but again not one of "valuing
| free things".
|
| The worst public restrooms I can think of tend to be the most
| lightly used, where it's hard to justify the cost of
| sufficiently regular cleaning, and things just get
| unpleasant, again without any question of values or cost-of-
| use.
| mellavora wrote:
| That's what Luxembourg did. Works great!
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| how do you keep people from just riding the train perpetually?
| marcellus23 wrote:
| why would you keep people from doing that? are so many people
| going to be doing that as to actually cause a problem?
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| In my area people will ride the commuter train (without
| paying) for hours and sleep on it. There isn't enough fair
| enforcement or will to remove them. Makes the train pretty
| unattractive for its actual purpose. I imagine that issue
| becoming even worse if it's just free.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| People do that in my city too -- they're homeless people
| who don't have anywhere else to go. The solution is to
| give them housing and jobs. Until that happens, I'm okay
| with them sleeping on the train if they need to.
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| and for that reason I'll keep my car. The solution to
| homelessness is not to degrade the living standard for
| everyone else.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| No one said it was. You asked how to prevent homeless
| people from sleeping on trains -- the answer is to give
| them places to sleep.
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