[HN Gopher] 9-Euro-Ticket
___________________________________________________________________
9-Euro-Ticket
Author : _Microft
Score : 703 points
Date : 2022-05-20 11:15 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bahn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bahn.com)
| april_22 wrote:
| The German government did that to compensate for rising gasoline
| prices. While I think that is in general appreciated by the
| public, I am not quite sure how many people aged 45 above will
| use this ticket. They trains will be super crowded this summer
| and people will just prefer to use their car instead.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| Also it is completely useless for people living on the
| countryside. The nearest train station is a 20 minute drive
| away from where I live, so this does nothing for me.
|
| Still better than nothing, I guess.
| radiospiel wrote:
| Well, this is part of a package deal where they also reduce
| gasoline pricing.
| foepys wrote:
| Over 75% of Germans live in cities or towns which
| overwhelmingly have reliable bus transit at least at daytime.
|
| Those remaining <25% are not really important here and can
| still use their cars.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > Over 75% of Germans live in cities
|
| Unrelated to this topic but that explains why Germans are
| so eager to remove forest in order to build windmills.
| People in the city obviously don't notice it anyway.
| foepys wrote:
| Give me an example where trees were cut and no new were
| planted. Coal mines are eating whole forests in North
| Rhine-Westfalia at this very moment and activists are
| getting beaten up by cops. Look up Garzweiler and Hambach
| [1].
|
| You argument is the usual fear-mongering by (often right-
| wing) conservative politicians, wanting us to keep buying
| oil and gas from dictatorships. As you can see in France
| where they routinely have to shut down nuclear power
| plants to not overheat their adjacent rivers in the
| summer, nuclear is also no build and forget solution.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_surface_mine
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Eifel. Around national park. I see it with my own eyes, I
| live here.
|
| Regarding Hambacher Forst. Does it not make you wonder
| why the situation quiet down while the country is going
| though an energy supply crunch?
| kappuchino wrote:
| Well, unless you have some data about loss of forest for
| wind turbines, your observations on your surroundings
| attached to 75% living in the cities is just anecdotal
| evidence casually presented as a fact. Not helpful in a
| discussion about a related topic, even less when this is
| about the 9euro ticket. For reference:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence
|
| As for Hambacher Forst, you failed to mention that most
| issues have been either finalized in courts or were dealt
| with in protests/politics. I'm not taking sides since
| this was never a black or white situation, it is always a
| multi faceted problem. (Empathic example: For the people
| living in the villages that were destroyed, the loss of
| their homeland is for most of us simply unimaginable.
| Then again for some time, germany needed the energy from
| these deposits under the villages.)
| snickerer wrote:
| I see three points in your post:
|
| 1. You want to tell something 'unrelated to this topic'.
| That's a bad idea because it clutters our discussions. I
| assume you have some inner pressure and strong emotions
| about the windmill topic and want to release it.
|
| 2. You're picking on city people. They don't notice the
| decrease of forests because they don't see it when they
| look out of the window?
|
| 3. You are telling us that the decline of the forests in
| Germany are caused by... windmills? Really? That's so
| wrong that I don't know where to start to explain.
|
| I don't know where the hatred against windmills or
| against 'city people' comes from. But its origin is
| certainly not windmills.
|
| We need the windmills to fight the decline of the
| forests, you know. And to fight mass extinction. We need
| the windmills to avert the demise of many species.
| Including our own.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| 1. Yes, I know the rules here.
|
| 2. Yes.
|
| 3. No, I'm saying that forest is being removed for
| windmills. You are assuming that I'm having some dumb
| argument. This is what I see where I live. Windmills in a
| national park with more trees removed for service roads.
| But please, continue educating.
| jona-f wrote:
| Afaik regional buses are included in this ticket. I do not
| know any villages that don't even have those at least once a
| day.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> They trains will be super crowded this summer_
|
| In Austria that's already a problem. Due to overcrowding,
| they're kicking people with valid tickets but no seat
| reservations off the trains telling them to get the next one.
| FabHK wrote:
| > The German government did that to compensate for rising
| gasoline prices
|
| In particular, the government reduced the taxes on gasoline due
| to the high gasoline prices, a purely populist insanity in
| these times of climate crisis. Then they remembered that they
| were elected on a pro-environment platform, and concluded that
| they also had to support those using public transport, and this
| was the result.
| bombcar wrote:
| "Nobody uses the trains because they're all super crowded"
| reminds me of the quote ascribed to Yogi Berra, "Nobody goes
| there! It's too crowded!"
| MandieD wrote:
| It will be an absolute relief to the elderly/near-elderly poor,
| for starters.
|
| Like the woman I saw in the grocery store a few weeks ago on
| the verge of tears because the cheapest cooking oil available
| was 6 EUR/750ml bottle organic canola oil, and that's still
| often the case.
|
| Inflation in Germany is every bit as bad as it is in the US, so
| this is also a bit of a welfare payment to all the people who
| take public transit anyway because they can't afford to drive.
|
| I'm 100% for this, by the way; it's an excellent use of my tax
| Euros. It will probably make the U-Bahn less pleasant for me,
| but that's ok.
| hit8run wrote:
| The idea behind it is to keep the idiots commuting just to sit
| down in the wage cage 9000. It's for three months only btw and
| just a trick to improve acceptance of the new German Poverty
| caused by very bad political decisions.
| paganel wrote:
| Hopefully this measure will persist even when (and if) inflation
| goes back to "normal" levels back again, imo heavily subsidised
| public transport is the way to go if we want to reduce car use.
|
| Asking people for a lot more money in order to decrease the
| regular use of their cars (either through higher gas prices or
| forcing them to purchase relatively expensive newer EVs) is
| really not fair if you don't offer something in return.
| seu wrote:
| For comparison, in Berlin the monthly ticket for the A-B zones
| (does not reach the airport) costs EUR86, and a 4-ticket pack
| EUR9.40. A EUR9 monthly ticket is an insane bargain, even if you
| only plan on using public transport within the city.
|
| (source: https://www.bvg.de/de/tickets-und-tarife)
| hansel_der wrote:
| might even be cheap enough to make them fare dodgers reconsider
| mahesh_rm wrote:
| I can't seem to find information on whether it is possible to
| purchase the ticket as a non German citizen.
| rostigerpudel wrote:
| Yes, anyone can purchase it.
|
| However, contrary to what is said multiple times in this
| thread, it is NOT transferable. You have to put your name on it
| and have some form of ID with you.
|
| https://www.rnd.de/politik/9-euro-ticket-ab-wann-erhaeltlich...
|
| Google Translate: https://www-rnd-
| de.translate.goog/politik/9-euro-ticket-ab-w...
| morelisp wrote:
| Yes it is.
| b3lvedere wrote:
| Awesome! I might do some holiday travel :)
| tauchunfall wrote:
| >People who use local/regional transport will be able to buy it
| anywhere in Germany via channels such as bahn.de and DB
| Navigator. It will also be available from DB Reisezentrum
| (travel centre) staff and ticket machines at stations.
|
| Ticket machines can be used without need to identify.
| kuschku wrote:
| Buying the 9 euro ticket is possible anonymously with cash at
| any train station, so yeah, you should be able to.
| curiousfab wrote:
| I couldn't imagine why not. You just to to a ticket machine and
| buy it, no need for a passport or anything. Enjoy - Sylt is
| waiting for you, and you'll be there along with a million like-
| minded people!
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is still a good question, because there are often special
| conditions to these kinds of offer.
|
| For example, in Paris, some "all zones" tickets are only
| available to residents (pass Navigo). The Japanese "Japan
| Rail Pass" is only available to tourists, and the "Interrail"
| pass is complicated: you have to reside in Europe but you can
| only use it in your own country for a single round trip.
| Bayart wrote:
| > I couldn't imagine why not.
|
| The single market. Refusing to sell to other EU citizens is
| very illegal.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Not illegal as far as I know.
|
| These are almost certainly subsidized tickets, financed
| with taxpayer money, it is common to restrict the sales to
| those who pay taxes in the covered area. And I don't see
| how it could be illegal, it is like forcing Germany to
| provide health care for the French and vice versa.
| Bayart wrote:
| > it is like forcing Germany to provide health care for
| the French and vice versa
|
| That's literally how it works [1]. EU citizens are
| treated the same as local citizens in every country.
|
| [1]: https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/europe-travel-
| insurance/ehi...
| [deleted]
| p_l wrote:
| AFAIK the legal way to limit subsidized tickets is that
| the specific "membership" required to get the subsidized
| fare is available to all EU citizens - for example in
| Warsaw we can get lower fare based holographic stamp
| available from the city _on the basis of paying taxes in
| the city_ - i.e. it doesn 't matter what passport you
| hold, it matters that your tax residency is in Warsaw.
|
| And healthcare operates by your local health system
| reimbursing the system in country you were visiting - you
| need to have _European Health Insurance Card_ on you,
| from your healthcare provider, which helps route the
| payments appropriately.
| RGamma wrote:
| Pack the Schultenbrau! Sylt, it's on!
| riidom wrote:
| Invade bavaria instead. As "thank you" for their threat of
| blocking the ticket :)
| [deleted]
| biafra wrote:
| I am 100% sure anyone can buy it. And I am almost equally sure,
| anyone using it will not get fined.
| _Microft wrote:
| The tickets aren't personalized (some regular monthly passes
| for public transport are/were though), so you should be fine.
| Since they aren't personalized and there is no way to check who
| the owner actually is, I would even expect them to be
| transferable.
|
| Edit: looks like I was wrong -> see replies. You can also
| search for "9-Euro-Ticket ubertragbar" (ubertragbar =
| transferable) yourself to get a number of different German
| sources for that.
| germanier wrote:
| This ticket is personalized.
| dmurray wrote:
| Normally DB day tickets, even bought at the ticket machine,
| are not transferable. You have to write your name on the back
| - in theory, before the first time you encounter a ticket
| controller - and be prepared to produce ID matching the name.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Honestly, this is the first time I ever hear of this, and I
| almost go back to steam engine trains :p
| himlion wrote:
| Yes, it would be a violation of EU law to restrict it.
| mrunkel wrote:
| No it wouldn't. You could say it's only for citizens of EU
| member states.
|
| That's a restriction that wouldn't violate any EU law.
| himlion wrote:
| Correct, that wouldn't violate it. For German citizens only
| would.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Another hypothetical alternative which wouldn't violate EU
| law (not that they have any reason of using it) would be to
| make the ticket only valid to people who legally reside in
| Germany, regardless of their nationality.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > I can't seem to find information on whether it is possible to
| purchase the ticket as a non German citizen.
|
| Biggest hurdle will be getting a Germany ticket machine to
| accept a regular credit card!
|
| But otherwise, isn't discriminating based on nationality for
| good and services illegal?
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Credit cards aren't regular in Europe. They accept Maestro
| debit cards though, which almost everyone has, and cash.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Credit cards aren't regular in Europe.
|
| Pretty sure it's just Germany being pig-headed about it for
| some reason. Everywhere else in Europe is perfectly happy
| to accept a credit card. I do 99.999% of all my spending on
| a credit card, like most millennial people or younger, and
| the only people in the developed world who this is a
| problem for is the Germans.
| dabc015f wrote:
| > Pretty sure
|
| Why not at least google some statistics before you lose
| yourself in some pig-headed chauvinistic rant about what
| in the most charitable interpretation amounts to nothing
| at all.
| FabHK wrote:
| To be fair, I find it absolutely absurd that credit card
| companies siphon off 3% or so of all retail purchases,
| and then distribute a part of it back to their "most
| valuable customers" in the form of miles and cash backs
| and similar time-consuming nonsense. It is redistribution
| from the poor, those using cash and those not being able
| to pay off credit cards in full, to the rich.
|
| The EU has imposed caps on these interchange fees [1],
| which is one reason Europeans are not inundated by junk
| mail offering credit cards, and may be a reason that
| credit cards are not ubiquitous. Having said that, I find
| that I can pay electronically in most places, including
| Deutsche Bahn ticket machines (or just buy them in the
| app).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee#Europea
| n_Union
| switch007 wrote:
| Come on that's not fair. Don't the Dutch hate credit
| cards too?
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Not hate, just not a system used very much here. Most
| people with a credit card have one for online purchases
| (I do), but those are a minority. Even that is no longer
| really needed with big stores like Steam and Amazon (.de
| and .nl) accepting the local IDEAL standard for banking
| transfers.
|
| Paying with a credit card in shops? That's just not done
| excepting American tourists, same as in a number of
| European countries. It's contactless debit cards mostly.
| Building a credit rating by using a credit card is not
| part of the system.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Pretty sure it 's just Germany being pig-headed about
| it for some reason._
|
| That pig-headed reason being that Germany went trough two
| different repressive regime during the last century.
|
| Regimes that made plenty of use of large scale
| surveillance and data collections [0] to find a lot of
| their victims.
|
| That's why cash still reigns supreme in Germany; It's
| anonymous and third parties can't just remotely disable
| it by disabling your bank account.
|
| It's also the reason why Germans value their privacy, at
| least used to.
|
| [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Liste
| p_l wrote:
| EMV2-compatible debit/credit cards work pretty widely. The
| real issue is that some countries have locally-popular
| cards that don't work in that scheme (Dutch old Maestro
| variant, some german cards, etc.) or have very annoying
| compatibility issues (my old "Visa Electron", once very
| popular in Poland and which tripped UK card systems like
| crazy) and availability of card payments differs across EU
| - capping card fees and speeding up transactions thanks to
| EMV helped there a lot, but I remember hearing stories of
| Italian shops in touristy areas getting card readers...
| because of Polish visitors, who were accustomed to wide
| availability of cards (last local bastion of cash only was
| farmer's market nearby - now every more established stand
| has one)
| elondaits wrote:
| I had no problem paying with a credit card on Bahn.de ticket
| machines (White and red). The yellow BVG ones gave me
| problems in the past accepting an Argentine card, but it's
| likely it'd take it now that it has a chip.
| [deleted]
| jdhzzz wrote:
| Who-hoo, let's all go to the summer long super-spreader event.
| jona-f wrote:
| Covid is currently not a big issue in Germany. Even so
| restrictions are lifted and most people don't care at all
| anymore about protection, the numbers are going down.
| Bigpet wrote:
| Numbers are still significantly higher than Winter 2020/21.
| So with lessening restrictions this winter is poised to set
| another record (for infections at least, deaths might not be
| as high as last year). People don't care, true. But that's
| about feeling, not about numbers or facts.
| foepys wrote:
| Hospitals have next to no cases in my region. 500/100.000
| people tested positive over the last 7 days with probably
| times 3 more infected due to no mandatory testing. Only a
| combined 2 people (both over 80) are in the 5 hospitals
| with only one being intubated. That's nothing, really.
| alecco wrote:
| Populism. This will make the country consume _more_ energy. There
| 's a crisis and the solution is saving as much energy as
| possible. And help companies not go bankrupt. But that doesn't
| sell...
| tauchunfall wrote:
| It will consume more energy, when they need more trains or
| train cars. Excluding the energy needed for devices and in the
| restaurant on board.
|
| edit: clearified a sentence.
| iknownothow wrote:
| Sources for claims? Genuinely curious.
| mbg721 wrote:
| When is there not a crisis? If you're running a train anyway,
| the marginal cost of attaching a couple more cars for the extra
| demand seems pretty small.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| Not even that. Most lines are already at maximum capacity,
| and the number of cars is usually dependent on the shortest
| platform on the line already.
|
| We take this so seriously, any stop, even unplanned, where
| the doors might open aside from absolute emergencies must be
| on a platform of sufficient length.
| poooogles wrote:
| >Not even that. Most lines are already at maximum capacity,
| and the number of cars is usually dependent on the shortest
| platform on the line already.
|
| Here in the UK we run trains that are longer than platforms
| quite frequently. I'm talking about 9 car trains stopping
| at 2 car platforms here as well, not 9 car trains where the
| front and rear doors of the first and last carriage don't
| open.
| bloak wrote:
| In the UK it's quite normal, I think, for them to tell
| people who want to get off at stop X that they have to be
| in carriages Y-Z because the platform isn't long enough for
| them to open the doors of other carriages. There seems to
| be a Wikipedia page on the general topic:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_door_operation
| ("Selective Door Operation enables trains to call at a
| station where the platform is shorter than the train.")
|
| It's my understanding that the capacity of the UK train
| network is mostly limited by the granularity of the
| signalling.
| mbg721 wrote:
| That's one of the situations where the UK seems like a
| halfway-honorary US state, in a "Hold my damn beer--
| you're all right!" sort of way.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| A lot of regional lines are already at max capacity in terms of
| rolling stock and track capacity. This will incentivise less
| car use for journeys where direct connections are available.
|
| It will also give access to public transport to those in
| extreme poverty who have no other means of mobility, whom
| Germany has been prosecuting as criminals and putting in jail
| when their fines add up enough. Speeding and parking offenses
| are civil offenses. Public transport without a ticket? Felony.
| macco wrote:
| If people use the train instead of their cars, it will save
| energy by a lot. Trains are the most efficient form of
| transportation, cars the least efficient.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| Bicycles are the most efficient form of transportation if
| we're talking energy use, but yes, trains beat out cars by a
| lot. :)
| freemint wrote:
| Absolutetly not since the fuel (human food) is horribly CO2
| intensive to produce.
| Aldipower wrote:
| The more fitness you gain, the more effective you are in
| your energy utilization. Sportive people need less
| energy! Hard, but true.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| You're still going to eat no matter how you travel
| though! That's non-negotiable regardless of mode.
|
| (Also, e-bikes exist too, if you're really worried that
| people exercising might eat a little bit more.)
| kuschku wrote:
| It'll move energy use from highly inefficient personal vehicles
| burning gasoline to highly efficient trains using mostly
| renewable electricity, during the summer where more than enough
| electricity is available.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Still plenty of diesel run train engines in Germany.
|
| Also coal is still being burnt. So I don't think it is mostly
| renewable.
| kuschku wrote:
| In both of these cases, the energy per person-kilometer of
| transportation is orders of magnitudes lower than with an
| ICE car. So the energy usage would still go _down_
| april_22 wrote:
| I think that the Deutsche Bahn runs 100% on clean energy.
| sneusse wrote:
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftwerk_Datteln
|
| 40% ~ 400MW of this coal plant go directly to DB. They
| argue that it's only used for freight and not for public
| transport but meh - a useless differentiation IMO.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| If this was really about saving energy, they wouldn't also
| simultaneously lower gas taxes during the same period as
| well.
| kuschku wrote:
| As is common in coalition governments, the 9-Euro-Ticket is
| a pet project of the greens to save energy and save people
| money, while the gas taxes are a pet project of the
| neoliberals to save people money :)
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| I know DB is owned by the state but I'm anyway interested in
| whether the difference to the original price is subsidized by the
| state. Or if it's just a special offer that allows them to cover
| expenses.
| germanier wrote:
| The federal state will pay 2.5 billion euro to the 16 states
| which in turn are responsible to compensate operators (or
| whoever actually receives the fare for the journey - this might
| be someone else) for the lost revenue.
| [deleted]
| Pete-Codes wrote:
| Giggly - may have to re-think summer plans
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Denmark is doing a similar thing ...
| b3lvedere wrote:
| Soo, i could travel throughout Germany and Denmark for quite
| cheap?
| MandieD wrote:
| If you're not in a hurry - it is _not_ valid for the high-
| speed (ICE) and mid-speed (IC) trains in Germany.
| sva_ wrote:
| In Germany, only in regional (slow) traffic (the RE only goes
| between 100 and max 200 kmh)
| fiber wrote:
| Kind of, but you'll have to take the scenic route (long
| distance trains IC/EC/ICE are not included).
| vaylian wrote:
| Interesting. Do you have a link with more info?
| throwaway4good wrote:
| https://www.dsb.dk/kampagner/rejsepass/
| legulere wrote:
| So like 40EUR for 8 consecutive days. That greatly reduces
| usefulness if you just want to travel to one spot and back.
| Reason077 wrote:
| I wish they would restore stopover functionality on the
| international booking site (https://www.international-bahn.de/).
| I remember back when you could book a London to Berlin fare (for
| example) with Eurostar included, with stopovers up to 48 hours
| along the way. Amazing value for tourists - often you could visit
| multiple Belgian/German cities for not much more than what the
| Eurostar fare would cost alone.
|
| The standard bahn.de site still allows stopovers, but since the
| pandemic you can no longer book Eurostar segments through it. Sad
| face.
| russianGuy83829 wrote:
| they should rather subsidize heat pumps to replace aging gas
| heating systems prevalent in the 1960s homes here. Would help to
| reduce energy dependency on russia
| partiallypro wrote:
| I assume this doesn't apply to urban rails like the MVV in
| Munich, etc. Has to be DB operated.
| locallost wrote:
| For comparison, the federal government is dead bent on building
| additional 4.1km of highway through Berlin that is estimated to
| cost over 500 million. And the critics say it will balloon to
| billions since the estimate is 10 years old anyway.
|
| So basically millions of people will ride the train for three
| months for almost free, and the cost will be in the same ball
| park as 4km of one highway.
| throwaway307423 wrote:
| Tenoke wrote:
| >1. In July and August, pretty much nobody[1] works in Europe
|
| >unused capacity
|
| What? The Sbahn I would take to the office in Summer 2019 was
| absolutely packed at peak times when people go to and from
| work.
|
| Also you didn't include that '[1]' reference. Complaining about
| downvotes is a faux pas. All the hostility and unnecessary
| mentions of Tesla didn't help either.
|
| Edit: Editing to replace the comment with yet another complaint
| about downvotes isn't a great look either.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I was entertained, but you didn't exactly add much to the
| conversation. I hope you typed this from your Tesla touchscreen
| doing 190 on the Autobahn.
| yccs27 wrote:
| Some context is given here: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-
| introduces-9-ticket-to-offset-...
|
| The ticket is part of a support package signed off by the German
| parliament. The will pay approximately EUR2.5 billion for the
| ticket offer, as a response to rising energy prices and the
| resulting high costs of individual mobility.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| In the meantime I just paid 200% more for heating oil than it
| cost me one year ago. And I cannot use this public transport
| offer. But I am contributing to it with my taxes.
| seoaeu wrote:
| In other words, your transportation patterns don't let you
| reduce your oil use, so you're doing your part by paying
| slightly higher taxes to benefit those who can? That doesn't
| seem like a bad thing
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| You mean I'm partially funding their cheap transportation?
| Where is the money for these cheap tickets coming from?
|
| But your comment kinda makes sense. It's not really worth
| trying much in Germany. The more one tries, the more one
| becomes the source of funding for others while not really
| getting any personal gratification or gain.
| wreath wrote:
| You're exactly right. The German system is setup so that
| you make use of it only if you are on average or below
| average income. Anything more is a diminishing return.
| This is for pension, maternal/paternal leave, health
| insurance etc. The reasoning being that "so we have more
| equal society". Yes equal but there simply is no
| incentive to progress without being penalized. The lucky
| ones are those with "old money" or those who prefer to
| rely on the system instead of themselves.
| seoaeu wrote:
| You're proposing cutting government support for the poor
| so that they'll try harder to escape poverty? Since I'm
| pretty sure there's already plenty of incentives to not
| living in poverty
| MauranKilom wrote:
| > The more one tries, the more one becomes the source of
| funding for others while not really getting any personal
| gratification or gain.
|
| It's unfortunate that you can't derive any gratification
| or gain from your more-than-half of the extra money you
| make when trying more. But it probably won't help to
| blame it on less wealthy people commuting to work.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| I'm not blaming anybody. I am simply saying that it's an
| advantage which isn't universal.
| seoaeu wrote:
| I could say the same about being wealthy enough not to
| have to rely on public transportation
| widerporst wrote:
| How do you travel and commute? By car? If so, millions of
| Germans who don't own a care are funding your means of
| transport.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| I will keep that in mind next time I am staring at the
| rear of a diesel bus while stuck in traffic.
| widerporst wrote:
| I know you're being facetious, but yes. Public transport
| is cheaper per person per kilometer than cars. Gasoline
| and motor vehicle taxes are very low in comparison to the
| cost of road maintenance and environmental and societal
| effects of individual transport, so you're indeed
| profiting off of tax money.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| To which I'm also contributing by driving myself. Those
| roads aren't built for my pleasure of driving to the
| office. They also serve crucial role in supply chains.
|
| In fact, those buses are on exactly on those same roads.
| The existence of those roads facilities convenient public
| transportation.
| akie wrote:
| These 2.5 billion euros is almost nothing for a country
| the size of Germany. I mean, it's 0.1% of the total
| budget (EUR1762.4 billion last year). It's nothing. Are
| you really getting all huffy & puffy about paying for a
| scheme that provides transportation to poorer people and
| helps the environment? And are you the same about all
| other tiny expenses, or is it just this one in
| particular.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| No, I just said that I paid twice as much as last year
| for the heating oil and my tax obligations are increasing
| and this doesn't benefit everyone. It turned into this
| discussion.
| foepys wrote:
| Your 30 cent gas discount is funded by all the people not
| owning cars. Which costs 500 million Euros _more_ than
| the 9EUR ticket by the way. Be grateful for that and stop
| huffing and puffing all over the comment section with
| snide comments on how the world is unfair to you.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Like that is helping me with heating oil. And mind you,
| not only me. Everyone renting places, owning places,
| offices heated with oil will get hit by that. I do not
| see how a discount on transport for three months is going
| to help those people.
|
| I also have a mother in Germany who I pay the rent for.
| She's a pensioner with a minimal amount of money. I am
| very much looking to Nebenkostenabrechnung next year for
| heating.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| In other words, there's a program in place to help people
| with high prices, that he has to pay into, but doesn't get
| anything from it, while still being affected by high
| prices, that he might not be able to afford.
| locallost wrote:
| I live in Germany and I also have to pay for the
| construction of toll free highways and other very
| expensive car infrastructure. The tax on gas was reduced
| for the same months in the sommer which is on its own
| totally ridiculous, but it will also cost over a billion
| a month. I don't drive so I have nothing to gain from any
| of that -- but you don't get help from others if you
| don't help others, so you don't pick and choose what you
| pay with your taxes.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| But you do consume stuff transported to your neighborhood
| by trucks and cars. Maybe you use public transport? That
| consumes gasoline/diesel and requires infrastructure. Or
| do you live on home grown food? How's the post at your
| door every morning? Ambulances? Police? Fire service?
| Electricians? Packets from Amazon or other MediaMarkt?
|
| I don't believe you do not benefit.
| dubswithus wrote:
| Unfortunately, it's going to be really hard for my wife to get a
| schengen visa. The appointments are already full.
| tosh wrote:
| Imagine something like this for the whole EU.
| bullen wrote:
| Interrail?
| freemint wrote:
| Are there cross country but regional rail lines?
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Yes, there are! For example, I have travelled between
| Strasbourg and Basel (Switzerland) on a regional train, as
| well as between Milan and Nice, and between Nice and
| Barcelona (changing trains at the Spanish border due to the
| change of rail gauge). There's also a regional line
| connecting Barcelona and Puigcerda (a town in the Spanish
| Pyrenees) which at certain times continues its service a
| further ~5km and terminates in Latour-de-Carol, a tiny
| village on the French side which is served by French regional
| services.
| 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
| There are also trains between Denmark and Sweden, and I'd
| be surprised if there's not similar things going on in the
| Benelux area.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| True. In fact, that reminded me that I have also taken
| regional trains between Copenhagen and Malmo.
| sdevonoes wrote:
| Why don't they make this for the whole year?
| _Microft wrote:
| It is meant to temporarily ease the burden of risen energy
| prices. (Car users are going to get a lower tax on gas soon.)
|
| A quarter of a year might be enough already to find out how
| much demand for low cost public transport there actually is. I
| consider it an useful experiment at this point.
| _0ffh wrote:
| I'm sure the private bus operators, who usually are the only
| cheap option to travel in Germany, are just thrilled by this
| additional market distortion.
| versk wrote:
| on one hand, free travel for millions of citizens, on the
| other, higher profitability for a handful private bus
| operators.
|
| Its surprising to me that someone would even consider bringing
| this up as a valid counter argument. Interesting to see how
| deeply Neoliberalism has seeped into western culture.
| _0ffh wrote:
| What does a temporary reprieve help if it threatens to
| destroy the outlook in long term? That strikes me as a
| uniquely short sighted pov. I am not surprised though, given
| your usage of the word "neoliberal" in that way. I am
| certainly not a "neoliberal", because that's just a soft form
| of socialism. I am a laissez faire capitalist.
| [deleted]
| FabHK wrote:
| Private long distance bus operators are complaining, indeed.
| They were looking forward to this summer to finally make some
| revenue after two years of reduced demand due to the pandemic,
| and then this measure torpedoes their business.
|
| See for example this [in German]
|
| https://www.busnetz.de/9-euro-ticket-bdo-warnt-vor-negativen...
| goodpoint wrote:
| > additional market distortion
|
| Are they also thrilled by "additional market distortions" like
| subsidized oil import and processing and road infrastructure?
|
| Or should we remove all tax-funded infrastructure investment
| and go back to the middle ages?
| _0ffh wrote:
| With more than 50% of gas prices going into taxes, are you
| seriously suggesting oil is a subsidised commodity in
| Germany?
| kuschku wrote:
| There's only one left, all the others went bankrupt, and that
| one (FlixBus) only offers long-distance journeys, while this
| ticket only applies to regional trains.
| _0ffh wrote:
| Firstly, long distance is misleading, I do not need to travel
| the whole length of a route. I can hop into a bus and hop out
| again at any of the next few bigger cities along the route.
| In my experience, that's what most people seem to do.
|
| Secondly, the 9EUR-Ticket is valid in all of Germany, so you
| could travel the length and width of the country if you
| wanted to. You'd just have to change trains a lot.
| kuschku wrote:
| Both of those are true, but that market distortion isn't
| nearly as large as you made it sound, and considering the
| upsides for society even the absolute worst case of driving
| one company into bankruptcy would definitely be worth it.
| _0ffh wrote:
| That would mean for a short term advantage I'd loose my
| ability to travel cheaply in the future. I don't think
| that it's worth the price.
|
| Apart from the fact that I'm opposed for principled
| reasons. If we want to make people's life easier, we
| should cut down on taxes, not engage in more deficit
| spending. Especially as the economy is headed for hard
| times anyway, for exactly that kind of reasons.
| freemint wrote:
| You might be confusing regional bus with long distance bus
| travel or ride for hire bus companies which will also be
| impacted.
| kuschku wrote:
| Which private regional bus companies or ride for hire bus
| companies are supposed to exist in Germany? I'm 26, but
| I've never heard or seen of any such company besides the
| long-distance travel with FlixBus (and formerly PostBus,
| InterCityBus, etc)
|
| The bus companies which operate official lines for
| Verkehrsverbunde will get paid the same as always, they're
| not affected by the 9-Euro-Ticket.
| rostigerpudel wrote:
| Did you really never go somewhere on a rented bus when
| you were in school? You can rent a bus with driver eg.
| for the company picnic or other touristic activities.
|
| However, I fail to see how that business, which usually
| involves a time constraint and direct point-to-point
| travels, would be impacted by this kind of ticket.
| kuschku wrote:
| Not really, we always used the city busses. I know that
| business exists, but I don't know any private bus
| business that'd be affected by this ticket (except, as
| mentioned, FlixBus)
| riidom wrote:
| They are. If you can squeeze an english translation out of this
| somehow, the article considers some potential problems:
|
| https://www.spiegel.de/auto/neun-euro-ticket-verkehrsbetrieb...
| Toboe wrote:
| For Automatic translations involving German it usualy is a
| good idea to check https://www.deepl.com/
| amarant wrote:
| This is awesome! For comparison, a single fare ticket from the
| Stockholm suburb I live in to city Central costs about EUR8.70. 9
| euros for a whole month seems like a dream!
| lom wrote:
| for 3 months*
| freeflight wrote:
| It's 9EUR per month and the ticket will be available for 3
| months.
| Havoc wrote:
| Wild - that gets me barely a days worth of tube travel in london
| (6.5 EUR a day)
| kilotaras wrote:
| Yeah, UKs train tickets are ridiculous if you compare it to
| rest of Europe.
|
| And that's not even case of UK just being generally more
| expensive, e.g. cheapest StAlbans - London (~25 km) yearly pass
| costs around PS4k. About a 1000 pounds more than Switzerland GA
| travelcard which covers basically any form of public transport
| in Switzerland.
| jonatron wrote:
| Ebbsfleet International - London possibly beats that in cost
| per mile. PS5272 or PS6056 with London travelcard for about
| 20 miles / 32km.
| Shacklz wrote:
| As a Swiss GA holder - UK public transport is all privately
| owned, right?
|
| The joys of free market efficiency in "public" transportation
| - maximum efficiency for the owners/shareholders, minimum
| efficiency for the people.
|
| The Swiss SBB is also again and again under assault to be
| fully privatized, luckily so far this hasn't happened yet,
| and I hope it never will...
| Symbiote wrote:
| The public transport politicians use (London Underground,
| London buses) is publically owned.
| pmyteh wrote:
| That's complicated:
|
| * Buses (outside London): yes. Private and (mostly)
| deregulated.
|
| * Buses (inside London): kinda. Private, but _heavily_
| regulated (fares, routes, everything)
|
| * Trains (outside London): both. The infrastructure is now
| public, after the company it was sold to became insolvent
| and got essentially renationalised by stealth. The
| companies running the trains are mostly heavily regulated
| private (some fares, routes, and other things are fixed by
| their franchise contracts, some fares are flexible). A few
| companies are 'open access' (private without franchise) and
| only their routes/timetables are fixed, they can do their
| own thing with fares and rolling stock. A few places (such
| as long-distance trains on the East Coast mainline) are run
| by a subsidiary of the state directly.
|
| * Trains (inside London, including the Tube):
| Infrastructure also public (some run by Network Rail, the
| national organisation, some by Transport for London). Some
| services (e.g. the Tube) run directly by TfL, some
| franchised as nationally.
|
| * [Edit: Eurostar runs (lightly regulated) services to
| France and Belgium via the Channel Tunnel and sets its own
| fares]
|
| The main difference from other countries (except for the
| insane web of contracts and inter-organisational
| dependencies) is that the policy of the UK Government is to
| put the cost of public transport as much as possible on its
| users rather than subsidising from general taxation. We've
| had above-inflation rises in the regulated fares nearly
| every year since privatisation in 1994, for example.
| dx034 wrote:
| It's not different in Germany outside of theses three months. A
| day ticket in most cities cost 5-10EUR. That's why this ticket
| will be so appealing, 2-4 trips are enough to make it worth for
| the whole month.
| dgellow wrote:
| Hamburg Sbahn/Ubahn are the same price, ~6.50EUR for the daily
| ticket. The 9EUR ticket is a no-brainer!
| pph wrote:
| The whole day ticket actually costs 8.20EUR, the after 9am
| ticket 6.90EUR (for the zones AB / city area)
|
| If you're commuting and have monthly ticket it will cost
| 93.70EUR (AB), though you might get around with a cheaper
| ticket if you're living in the center (zone 000).
| Reason077 wrote:
| Daily fare cap is now PS7.70 (EUR9.10) in London, and that's
| just for Zones 1-2. PS14.10 if you want to go out to Zone 6.
| waffleiron wrote:
| A 24 hour ticket in Berlin for local public transport is
| 8,80EUR, two singles would also make 6 EUR
| dagw wrote:
| To be fair that is what it costs in Germany as well under
| normal circumstances. A day ticket for central Hamburg is about
| 8 EUR a day.
|
| And even that is cheap compared compared to Oslo and Stockholm
| where it costs 12-13 EUR a day. On the whole the London
| Underground is quite reasonably priced compared to many major
| European cities.
| sva_ wrote:
| Im really curious to what extend this will affect how full/busy
| regional transit will be.
|
| I also wonder what happens to the people who control tickets
| fulltime. Their job seems pretty pointless when almost everyone
| has the ticket.
| bowsamic wrote:
| It is already at tipping point of fullness without this
| sva_ wrote:
| Depends on location
| bowsamic wrote:
| Here in Northern Germany it's pretty terrible
| trumpablehump wrote:
| Are you referring to one specific connection? Two? Five?
| A significant fraction?
| bowsamic wrote:
| 3.5 times 4
| SomeBoolshit wrote:
| Likely extremely busy - at least on the inside - because
| there's essentially no wiggle room in the form of extra
| vehicles or personnel.
| _ph_ wrote:
| If the trains get full enough, you don't even have to pay the
| 9 euros as no one can control your tickets :p
| unjustified wrote:
| These are going to be wild chaos days.
|
| https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/chaosta...
| k8sToGo wrote:
| This is why we can't have nice things.
| kappuchino wrote:
| For anyone wondering why 9EUR? Not 10EUR or 15EUR or ... - its
| consistent with 101 consumer psychology.
|
| First: Its not free, its subsidized by the state. _Free_ would
| suggest for some "not worth it". Not you, most likely, but this
| is why some free offers are not taken (seriously). If you want to
| see what free does, look for the Luxemburg experient:
| https://www.mobiliteit.lu/en/tickets/free-transport/
|
| Second: Higher price point would make a difference for less
| subsidy payments for the state, but the psychology is "not even
| 10 bucks". I know that some will argue that 10 Euros will be hard
| for low income/poor/out of the system people - but again, this is
| seen as an experiment and a simple message. The data from the
| usage will help to understand how one can/might change public
| transportation on a grand scale.
|
| Third: Its during the summer holidays. People with children in
| school have to book vacation during that time and so the traffic
| volume in every year before was less than usual on average. In
| reverse, a lot of people are on the autobahn and the high speed
| trains on the first and last days of each school holiday, which
| are different in each federal state.
| krrrh wrote:
| One interesting thing about the Berlin metro system (which is
| covered by this pass) is that it is one of the few metro
| transit systems that is nearly or fully supported through
| ticket fees. I can't find a reference for this at the moment,
| but it was something people talked about when I lived there.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Sweden does something similar, they offer unlimited regional
| rail passes for 1-2 month period during the summer - theirs are
| quite a bit more expensive than this though. I think closer to
| 100-150 euro for 2 months if I remember correctly.
| felurx wrote:
| I think most federal states in Germany have regional tickets
| for students for the summer vacations. It's probably going to
| vary a good bit, but here in BW it's 25~30EUR for the ~1.5
| months.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > First: Its not free, its subsidized by the state.
|
| ,,The state" doesn't have its ,,own money". It is subsided by
| the taxpayer.
| bromuro wrote:
| And where does the taxpayer money come from? :) The state (or
| in this case the european central bank) owns and distribuites
| the money, then the tax payers give it back.
| [deleted]
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| ECB does not issue funds to individual countries. It does
| so only to stabilise the economy which is moving funds from
| one place to another. Eventually, by creating debt.
|
| But on point. ECB manufactures banknotes. As in, it prints
| them and hands over to individual countries. ECB is owned
| by central banks of all 27 countries.
|
| https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/educational/explainers/tell-
| me...
|
| Taxpayers money comes from the work they execute. For
| example, when I do a contract for someone, I get paid for
| the service I did. If I don't do the work, I don't get paid
| and "the state" doesn't give me anything. Furthermore, if I
| do a lot of work in a year and the next year I have a
| misfortune of falling ill and can't sustain working, I'm
| screwed because "the state" wants its share in case of
| future profits, and just takes it from my account leaving
| me with a hole. "The state" doesn't care.
|
| I remember such a conversation I had once with a
| representative of "the state": "you don't have our money?",
| to which my immediate thought was "yeah, because we were
| sitting nights together trying delivering those projects".
| kappuchino wrote:
| Not a helpful comment. (And you should know.) The state is
| funded by taxes and other income. Germans elected
| representatives to decide/vote on issues like the 9euro
| ticket. You can try ad nauseam to redirect by adding
| complexity, but this was supposed to highlight that the
| difference is been paid for so that there is compensation the
| loss for regional public transport companies/structures. At
| the end, we are all atoms miraculously clustred together,
| somehow self aware and writing comments to each other. (Now
| go ahead, add some complexity and redirection again /s)
| Aperocky wrote:
| > It is subsided by the taxpayer.
|
| That used to be completely true, but seeing the US government
| consistently spending 150% of its revenue every year make me
| doubt that. Money printer and price go brr
|
| At least Germans are getting train tickets and not shiny new
| drone missiles.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> At least Germans are getting train tickets and not shiny
| new drone missiles._
|
| Germany is actually getting both, train tickets and armed
| drones [0]
|
| [0] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220408-germany-
| buys-140-...
| bowsamic wrote:
| I'm extremely not excited about how insanely rammed the public
| transportation is going to be for the next three months
|
| Already here in Hamburg the busses are not at all empty!
| dx034 wrote:
| If there's such an uptick in demand it would show that price
| was what kept people from using public transport. In that case
| I'm sure there will be a lot of pressure to make travel more
| affordable.
|
| So far, many claimed that a lack of availability was the reason
| public transport wasn't used more. I guess the next three
| months are a good way to validate that.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I don't think that would show that. It would show that some
| people don't want to make the investment for a monthly ticket
| if they aren't sure that they will use it. Now everyone will
| use the public transport at all times, without thinking about
| it. Even if the price for a monthly ticket was half its
| current price it still wouldn't be a no brainer to get one
| iggldiggl wrote:
| A few years ago they already did some smaller-scale
| experiments in a few cities regarding fares and service
| offerings and the conclusion was clearly that better service
| was more effective in attracting additional passengers.
|
| Also according to https://www.science.lu/de/faktencheck-
| gratis-oepnv/was-bring..., while some smaller cities who have
| experimented with free public transport have seen substantial
| increases in passenger numbers (but still often only a
| limited number of conversions from car drivers), the biggest
| city that tried this so far (Tallinn) only saw an increase in
| passenger numbers of 8 %. In the recent case of Luxembourg,
| unfortunately the effects of Covid make it rather difficult
| to draw any valid conclusions.
|
| While I am not opposed to some moderate fare reductions, it
| should be kept in mind that in Germany, the average farebox
| recovery ration for local and regional public transport
| before Covid was around 75 %. Making public transport
| completely free would therefore mean _quadrupling_ operating
| subsidies - and if through some miracle politics was really
| committed to spend that much more and for the long term, I 'd
| much rather see the majority of that amount being spend on
| better services.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| And I can't wait for the usual politicians from FDP and Union
| to draw the conclusion that free or cheaper public transport
| will forever be unfeasible, not that we need to invest more
| into the rail network.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Here in Hamburg it's really the busses that get overwhelmed.
| The S-Bahn and U-Bahn are rarely overly full compared to the
| busses.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| I'm from the south of Hamburg. The lines served by Metronom
| are probably the most tightly scheduled around. They don't
| even have time to stop at the terminus most of the time, so
| they carry delays forward throughout the entire day. The
| reason no S-Bahn goes far south is also that Dostos can
| still carry more people despite the slow
| acceleration/breaking.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Hmm, so social distancing is truly gone and they don't fear this
| action massively spreading the COVID virus?
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| I guess the German health minister and quite a bit of regional
| health ministers would be thrilled if the numbers of Covid-19
| cases increase. Then they can try again to push that mandatory
| vaccination that failed last time in parliament only due to
| interpersonal ego issues.
|
| They already ordered a few hundreds of millions of vaccines.
| _ph_ wrote:
| FFP2 masks are still mandatory and it isn't as if the regular
| trains were not crowed before.
| Tenoke wrote:
| FFP2 mask are still mandatory on public transport (at least in
| Berlin) but generally nobody is concerned anymore, and even
| less so for the Summer.
| netsharc wrote:
| Feels like the European governments' (I generalize...) thinking
| is, the vaccine is available, it's good enough, and Omicron is
| "not that bad" anyway, so, if you don't want to get vaccinated,
| it's on you, but let's get on with our lives...
| avianlyric wrote:
| The EU has a 78% vaccination rate and a 52% booster rate.
| Mask usage in public places is generally very high. The EU
| never turned vaccination and masks into divisive political
| and cultural issue.
|
| All of this compares very favourable to the US where
| vaccination is 65% and boosters are 31%. Plus vaccination,
| mask usage and lockdowns became deeply decisive topics,
| substantially reducing the effectiveness of all of them. In
| the end it's place the US in bad spot for resolving the the
| pandemic quickly.
| Scarblac wrote:
| It's summer, everybody who wants to has three or even four
| vaccinations, most people have already had it on top of that,
| it's safe to say that Covid doesn't spread massively here at
| the moment.
|
| Maybe another wave with a new variant or in autumn, but it'll
| most likely be mild as omicron is and there is so much
| resistance built up now.
|
| So for all practical purposes, Covid is over at the moment.
| RGamma wrote:
| For comparison: The equivalent, non-subsidised "Quer durchs
| Land"-Ticket costs 42EUR for one person per day (70EUR for 5
| people per day) -- https://www.bahn.de/angebot/regio/qdl
| lispm wrote:
| That ticket is not equivalent. That ticket is only for Deutsche
| Bahn and similar.
|
| OTOH, the 9-Euro-Ticket is for all (!) local transport (incl.
| bus, ferry, ...) and regional trains. That means here in
| Hamburg I can use all bus, underground train and ferry
| connections. It's also all month, 24hours/day.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| There are also the cheaper Landestickets which offer the same,
| but limited to one (or two) Bundesland and usually starting
| from EUR25. Those offer good value for tourists exploring a
| region too (in the absence of this EUR9 ticket).
| freeflight wrote:
| Wow, that has gotten expensive. I still remember when the
| similar "Wochenendticket" cost like 20EUR and would even allow
| to bring along some extra people, tho that was like 20 years
| ago.
| franciscop wrote:
| When it gets crowded in Tokyo trains you are literally pushed
| against each other, back to front people against people,
| specially bad in summer where the aircon cannot keep up. That's
| only at 9am normally though, and so I do not consider jobs that
| make me be in the office at that time (9:30~10 is an order of
| magnitude better). WFH has been a blessing to Tokyo.
|
| So it was funny when I visited my sister in a rural town in
| England, and there was a festival so we took the bus to get
| there. It was obvious the bus was more crowded than usual, and
| people were grumpy, but from my point of view it was almost
| empty; people were within an arm's distance from each other,
| which for the locals probably used to less than half the people
| that was very crowded.
|
| I wonder if the same will happen on the trains in Germany. Japan
| is used to this though, and they have powerful ventilation and
| aircon systems to alleviate the situation in summer.
| april_22 wrote:
| People in Germany are typically not very contact friendly and
| since COVID it got way worse. People here rather stand than sit
| next to a stranger, sometimes even across. The trains will be
| beyond crowded this summer (especially the ones going to the
| sea), so it will be interesting to watch how people will react.
| I think though the ticket will mainly be used by younger people
| which are typically more open to this.
| [deleted]
| paganel wrote:
| If the recent street scenes in Frankfurt are anything to go
| by I'd say people will be just fine, as long as there will be
| something to celebrate/look forward to :) (either a fantastic
| football win, like in Frankfurt, or waiting to get to the
| seaside, like in your example).
| wongarsu wrote:
| There are long distance trains like the RE (or ICE, which is
| not covered by this ticket) which are designed around everyone
| being seated, and there are commuter trains like the S-Bahn
| which are designed to have enough seating space for normal
| hours and lots of standing space for rush hour. The former are
| very uncomfortable when overfilled, the latter are designed
| around it in terms of ventilation, number of doors etc.
|
| I've been in a couple of people-shoving-level crowded commuter
| trains when traveling to popular consumer trade fairs, and it
| was ok. Most people took it as part of the experience.
|
| The biggest issue will be people trying to cross the country,
| packing 40 year old REs beyond their limit in the hottest time
| of year.
| Tenoke wrote:
| The more busy Sbahn lines (e.g. Ring Bahn) absolutely did get
| crowded enough that you couldnt even always get in pre-covid
| at peak times, and I suspect it will be even worse in the
| next 3 months.
| goodpoint wrote:
| Don't you know that there are seats on long-distance trains?
|
| Unless people start sitting on each other's lap the aircon
| capacity is not going to be exceeded.
| franciscop wrote:
| This article seems to be discussing local mass-passenger
| trains going from town to town in Germany, so I assumed it
| was trains with seats + passengers standing. Is that not the
| case for the purpose of this article?
| Symbiote wrote:
| On these trains you expect a seat outside rush hour.
|
| It will be a less comfortable seat than a long distance
| train.
| germanier wrote:
| In German long-distance trains, seat reservations are not
| mandatory and capacity is planed while taking into account
| that some passengers might not get a seat. Most regional
| trains (which is where this ticket is valid) don't even offer
| seat reservations.
| fho wrote:
| > they have powerful ventilation and aircon systems
|
| ... well ... the ICEs AC is known to fail regularly at elevated
| temperatures :-)
| kuschku wrote:
| Well, they were designed to survive everything except an
| every-100-years summer (36degC sustained outdoor
| temperatures) back in the 80s, which now happens to be every
| summer.
|
| Even the trains ordered in 2000 were designed for an
| every-100-years summer (40degC sustained outdoor
| temperatures) which now some regions are hitting every year
| as well.
|
| The issue isn't the ACs, the real issue is climate change ;)
| namibj wrote:
| But per Carnot, maintaining a fixed temperature
| differential against a fixed thermal resistance is cheaper
| (requires less work) at a higher temperature
| (1/(1-(Tcold/Thot)) is the carnot-limited "coefficient of
| performance" for a heat pump). So theoretically they should
| be able to maintain the design differential even at higher
| outdoor temperatures, causing indoor temperatures to raise
| from ~21degC to 26degC comparing the "still works at
| 35degC" and "40degC happens regular in $current_year".
| MandieD wrote:
| Very important caveat for all of you who are thinking, "woo hoo,
| no need to buy that EuRail pass! Or to buy an expensive ICE
| ticket!"
|
| These tickets are good for all "Nah- und Regionalverkehr,"
| explicitly excluding ICE, IC, EC (international) and long-
| distance busses (like the one between Munich and Zurich)
|
| If the train number begins with RE or RB, you're good, but of
| course, those are the slow ones that stop in every village along
| the way.
|
| This is for the benefit of people who live here and are
| struggling with 2 EUR/liter fuel, not the kind of people who
| blithely paid 60 EUR to take the ICE. There does not appear to be
| any residency requirement, but remember, you're not the target
| market for this (unless you live here and are struggling with
| fuel prices...)
| steven_pack wrote:
| Did this 20 years ago, it was called Schoeneswochenende
| Fahrkarte "Good weekend" ticket. You could get all over the
| country, but real slow. I met loads of people and got invited
| to people's homes, because they didn't typically see an Aussie
| backpacker on a local train. Great times, go do it.
| nick_meister wrote:
| Yes! I went from Stuttgart to Berlin using the
| Schoeneswochenende Fahrkarte like 20 year ago, it took some
| time but since we were a group of friends, it was fun
| actually :) Ahh.. good memories
| not2b wrote:
| Yes, did that also. I live in California, but at the time my
| company had a group in Aachen that I worked with and I
| visited about four times a year. I often played tourist on
| the weekend and took trains all over the Rhineland. I used
| the cheap weekend ticket several times. But I usually didn't
| go that far, given my time constraints.
| macleginn wrote:
| One does not need a car to enjoy this. I live in a suburb of a
| big city and have to cross two zones to get to work. However,
| the yearly pass does not make sense for me because I cycle to
| the office half of the time and work from home on some days, so
| I'm quite happy that for three months my monthly commute will
| cost the same as a single round-trip ticket.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >This is for the benefit of people who live here and are
| struggling with 2 EUR/liter
|
| If 2 EUR/liter is too much for Germany, than it's enormous for
| my Eastern European country.
|
| I know we should support the war and sanctions and all those
| nice things, but some poor people depend on transportation for
| their living. If it costs too much, they might not be able to
| work. Already surges in food prices and utilities prices made
| life very hard for the most unfortunate of my countrymen.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Germany is a rich country with poor people.
| freeflight wrote:
| Easy fix, just don't count the poor people [0]
|
| [0] https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/der-geschoente-
| armutsbe...
| ruune wrote:
| Article is about the government, consisting of CDU and
| SPD at the time (2017), removing important parts of their
| report on poverty. Affected were passages about the
| growing low-wage sector, wage inequality and inequality
| of wealth overall, as well as reports on how poverty
| affects political influence and the growth of the
| economy. It appears as if the government had a disregard
| about the social and democratic implecations of poverty.
| The previous government of CDU and FDP did something
| similar in 2012 and was criticized for it by the SPD
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I'd argue that poor people in poor countries are even
| poorer, although being poor is not a nice contest to have.
| usr1106 wrote:
| >>This is for the benefit of people who live here and are
| struggling with 2 EUR/liter
|
| > If 2 EUR/liter is too much for Germany, than it's enormous
| for my Eastern European country.
|
| Germans are always complaining although they are amongst the
| richest in Europe. In Finland it's 2,50 EUR/liter (somewhat
| less in the very south) and at least IT salaries are mostly
| lower.
|
| What I did not see mentioned here that gas(US)/petrol(UK)
| will also be temporarily subsidized (by tax reduction) by the
| same law package as this 9 EUR ticket.
|
| (German living in Finland.)
| maigret wrote:
| Car is probably not the right solution for all those people
| then. Even I wish I could reduce my dependency on cars.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Germany has since forever had the Schones Wochenende ticket
| which is a similar deal that can be used during the weekend. No
| need to be a resident or whatever. This is just a similar
| ticket that can be used during the summer holidays.
|
| It's very nice because as long as you don't mind it taking a
| lot of time you can take the train on holidays for very little
| money.
| dathinab wrote:
| > struggling with 2 EUR/liter fuel,
|
| Yes, exactly.
|
| The main benefits are in context of in and around city travel.
| Like e.g. a regular in-city ticket (area A,B not C) in Berlin
| cost 86EUR/month (but there are many ways to get it cheaper).
| Now for this 3 month it's 9EUR per month and covers all areas
| and you can even use it to get to day trip locations close to
| Berlin (like the "Spreewalt").
|
| So it's really a grate deal for locals.
|
| But if you want to travel longer distances IC/ICE are still the
| choice to go (if you can afford it), like Berlin->Kiel with
| IC/ICE is ~3.5h switching trains 1 time but with only using
| RB/RE it's >6h with switching 5 times.
| itronitron wrote:
| I am thankful that fuel prices are high because it makes the
| cost of my regular car maintenance seem remarkably inexpensive.
| unjustified wrote:
| > This is for the benefit of people who live here and are
| struggling with 2 EUR/liter fuel
|
| It's also for people normally using public transport.
|
| There's a city in northern Germany where a ticket for one day
| public transportation costs nearly 9EUR.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Somewhat off topic, but still:
|
| > long-distance busses (like the one between Munich and Zurich)
|
| Zurich is too deep in Switzerland to be covered anyways.
| (Salzburg, Kufstein, Basel Bad Bf, etc. however are in
| Austria/Switzerland but part of German rail rates and included
| in 9EUR tickets)
|
| And that DB bus doesn't exist anymore since the new electrified
| railway line to Lindau was opened two years ago, as Munucih-
| Zurich got way faster by train. (I guess Flixbus still offers
| it but Flix isn't part of 9EUR either)
| ptspts wrote:
| From Zurich to Munich by direct train is now 221 minutes
| instead of 245 minutes. It'z faster, but I wouldn't call it
| way faster.
|
| By bus it's 225 minutes, but the bus is often up to 30
| minutes late.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| That was the integration into the Swiss train schedule.
|
| They improved the line (electrification which allows better
| trains, moving tran station in Lindau from the island with
| old town to the shore etc.) in the first year they went
| from 4h30 to 4h. Where the trains were standing for about
| half an hour at St. Magrethen at the Austrian-Swiss border.
| In 2021 they improved signalling and adjusted schedules and
| got rid of that half an hour wait, so it's now at 3h35.
| 2143 wrote:
| (I haven't yet had the good fortune of visiting Europe).
|
| I can see why you said the train takes 221 minutes.
|
| However, "225 minutes" for bus? I know y'all are known for
| punctuality, but are buses in Switzerland/Germany that
| precise?!
|
| Also, is it customary to tell such durations in minutes, as
| opposed to something like "4 hour 45 minutes" or "4 and
| 3-quarter hours"?
|
| Where I'm at, nothing runs on time unfortunately. Over here
| I sometimes feel arrival times of trains should just say
| "morning" instead of showing an actual time like 8:20 am.
| [deleted]
| rootsandstones wrote:
| In 2021 91.9 percent of the trains in Switzerland were on
| time (tolerance is 3 minutes)
|
| Source:
|
| https://news.sbb.ch/artikel/109510/puenktlichkeit-2021-zw
| eit...
| 2143 wrote:
| What about buses? Are they also super-punctual?
| grp wrote:
| In cities, there are many bus lanes to bypass traffic.
| And they circulate several times per hour, 6 or more.
|
| Even if sometimes they are not punctual, the density
| saves you and you rarely think about it.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Not only are there lanes to bypass traffic, almost more
| important is that the traffic lights are controlled to
| prioritize the busses. Thus if a bus comes the traffic
| lights turn and hold green so that the cars in front of
| the bus can clear the crossing for the bus.
|
| And there are dense schedules, so that if one bus is
| delayed to some problem the next one is close by, thus
| gap is little.
| jyounker wrote:
| Yes. All jokes about Swiss punctuality are true.
|
| I say this as someone who lived in Zurich for two years.
| metacritic12 wrote:
| Thank you for the disclaimer of the speed. Useful for travelers
| to note the time difference!
|
| Yet there is no need to guilt people into it being "German
| only". The ticket is priced on the slow trains so it already
| selects for people who care more about money than time. Anyone
| who chooses a 9 Euro, 4-hour train over a dozens of Euro 1.5
| hour train is already not the "upper class".
| MandieD wrote:
| Hmmm, didn't realize it was coming off as "German only" - I
| wanted people to realize that this was designed for the
| benefit of less-wealthy residents of Germany, not the
| convenience of tourists, but that there's nothing stopping
| anyone from using it.
|
| Since it's not obvious, I'm not German, merely a permanent
| resident (US citizen).
| roystonvassey wrote:
| Given how notoriously unreliable even the IC and ICEs have
| gotten over the last few years ( i rarely travel but the three
| times I tried, the train was either substantially delayed or
| worse, canceled) , this is really a good deal.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Our Dutch Scouts of age 15-17 also plan their own camps and do
| so on a shoestring budget, and it turns out that yes you can
| get from the Netherlands to the Czech Republic with all your
| camping gear using only like fifteen different German regional
| trains :-)
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Related: We're a Czech couple, currently planning our
| vacation in the Netherlands, and we too are on a very tight
| budget. I wanted so bad to get there by train and spend the
| week there riding Dutch trains all over the place, but man,
| the train journey there and back is just as long as a car
| trip (~10-12 hours) and costs at least twice as much. Looks
| like we'll be taking our 50 MPG car instead and since it will
| be there with us, also using it to get around the country.
| Sorry about the pollution.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| Have you considered long distance buses from something like
| Flixbus? I live in Rotterdam and see them coming into the
| central station from all over Europe.
| notagoodidea wrote:
| Any travel by Flixbus longer than 6 - 8h is really
| painful imho, they are not really long-distance bus. They
| are nice for cheap big city hopping. Of course a lot of
| people do use them for longer trips but honestly, I don't
| know anyone that arrive from a long distance bus rested
| tbh also.
| tasuki wrote:
| I'm Czech. When I lived in Amsterdam, my sister came to
| visit by Flixbus. She's used to all kinds of travel, but
| boy was she destroyed by that journey...
| kzrdude wrote:
| Some people can sleep on such buses. I for sure can't. So
| I always prefer to go by bus over daytime (wasting a day)
| instead of the night (ruining both the night and the next
| day).
| pheelicks wrote:
| Take the night train via Regensburg (book via cd.cz) and
| arrive rested. Goes every Thursday
| tasuki wrote:
| Night trains are great! Do you have to transfer in
| Regensburg? There used to be a direct Prague-Amsterdam
| night train going through Berlin. I met some weird people
| on it, great times :)
| belter wrote:
| Now you know why so many still use the car in the
| Netherlands.
|
| "Dutch public transport is the most expensive in Europe":
| https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-expat-news/dutch-
| pu...
| gattilorenz wrote:
| > Dutch public transport is the most expensive in Europe"
|
| Yes. On the other hand, the comparison in frequency,
| punctuality and cleanliness between the cheap Italian
| regional trains and the average Dutch ones clearly
| favors, and by a large margin, The Netherlands. This
| might have an impact on the costs :)
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Don't think anyone disputes that. What they will say is
| how Tokyo still one-ups any major city in The Netherlands
| at a fraction of the price.
|
| GP is still very much right that The Netherlands, while
| being _better_ , isn't _good enough_ yet for most people
| to get rid of cars.
|
| >cleanliness
|
| Eh.. they certainly aren't _clean_ here.
| simlan wrote:
| The secret sauce is density and a dire need to get this
| right or congest that city beyond believe. But yes they
| do a good job.
| rjsw wrote:
| > Dutch public transport is the most expensive in Europe
|
| Only because the UK is no longer in the EU.
| belter wrote:
| "Transport in the Netherlands is 35% more expensive than
| the European average, putting it top of the ranking,
| above Denmark and the UK, broadcaster RTL said. The
| figures were released in mid December and relate to 2017.
|
| https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/01/dutch-transport-
| servic...
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Prague - Amsterdam by bus
|
| 13:30 hours - 120 EUR
|
| Look up Flixbus. It's slow, but cheap.
| Reason077 wrote:
| You could also buy this EUR9 ticket, go to a Czech border
| town, and take DB trains all the way to the Netherlands.
|
| For example, you could do Decin (Czech) to Glanerbrug
| (Netherlands) in 12.5 hours with only 7 changes, all on
| RB/RE and S-Bahn trains.
|
| Of course, that's still going to be a long journey, but
| you can break it up anywhere you want and stay at cheap
| hotels in random German towns along the way that you
| otherwise would never have considered visiting!
| nixass wrote:
| To spend 13.5hrs in Flixbus, dear god..
| virtualritz wrote:
| I regularly take long distance flights.
|
| FlixBus seats, when reclined, are on par with economy
| seats in any airline I used. But FlixBus seats have
| considerable more legroom.
|
| Also the bus takes breaks on journeys that last for that
| many hours.
|
| Even some of the direct FlixBuses Berlin-Hamburg (3.5hs)
| take a 5min break at a petrol station somewhere in the
| middle of the journey.
| tawm wrote:
| Definitely take a shower right before departure. Your ass
| will thank you.
| siva7 wrote:
| 13.5 hours in a flixbus could be considered torture
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Somehow that didn't occur to me. It's much cheaper than a
| train, but it's also a bit slower than a car and it costs
| roughly as much as the fuel (no wear and tear though). So
| a bit cheaper overall.
|
| Buuut... I was on a school trip to the UK once where I
| spent 13 hours on a bus and I remember hating every
| second of it. Well, we'll consider it :)
| RektBoy wrote:
| Scarblac wrote:
| In the Netherlands, almost all train stations have
| bicycles for rent for 4.15 euro per day. You have one in
| minutes (uses the same card as paying for the train
| does). And there are bicycle paths everywhere. No need to
| take a taxi after taking a train.
| sdoering wrote:
| You lost me at "EU green-madness". It could have
| otherwise been a valid pov but this definitely changed
| the territory for me.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| You may be surprised to know that this is actually
| something people have thought about; turns out you would
| need extremely low utilization of the train, plus a very
| long journey at each end by car, plus one of the more
| inefficient train routes, for it to lose to the car or
| the plane. High speed trains are generally the least
| efficient in CO2/passenger km, so if you're looking to
| put this together then I would recommend France's
| excellent analysis of their carbon output on their
| routes.
|
| As one example, the Paris-Geneva TGV Lyria is 3.5 kg co2e
| per person per trip on an average utilization train. [0]
| Driving is 149 kg co2e per vehicle; average occupancy is
| 1.12 to 1.6 people per car but let's be generous to your
| idea and say we have a full average Swiss family of 2.3
| people along for the ride. So driving is 64.7 kg co2e per
| person. It's a 5.5 hour drive, so let's be very favorable
| to the car again and say they have a 1 hour taxi ride at
| each destination. You're now at a total of 23.2kg taxi +
| 3.5kg train = 26.7kg total, or half that of driving; as
| you can see even a 10x capacity reduction in the train
| would still make the train more efficient. It's
| remarkably hard to beat a train with anything other than
| a bus, and you'll need a fairly efficient bus and a
| fairly inefficient train for that.
|
| [0] https://www.tgv-lyria.com/sites/default/files/inline-
| files/t...
| master-lincoln wrote:
| The train will go independently of utilization so no
| matter how few seats are occupied, using a car instead
| will lead to more emissions (noise, particles from tires,
| exhaust gases incl. CO2). Why do you think taking a taxi
| to/from a train station makes the whole trip take more
| emissions than taking a car for the whole ride?
|
| Which other factors would need to be counted in? I
| honestly can not imagine a scenario where using a car is
| better for the environment than using a train...
|
| > Please don't push this EU green-madness.
|
| Please make an argument that your position should not be
| considered madness.
|
| I am myself not taking a train very often, but that is
| because it's often more expensive than using my car, less
| flexible and not as comfortable (mostly because I don't
| feel comfortable around strangers).
| april_22 wrote:
| Especially for traveling across Germany, this ticket isn't
| quite useful, however I feel like it is marketed as "free
| traveling across Germany for a month" which isn't really the
| case. Am wondering how everything will play out next couple
| of months.
| dathinab wrote:
| But if you travel across Germany you still likely want to
| use public transportation at the place where you come
| from/go to. Especially in inner cities using car can be a
| problem, parking can be very limited and/or very expensive.
| The ticket is cheaper then a 4x-rabat-bundle of "one way
| single trip" tickets in Berlin and Berlin is by far not the
| most expensive city wrt. local public transportation.
|
| So even then it's a good deal.
|
| The "traveling across Germany" advertisement is less about
| "you want to get to place B as far as possible" but more
| about "you want to travel and see a lot of places
| eventually ending up at place B" something the DB believes
| students like to do (if you look at other ads or thinks
| like the "Quer durchs Land" ticket.
|
| Anyway the ticket is mainly for people which use (or maybe
| now have to use) public transportation for daily usage
| (e.g. to/from work).
|
| I.e. the people mostly profiting from it are the people
| which don't have a lot of money. Which is grate as they are
| also the people hardest hit by the increased costs of more
| or less everything.
| rob74 wrote:
| Well, you _can_ travel across Germany if you don 't mind
| changing trains several times. And the "free traveling
| across Germany" means that _one_ ticket is valid for _all_
| regional trains and _all_ public transport in all Germany
| (as opposed to e.g. a ticket bought in Munich only being
| valid in the Munich region), which is quite a good offer
| anyway...
| pflenker wrote:
| It's not uncommon to travel through Germany using only the
| regional trains. There are several tickets tailored to
| this, like the "Quer durch's Land Ticket", which is valid
| for a full day.
|
| I, for one, used to travel a lot through Germany using only
| the Wochenendticket, which is the predecessor of the "Quer
| durch's Land" - Ticket and was only valid on Saturday or
| Sunday.
| kuschku wrote:
| DB always had weekend or summer tickets that were heavily
| discounted and only allowed regional trains. Especially
| young adults and teenagers use those every year, they're
| perfect if you've got more time than money.
| Someone wrote:
| If you're not only doing it for getting from A to B but
| also for the journey and have time, this can be a great
| deal.
|
| Even if you really want to get to B, it's more adventurous
| and cheaper than taking a direct train.
|
| I can easily see teenagers or pensioners use this to
| backpack through Germany for a month. Even if you don't
| know whether you'll like it, it's cheap enough to give it a
| try.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| > "free traveling across Germany for a month"
|
| It's 3 months
| jeroen wrote:
| No, it's 1 month (in a 3 month period):
|
| > For 9 euros, you can travel throughout Germany on
| local/regional trains for a whole month in June, July or
| August.
| kingofpandora wrote:
| Pro-tip: buy three tickets!
| a2800276 wrote:
| You can buy one each month, though. Even of you just use
| it for metropolitan transit, it's super cheap. My monthly
| pass (reduced because it only valid after 9 am so
| commuters have to pay more) costs 75 EUR. A single ticket
| ist 2.80. This is a good deal in almost any scenario
| where you take and applicable train.
| FabHK wrote:
| > so commuters have to pay more
|
| or start later...
| tuukkah wrote:
| From the linked page:
|
| > _The 9-Euro-Ticket is available in the period from 1
| June 2022 to 31 August 2022._
|
| > _It is valid for one calendar month, from 00:00 on the
| 1st until 24:00 on the 30th /31st._
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > If the train number begins with RE or RB, you're good, but of
| course, those are the slow ones that stop in every village
| along the way.
|
| Well, that is not exactly true now, is it. REs do actually skip
| the vast majority of "villages" and are far from being the slow
| ones, comparatively.
|
| Anyway, for comparisons sake here is some Hamburg -> Berlin
| options:
|
| - By car (with low traffic, according to GMaps): 3h20
|
| - Regional Trains (the ones you can use with 9-eur-ticket):
| 4h10, including 1-3 train changes depending on connection
|
| - All trains: 1h50 with no change
|
| Given that going by car will be considerably more expensive
| than a regional ticket (even the none-9-eur version) I would
| say that +1h might be a reasonable trade-off for a lot of
| people.
| kuschku wrote:
| Actually, the Hamburg-Berlin IRE should be covered by this
| ticket as well, which requires no changes at all.
| germanier wrote:
| That train isn't running since 2020 and last December they
| have announced that won't be coming back for the
| foreseeable future.
| kuschku wrote:
| Really? Oh no :( I never got a chance to take it, from
| what I heard it was a fun experience.
| usr1106 wrote:
| IRE trains are extremely rare. They have never been a
| regular product, but results of local political bargaining
| after the popular IR trains were discontinued ages ago.
| april_22 wrote:
| There is a RE from Hamburg to Berlin?
| kuschku wrote:
| There used to be an IRE, which stands for inter-regio-
| express. But apparently it was discontinued during covid.
| end0r wrote:
| No, RE stands for 'Regional Express'. There is RE between
| Hamburg and Bargteheide for example, but Berlin is too
| far away. REs are rather for commuters from nearby towns.
| dathinab wrote:
| No you have to switch trains at least once.
|
| Also the travel takes ~4h15m (RE->RE) instead of ~1h50m
| (ICE).
|
| If your traveling at a time where the RE is not over
| crowded and you can spend the time well it's okay. If
| not, especially if the train is overcrowded in parts of
| the travel and it's really hot it's shit.
| virtualritz wrote:
| There is also FlixTrain for e.g. Hamburg--Berlin (or vice
| versa) which is demand-priced.
|
| And includes a reserved seat.
|
| I went for 4.99EUR last month - twice (taking early morning
| trains).
| IMTDb wrote:
| This is assuming that your trip starts and stops exactly next
| to the train station and that there is a non-delayed train
| available precisely at the right time. In practice that's not
| the case and those time add up _quickly_.
|
| Car trip will look like: 1. Travel from start
| to location (3:20) 2. Find parking (0:5) 3. Walk
| from parking to location (0:10)
|
| Total time of 3:35
|
| Your train trip will look like: 1. Go from
| start to train station (0:20) 2. Wait for train (0:10)
| 3. Train to Berlin (1:50) 4. Train station to location
| (0:20) 5. Wait at location because there was no better
| train (1:00)
|
| Total time of 3:40.
|
| It stil might be worth it to use the train, as you can
| work/read in the train which you can't do in a car.
|
| But for the train to be working it needs planets to be
| aligned: start location must be within reasonable distance to
| train station; end location must be within reasonable
| distance to train station; train travel speed is
| significantly faster than cars; train schedule is aligned
| with desired arrival time. If _any_ of these conditions are
| not met, the train option does not work
| jupp0r wrote:
| You are making the assumption that it's one person
| traveling. If I imagine me traveling with my family, then
| the tradeoffs would look quite different:
|
| 1. There's only one driver in the car, so all other
| passengers could still work/read during the drive.
|
| 2. The cost is split. With three kids and two parents, the
| cost would be 45 EUR vs 50 EUR traveling with a somewhat
| fuel efficient car with an internal combustion engine. This
| is only fuel price and deprecation of the car is not
| accounted for and would be more.
|
| 3. The stress of switching trains multiple times with small
| kids, putting clothes on in the cold, making sure they
| don't bump into people, etc can totally negate any "you
| don't have to navigate traffic" benefits.
|
| 4. You usually don't travel from main railway station in
| city A to main railway station in city B. Getting to your
| actual destination can also be a slow and complicated
| affair with public transportation, especially in
| conjunction with 5.
|
| 5. Luggage can be problematic. If you are traveling with
| children, moving multiple heavy suitcases from one train to
| another while simultaneously taking care of kids can be a
| nightmare.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| That's what happens when ideological truth and real world
| truth collide.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| As someone who generally prefers public transit to
| driving (especially in a foreign country - a lot will
| depend on _where_ you 're traveling. I usually travel
| solo but think in general it would scale pretty well. Of
| course if your kids are poorly behaved then it'll be more
| of a challenge.
|
| I think having some familiarity with the infrastructure
| can go a long way into making the trip easier. Knowing
| where platforms are, which stations are easier to
| transfer at, etc.
|
| 2 - Don't forget road tolls, parking, and surprise
| maintenance.
|
| 3 - The most consistent "pain point" I've seen with
| transferring is simply walking from platform to platform.
| I can only think of a handful of stations that I'd
| actually consider difficult (e.g. BART's Millbrae and
| Madrid's Atocha station).
|
| 4 - Again, parking. In most big cities you're not going
| to roll right up to your destination and park.
|
| 5 - My experience has been it's as difficult as you make
| it. Hell I saw someone bring a refrigerator on Muni. Some
| places like Japan have low cost courier services that
| entirely negate the need to bring luggage with you. Just
| drop it off with the courier at the airport and have it
| sent to the hotel or nearest 7-11. In other places you'll
| find luggage racks or areas on the trains. Alternatively,
| pack less stuff. If you're traveling by car and need to
| use a rooftop box don't forget the hefty fuel consumption
| penalty.
| smlacy wrote:
| I'm not sure what "Wait at location because there was no
| better train" means?
|
| Are you massuming a 3h40m trip for a specific time-based
| appointment? I think the use case of this kind of train is
| more similar to a flight with one or more nights at
| destination, so that the specific arrival time is not that
| important.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Let's say you have an appointment at location 15 minutes
| away from train station at 9:00 and your train arrives at
| 7:45. You will have to wait for 1 hour and probably spend
| this time unproductively and maybe even at extra cost
| (e.g. you choose to get a cup of coffee and a sandwich in
| a restaurant nearby).
| rurban wrote:
| If I have an appointment, I'll rather take the train, be
| rested and have enough time in the train to prepare for
| the meeting. all the trains have wifi and power.
|
| In Germany the trains are also faster than cars on the
| Autobahn, even if I theoretically could drive 180km/h.
| All my travels from Dresden to Berlin, Leipzig or
| Frankfurt are faster by train than by car. ICE only.
|
| Now with this offer, the slow RE trains only, it's slower
| than by car, but still more attractive. Just if I have a
| meeting far outside a big town, and bad connections (say
| the bus only goes every 30min) and I have to walk 10min,
| I'll take the car. For my next travel to the Leipzig
| Kanupark I'll take the car, but all other business and
| leisure trips are by train. For the last 3 years already.
| LosWochosWeek wrote:
| Yeah, if you plan your appointment at a place 300km away
| willy nilly without checking the train schedule _and_ if
| you plan your car drive in a way that you dont plan for
| any congestions leaving Hamburg, on the Autobahn,
| entering Berlin (good luck!), then yeah: The car is more
| expensive, more tiring, and slower. But get this: Instead
| of having an hour you can spend at your destination to
| your liking, you get to use that extra hour driving your
| car! Congratulations!
|
| Sorry but that has to be the most contrived and
| ridicilous statement I've ever read. And this is coming
| from someone -- me -- who owns two cars, lives in Berlin
| and practically never uses public transportation.
| nottorp wrote:
| I believe the OP who started this is not familiar with
| public transport travel.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| In many cases you are absolutely right, the appointment
| times can be adjusted according to train schedule,
| destinations are nice places where you can find something
| to do in between etc. Public transportation in Germany in
| most cases is better than cars (I do not even have
| driving license for that reason - never needed it).
| Still, the calculation logic is right: when you travel
| somewhere to be there at certain time, you need to
| include some buffers in your planning, both for trains
| and for cars. Every 4th train in Germany arrives with
| delays and not every appointment can be planned for your
| convenience.
| usr1106 wrote:
| > even at extra cost (e.g. you choose to get a cup of
| coffee and a sandwich in a restaurant nearby).
|
| That's the pessimist's view. The optimist wanders around
| and randomly finds a place they would never have found
| otherwise. I mostly do the first. Sometimes I find
| something truly interesting. Sometimes not, but I don't
| think the unproductivity you mention has harmed me. (Yes,
| occasionally I absolutely have to hack something, so I
| search the first place where I can use my laptop. But I
| try to avoid that in all but the most familiar cities.)
| cjrp wrote:
| If I was driving I'd aim to arrive pretty early too
| (random traffic happens).
| IMTDb wrote:
| > I think the use case of this kind of train is more
| similar to a flight with one or more nights at
| destination, so that the specific arrival time is not
| that important.
|
| OP was explicitly comparing car and trains, not flight
| and trains.
|
| If that's the case, then we are more in the context of a
| "city trip", and Hamburg -> Berlin might not be the most
| representative case. Something along the line of Hamburg
| -> Rome is more accurate as people usually like more
| change of scenery. Flight from Hamburg to Rome is 2:20
| and train is 19 hours. Even accounting for airport wait
| time, the difference is ridiculous.
|
| The issue for passenger transport with rails is that it's
| not good for small distances as cars have the advantage
| because of the added convince/flexibility, and for long
| distances, flight is better due to speed.
|
| For freight, however, train is _amazing_ as these extra
| hours don 't matter too much and the reduction in
| emissions is massive. The issue is that there aren't that
| many dedicated cargo flights. Most cargo revenue come
| from transporting freight in the holds of passenger jets.
| So moving cargo from flights to trains does not lead to a
| direct reduction in CO2 emission since those planes are
| going to fly anyway.
| gnatolf wrote:
| OTOH, you make it seem like it's super easy to find
| (free?) parking anywhere near your destination, I'd guess
| the unknowns about that even out with the blanket
| assumption of '1 hour to get wherever you wanted to
| really be'.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > Most cargo revenue come from transporting freight in
| the holds of passenger jets.
|
| Is this really true? DHL, FedEx, and UPS (and Amazon?)
| all operate their own freight aircraft. There are also
| contract freight operators. Most major airports have an
| entire area that is exclusively for freight operations.
|
| Yes some freight does go in the holds of passenger jets,
| but is it "most" or even close?
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Yes, and during the pandemic when passenger traffic
| cratered passenger airlines started putting additional
| cargo in the passenger cabin. China started cracking down
| on that recently though (unsure why). Freight is
| generally far more profitable than passengers.
| tyrfing wrote:
| Roughly half of air freight is carried on passenger
| planes.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-10/air-freight-
| prices.ht...
| oneplane wrote:
| I don't think anyone living in a country with reasonable
| public transport and uses it actually thinks that that is
| how it works.
|
| I get the feeling that there might be a whole lot of "it
| sucks in my country so you probably have a bad experience
| too" replies here (not yours as it's quite a clear
| illustration of details people might miss), and I would
| almost immediately assume it'll be mostly people from the
| US who are car-bound for their transport needs.
|
| The idea that you can life a nice and productive life and
| go places as you please without dring a car is very foreign
| to some people. Even the idea of switching it up and having
| some work commute by bike or bus seems like a 'poor people
| thing' to some people. It's weird.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" It stil might be worth it to use the train, as you can
| work/read in the train which you can't do in a car."_
|
| Also, at EUR9 for a ticket that lasts a month, you're going
| to save an awful lot of money compared to taking the car.
| dathinab wrote:
| Yes I mean a 4-bundle of "single one direction" tickets
| in Berlin (limited to inside of Berlin, not even
| including the Airport) costs 9.40...
|
| A Uber/Taxi also easily costs more then 9EUR even for
| short distances.
| consp wrote:
| You should add at least one 15 min car stop. After an hour
| or two you are not focused anymore.
| Beltiras wrote:
| Finding parking is hilariously underestimated for any metro
| area I've been to.
| andi999 wrote:
| Surrender and find the cheapest parkhaus before you go.
| Pamar wrote:
| I, too, have some questions about your 1:00 waiting due to
| _" no better train being available"_
|
| I am familiar only with Italian and German trains (i.e. use
| these regularly, but occasionally I also used trains in/to
| Austria, Luxembourg, Hungary).
|
| You seem to think that in order to go to Berlin by train
| someone living, say, in Rostock, first goes to the station
| then looks when the next available train departs.
|
| In reality you can just use apps on your phone to get not
| only a timetable of departures but also find out how long
| it will take for you to get to the station using public
| transportation.
|
| Example: this Sunday I go visit friends near Hamburg. I
| have booked a 7:08am train already (with iPhone) and on
| Sunday morning, depending when I am ready, I can walk to
| the station (25 mins) or look what bus to take and at what
| time from the nearest bus stop (5 mins from home).
| codefreeordie wrote:
| The parent's point is that if you actually wanted to get
| there at any time other than exactly when the 7:08a train
| arrives, say because you have an appointment at a set
| time, then you're going to end up having a wait somewhere
| along your journey because the train wasn't on your ideal
| schedule.
|
| For example, if that train arrives at 10:08a, say, and
| the next train is the 9:09a which arrives at 12:09a, and
| you had an 11:00a appointment, you're going to wait 45
| minutes at your destination because you couldn't arrive
| closer to the target time.
| logifail wrote:
| > The parent's point is that if you actually wanted to
| get there at any time other than exactly when the 7:08a
| train arrives, say because you have an appointment at a
| set time, then you're going to end up having a wait
| somewhere along your journey because the train wasn't on
| your ideal schedule.
|
| If you're travelling a significant distance by car for an
| appointment at a fixed time, don't you have to allow
| extra time for traffic?
|
| (Depending on just how much traffic there might be) if
| the roads are "normal" you might well end up arriving at
| the destination 30 mins or even 45 mins early?
| codefreeordie wrote:
| Yeah, if I was going far, I'd allow extra time, for sure.
|
| I don't actually live in Germany, so I don't really know
| how frequent these trains run.
|
| I have really only one example, where I missed a train
| from Frankfurt to Bingen, and had to pay a fortune for a
| cab ride because the next train was 3h later and I'd miss
| my planned day.
|
| But if that's a common frequency, the train can work out
| to be inconvenient, because you will have only a very few
| times you can plan on without building in lots of
| waiting.
|
| If you're going a far distance with an hourly service,
| it's probably convenient enough for most things, provided
| you never miss a train.
| Pamar wrote:
| While if you use a car you are at the mercy of
| "baustelle" (roadworks) and constantly risk to have
| slowdowns (e.g entering a major city at critical times).
|
| Until we have Star Trek teleports no single method of
| travel is "absolutely best". But dismissing trains
| altogether because they do not run at your own
| convenience looks a bit of a strawman to me.
|
| I do not own s car anymore, but when it is really the
| best option I rent one. But I also check first if a bus
| or train gives me reasonable guarantees to reach my
| destination in time (if they do, they are also way
| cheaper, especially since COVID, at least here).
| anonyfox wrote:
| Also remember we're talking Autobahn here! Gmaps assumes
| upto 130kp/h... depending on your car and driving style you
| could drive 200kp/h++ (at least partially when there's no
| speed limit)
|
| -> I'd challenge the 3:20h driving time, would probably
| more like 2:30h in ideal conditions
| jupp0r wrote:
| The ability to do that will be highly traffic dependent.
| In practice, driving that fast when possible doesn't
| shave more than a few minutes time off the overall travel
| duration from my own experience.
| jansan wrote:
| Of course, as with all train connections, you have to add the
| time to get to/from the station and some buffer.
| lucioperca wrote:
| As usual in big cities you need to add the time for walking
| to your car and for finding a parking space in the end.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| And add 30 minutes that you are stuck in downtown traffic
| because your meeting starts at an inconvenient time.
|
| I can't speak for all of Europe, but here in Austria
| trains, trams, and subways are way more predictable than
| taking the car. Sure, sometimes there are delays, but 99%
| of the time you get to your destination on schedule. When
| you drive you always have the risk of random delays due
| to traffic.
| usr1106 wrote:
| Deutsche Bahn is very far from 99% punctuality.
| Statistics were published only recently and they pointed
| down once again. But to be fair going by car is hardly
| better, you can get stuck more or less unexpectedly in
| most somewhat busy places.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| I can't really talk about DB, I rarely take the ICE.
|
| But I also want to point out that I didn't say that
| public transit is 99% on time, I said I get to my
| destination on time 99% of the time. Often when a
| train/tram/subway is late I can just take a different one
| and still get to my destination on time.
|
| If there is a delay on a long journey, I usually know
| hours in advance, and I can let people know I'm going to
| be late. But it's a very rare occurrence in my
| experience.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| This week I had two business trips on ICE trains. It was
| exactly like in statistics (only 75% trains come on
| time), one of them delayed by 20 minutes just before
| departure due to "unauthorized people on the tracks".
| This was the 3rd incident with DB during my travels this
| year (before that I had my connection train from
| Frankfurt cancelled while I was on the 2 hour long flight
| there).
|
| One of the delays that I experienced with DB couple years
| ago was related to a complete change of the train route
| that happened after departure (!). Some unlucky
| passengers had to leave at the next station and check how
| they can get to their destinations at Reisezentrum.
| Travel time was increased by 1 hour for me.
| misja111 wrote:
| > There does not appear to be any residency requirement, but
| remember, you're not the target market for this (unless you
| live here and are struggling with fuel prices...)
|
| I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Do you mean that non
| Germans should refrain from buying these tickets?
| MandieD wrote:
| I'm trying to say that although anyone is free to buy them,
| they're not designed for city-to-city tourist convenience or
| even as a good substitute for the IC/ICE product for long-
| distance, car-comparable-speed travel.
|
| They're for making short, local trips more affordable in a
| country that has a lot of people struggling with fuel and
| inflation, and for encouraging drivers to consider transit
| instead more often, and long-distance trips to the sea shore
| and mountains are a nice side benefit that is a pleasant
| thing to discuss when we all feel like there's a shortage of
| pleasant things to discuss.
|
| That they'll make local transit uncomplicated for visitors
| (no trying to work out where to buy a given city's tickets,
| or exactly which fare you need for a particular subway ride!)
| is also a nice incidental, and I, a taxpayer here, will be
| happy to see tourists using them, but that's not why the
| Bundestag is spending 2.5 billion EUR on this.
| generationP wrote:
| It's also for the benefit of hikers, sightseers and whoever
| else needs places that aren't served by the IC/EC/ICE network.
| I have a BahnCard 50 (a subscription that halves the price of
| each trip) and yet it would have saved me over 100EUR last
| summer. Note that some of the local bus associations aren't
| particularly cheap; it's not just the trains.
|
| My main worry is whether they'll have the resources to put up
| with the increased demand. Guess I'll see soon...
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "My main worry is whether they'll have the resources to put
| up with the increased demand. Guess I'll see soon..."
|
| My train ticket inspector vents to everyone how they do not.
| (they get the heat)
|
| I think it will work out, but will be very crowded at times.
| Or rather, even more crowded. They are already bad at scaling
| up or down, at a sunny sunday for example. Also this is,
| because they have allmost nothing to scale up. This is a long
| term investment.
| User23 wrote:
| This is still a screaming deal. It's been a while, but this is
| like getting multiple Monatskarten for for single Tageskarte
| prices.
| germanier wrote:
| > If the train number begins with RE or RB, you're good
|
| A few days ago Deutsche Bahn has started to label some trains
| with an RE number (e.g. running Norddeich-Bremen or Stuttgart-
| Singen) with "9-Euro-ticket not valid".
| _Microft wrote:
| There are Norddeich-Bremen connections with a remark that the
| 9-Euro-Ticket is not valid but these connections include a
| section/leg with an Intercity train (IC). The ticket is not
| valid for Intercity trains in general.
|
| There are other connections between these two places without
| having to go on an Intercity and these do not show the
| message.
| germanier wrote:
| These trains do have an RE number though, they show up when
| searching "local trains only" on the route planner (in that
| case the IC number will even only be visible after
| expanding details), and all other regional train tickets
| are accepted on those trains. This will confuse lots of
| people.
| Tomte wrote:
| The RE from Stuttgart to Singen (I used to ride that train
| regularly and did so recently again) has been co-labeled "IC"
| for some time now, even though the rolling stock is
| distinctly RE.
|
| It has been confusing even before the 9 Euro ticket.
| thesimon wrote:
| > even though the rolling stock is distinctly RE
|
| It is painted in white and the floor is carpeted, making it
| a IC train.
| Tomte wrote:
| Oh, maybe it was broken and I got a substitute when I
| took it a few months ago. Thanks, that's new to me!
| rob74 wrote:
| _[citation needed]_... I 'm not putting it above DB to do
| that, but that _really_ sounds like more trouble than it 's
| worth: endless hassle with passengers who think that the
| ticket is valid in _all regional trains_ (which has been
| repeated endlessly in the media for the last month, and also
| on the page we are commenting on), need to adapt the route
| planner to exclude these trains (an option "only regional
| trains" is already available) etc. etc.
| germanier wrote:
| Just search for any Norddeich-Bremen connection in the
| affected three months on the DB route planner with "only
| local transport" ticked and you will see the label on every
| second train. Well, after clicking "Show more information"
| and carefully reading the grey on white text.
|
| Edit: I tried in English and the warning didn't show up...
| Hopefully this link works as an example: https://reiseausku
| nft.bahn.de/bin/traininfo.exe/en/45678/209...
| fabioborellini wrote:
| It seems that both IC train number and RE line number
| appear for these kinds of trains, so for savvy passengers
| it is possible to recognise such connections. Allowing
| local travel in selected IC trains is pretty interesting,
| though.
| rob74 wrote:
| Ok, that's apparently a special case, that's an Intercity
| train (as can be seen from the "Operator: DB Fernverkehr
| AG" on the page above) that can _usually_ also be used
| with regional tickets, but DB apparently decided that
| doesn 't apply to the 9 EUR ticket. The trains are
| painted in DB's "long distance" livery, but I'm not sure
| how many passengers would interpret that as a clue that
| the 9 EUR ticket may not be valid...
|
| Paywalled article in German:
| https://www.nwzonline.de/plus-wirtschaft/9-euro-ticket-
| gilt-...
| germanier wrote:
| This is actually a pretty common model nowadays, as it
| saves the commissioning authorities quite some money
| compared to running actual local trains. See
| https://www.bahn.de/service/individuelle-
| reise/bahn_und_fahr... for an overview.
|
| People are used to use a regional ticket with those
| trains, and they show an "RE" number. This will likely
| lead to loads of discussions on the train if they will
| follow through with that.
| Aeolun wrote:
| That seems to defeat the point. Any idea why they'd do that?
| germanier wrote:
| These are all[0] long-distance trains that due to an
| agreement with the local transit commissioning authority
| accept regional train tickets and therefore got assigned an
| RE train number (some even added some stops due to such an
| agreement).
|
| [0]: I know of one exception, though it looks like an
| honest mistake.
| butterlesstoast wrote:
| For all the Americans. Converting from euros to USD and liters
| to gallons, gas is roughly $12 a gallon at this moment.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Out of curiosity, for people who live in small towns/villages
| in Germany, how much driving is expected on a typical day?
| Most Americans commute about half an hour, twice a day,
| right?
| hibbelig wrote:
| I live in a small city and work in a nearby larger city.deg
| The distance is 45km and it takes me about 45mins to drive
| the car, door to door.
|
| Public transport is pretty good on this connection, but
| overall it takes me 75-90 mins, because I need to change
| twice and there are wait times.
|
| deg Well, I'm working from home now...
|
| I used to live in a different, larger, city, and worked on
| the opposite side of the same city. Distance 13km. Driving
| commute 30 mins (middle of the night) to 45 mins (rush
| hour) each way. Public transport 90 mins...
| soco wrote:
| Not German, I live in a Swiss village and drive zero km a
| day. But I spend almost an hour/leg in public transport
| traveling door-to-door to the office when I go there (well,
| before covid much more often). I can also work in the train
| most of the time - 45 minutes of said hour - so that it
| counts as work time too. So, no reason to drive at all. I
| only take the car at weekends for doing shopping or doing
| some visits, even then not always.
| mbg721 wrote:
| The reason I ask is that there's a stereotype that
| German-speaking Europeans especially all go everywhere
| with hyper-efficient trains that come every three minutes
| and are only a little bit less on-time than the ones in
| Japan, and that can't actually be true out in the
| countryside.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, I think that most people understand that rural
| villages rarely have metro service; I don't think anyone
| was claiming that.
| soco wrote:
| And yet, it is true. Not everywhere trains obviously, but
| you'll have bus links to every dump - at least 5-6 a day
| and the closer you get to civilization the more often (up
| to every half an hour or whenever you have the train to
| the nearby station). They do come within a few minutes of
| schedule, no legend here - sometimes they even come a bit
| earlier and sometimes also wait hehe. Edit: my village
| has trains to the main city every half an hour and I can
| walk 10 minutes to the station or take a bus if the
| weather is nasty.
| mbg721 wrote:
| I'm from a medium-sized city on the US midwest, so my
| experience is that bus drivers sometimes decide "Fuck it,
| I'm not coming today," on a route where the schedule says
| they should be there every 30 minutes. I think most
| Americans outside of large cities have a similar
| experience. I was really struck going on vacation to San
| Francisco how together the bus schedule was, compared to
| how "meh" laid-back the city institutions I interacted
| with were about everything else.
| jyounker wrote:
| > I was really struck going on vacation to San Francisco
| how together the bus schedule was,
|
| Wow. Things must have improved incredibly in the last ten
| years.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Granted, I was trying to go up Grant in Chinatown, but
| you clearly haven't tried a crosstown bus in Cincinnati.
| Scooby Doo would have an easier time making a cake.
| archi42 wrote:
| Anecdata: A lot of people I know take about 20m (suburb to
| a major city) or about 30m (rural countryside), one way. My
| dad drives ~1h because in the country side he doesn't find
| a job in his area of expertise (now that we kids have left,
| they think about selling the house and moving to a better
| location).
|
| Better data:
| https://de.statista.com/infografik/13644/laenge-von-
| arbeitsw... Can't find how to change the language, even
| though it's an international page. The graph shows minutes
| per single way. The pie diagram seems to be a popular vote
| on "maximum acceptable time".
| tyingq wrote:
| The report seems to be sourced from here, which has more
| detail: https://www.stepstone.de/ueber-
| stepstone/press/mobilitaetsre...
| Tomte wrote:
| If you're living in the surrounding area of a larger city
| where you're working, I'd say half an hour to an hour is
| normal/average. With traffic jams sometimes double that.
| User23 wrote:
| I've lived in a village in Germany and I never drove. The
| village center and Strassenbahn stop were a five minute
| walk from my apartment. And that tiny little village had
| more independent butchers and bakers than most large
| American cities. It also had everything else you might need
| day to day. So the only real reason to take the train
| besides entertainment was commuting. Depending on where you
| worked that would be about 10-30 minutes one way by
| transit.
| nani8ot wrote:
| I live in a village 15km from the next big city (33th in
| terms of population). If I take the bus it'll take 40min
| because they take the longest route and stop at every
| little village with multiple stops each. The next town is
| 5km from my village and about the same from the city and
| the train takes 7-13min, depending on whether it's an RB or
| RE (they have more stops). Both train and bus arrive on a
| 30 min schedule from roughly 05:00 to 01:00.
|
| Edit: As a student I pay 90EUR for a "semester ticket" once
| every 6 months.
| pavlov wrote:
| Your math is off by 50%.
|
| A gallon is 3.785 litres, and the euro is roughly $1.05.
|
| So 2 euros per litre = one gallon costs $8.
| arghwhat wrote:
| *US liquid gallon
|
| A US liquid gallon is defined as 3.785411784 liters, the US
| dry gallon is 4.40488377086 liters, while the imperial
| gallon is 4.54609 liters. And that's just the currently
| used definitions...
|
| If I ask Google for "1 gallon in liters", it assumes
| Imperial gallons which would account for a good chunk of
| the error.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| To be fair, even google gets this wrong sometimes - "1
| gallon in gallons" = 1.2:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=1+gallon+in+gallons
| fabioborellini wrote:
| This seems to be localised, for me it highlights 3,78
| litres
| butterlesstoast wrote:
| Thank you for the correction. I should have done my math a
| bit better. I do appreciate this community for calling out
| incorrect data. One of the very few communities left that
| call errors out in a thought out way.
| kmonsen wrote:
| It's above $6/gallon here in the bar area even for the
| cheapest gas so the prices are not that different.
| User23 wrote:
| This is partly because California law requires special
| gas that not all refineries produce.
| mastax wrote:
| For reference gas in the USA costs between $5.60 (mostly in
| California) and $3.60 per gallon. (According to
| GasBuddy.com)
| april_22 wrote:
| Yes it is extremely expensive. However I don't think most
| people who have a car will use it. The trains will be
| extremely crowded and to get to any notable destination you
| will probably have to change a couple of times. I think
| people will just prefer using their car instead of having to
| stand in crowded trains for hours.
| gspr wrote:
| > The trains will be extremely crowded and to get to any
| notable destination you will probably have to change a
| couple of times.
|
| That's not true at all. There's lots of direct service to
| notable destinations. It's rather if you want to go to _un-
| notable_ destinations (which is of course something that
| people do a lot in their daily lives) that you can expect
| to have to transfer.
| Escapado wrote:
| When I was still in school about a decade ago an exchange
| student from the US was flabbergasted at our gas prices when
| she found out that the signs at the gas station would display
| the prices in EUR/l and not EUR/gallon. Quick googling shows
| that EUR/$ was 1.45 around that time and gas prices were
| around 1.42EUR/l which would be a little over 2.06$/l or
| 7.79$/gallon. At the time the gas prices in the US was
| 2.79$/gallon.
| jgehrcke wrote:
| The login system of the Bahn app amd website is experiencing
| issues right now -- wonder if it has to do with HN peak traffic,
| hm :).
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| This is fantastic. Despite the warnings to not count on it, these
| local trains generally will transport your bicycle. So you can go
| for a bike ride some distance from your home location (or from
| your home location and return by train if you don't feel like
| riding back). Practically for free.
| mariusor wrote:
| When you take your bicycle on public transport usually you
| require a special ticket for it.
| lispm wrote:
| Keep in mind that this is the website from Deutsche Bahn, which
| operates a lot of trains, regional trains and local trains. But
| not every public transport is from Deutsche Bahn. The 9-Euro-
| Ticket is valid for all public local transport, too - not just
| for the Deutsche Bahn.
|
| The ticket is for local transport operators, too. One can also
| buy the ticket there. A subscription ticket will be automatically
| converted. One can for example buy it at the local
| Verkehrsverbund (transit district), which here serves in Hamburg
| several million people with all kinds of regional trains, city
| trains, underground trains, busses, ferries, ...
|
| Thus one can use all (!!!) local and regional public transport
| for 9 Euro for a month, 24 hours a day, for all of Germany, for
| all public transport operators. The is done for three months,
| each month costs 9 Euro.
| wafriedemann wrote:
| Socialism is COOL
| mvexel wrote:
| Very cool. Reminds me of the "Wochenende-ticket" DB sold in the
| 90s. It was something like 30DM and was good for travel on all
| regional DB trains for up to 5 people.
|
| I used it with a group of friends to travel to Berlin from The
| Netherlands in 1993. I was a bit of a rail geek (still am, I
| guess) and had purchased a "Kursbuch" on a previous trip to
| Germany. This was a 2000 or so page, 3 pound book that contained
| all the timetables for all German trains. We pored over the
| timetables for hours to find an optimal route from the closest
| German border station to Berlin. I remember it being relatively
| few trains, something like Bad Bentheim - Osnabrueck - Bielefeld
| - Kassel - Dessau (!) - Berlin. It was a fun trip, lots of people
| were traveling long distance on local trains and Berlin attracted
| very...interesting people at that time.
|
| After arriving in Berlin we sold our ticket, which was still good
| for another day, for 15DM.
| flobosg wrote:
| DB was still selling those tickets (as Schones-Wochenende-
| Ticket) until 2019.
| mvexel wrote:
| I think that was what it was actually called back then too!
| Interesting that it's lived on all that time.
| Escapado wrote:
| I would argue making it free and keeping it free would have been
| a cool move. - Less/no expensive accounting - Less/no personnel
| for checking tickets - Less/no personnel for prosecuting people
| who don't have tickets - Less/no ticket vending machines (and all
| the maintenance that comes with it) - Less traffic on the roads
| since you can't beat "free" and hence less emissions (at least in
| hamburg trains operate on green energy) and less wear on the
| roads (might be offset by the wear on trains and busses) - Fully
| non-discriminant with respect to income
|
| I have no idea if that would work for inter-city transport but
| for inner-city transport the HVV for example (the public
| transportation network responsible for hamburg and surrounding
| areas) sells 30 million tickets a year and I wonder how much it
| truly costs them to do that with all the relevant factors
| mentioned above.
| the8472 wrote:
| A token price (9EUR/m is cheaper than even subsidized region-
| specific tickets for students or the elderly) likely has some
| benefits such as making it easy to count interest based on
| sales. It might also make the inrush a bit more manageable.
| aloe_falsa wrote:
| At least in Berlin, they tried to introduce a free ticket. It
| failed due to organizational reasons: https://www.berliner-
| zeitung.de/open-mind/scheitert-jetzt-au...
| jacobr1 wrote:
| > I have no idea if that would work for inter-city transport
|
| With inner-city transport, while free would undoubtedly have
| some marginal impact (and more over time as residential and
| commute patterns shift) there probably wouldn't be large shifts
| in use.
|
| I suspect for inter-city, you would actually see significantly
| increased usage, which could outweigh all the benefits cited.
| soco wrote:
| Increased usage outweighing the benefits...?? I'm confused by
| the wording, do you mean that in a good or a bad way?
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Probably commenting on local transit networks being
| generally at capacity during rush hour, which this would
| not improve.
|
| For example, in Munich, there is a ~10% cheaper version of
| the monthly ticket that is only valid after 9 AM. This kind
| of incentive shaping falls flat.
|
| (That is not to say I object to the new ticket, to be
| clear.)
| hhlevnjak2 wrote:
| Perhaps it would work in DE, but it can create wrong
| incentives.
|
| Here in Croatia, we had "free" public transport in some places
| for i.e. students travelling to school. But the price was still
| paid for by the cities/government to service operators. Which
| led to inflated prices for the service because there's always a
| way for the operator and some officials to collude together for
| extra profit. And the increases weren't transparent until at
| some point the tickets were no longer "free", and suddenly
| their cost was way over what it was before it became "free".
| soco wrote:
| Corruption always finds a way, with or without free
| transport. What I mean, that cannot be a reason to not
| provide some service, because also the paid transport is
| getting (or can be) corrupted I suppose, just like everything
| else.
| FabHK wrote:
| > Corruption always finds a way, with or without free
| transport.
|
| Indeed. I've taken the train in Romania with a Romanian
| friend. The ticket for both of us would have been X$, say,
| but she talked to the conductor and paid him 1/3 X$ in cash
| to "look the other way" and ignore us. Conductor pocketed
| that, we traveled cheaper, and the company lost the
| revenue.
| FabHK wrote:
| > - Less/no expensive accounting
|
| Not quite. Many people (eg commuters) have monthly train
| passes, almost all students have a "Semesterticket" (university
| enrolment is about 350 EUR every half year, but that includes
| all public transport in the region).
|
| Now, the 9-Euro-Ticket is cheaper than those options, so out of
| fairness the holders of all those tickets are getting a refund
| of 3 months worth of their pass minus 3x9=27 EUR, which is a
| huge administrative burden for the public transport providers
| and universities. That substantial burden would not have been
| reduced by having the ticket for free.
| VGltZUNvbnN1 wrote:
| I am going to need a citation for the substantial burden
| everything I read is that they are annoyed but its easy to
| do.
| FabHK wrote:
| Could well be that the complaining is exaggerated, but
| there is definitely complaining.
|
| > "Theoretically, all students would need to be reimbursed
| or credited 79.98 EUR each," says [speaker of Bochum
| University] Dessaul. An enormous administrative effort,
| because almost 43,000 young people study there.
|
| > The AStA (student council) [of Duisburg-Essen University]
| would have to initiate 40,000 bank transfers [for the
| refunds]. "This would be an incredible effort, especially
| given the limited number of people we have in treasury,
| finance, and on the board, that would be extremely
| difficult to manage and would probably also take
| considerable time"
|
| https://www.businessinsider.de/politik/deutschland/trotz-
| ber...
| Escapado wrote:
| You are right, however if it would have been made free and
| kept free indefinitely this would have been a one-time cost.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Farebox recovery ratios in Germany before Covid were around
| 75 %, so abolishing all fares would mean _quadrupling_ the
| budget for operating subsidies [1]. While I am not opposed
| to some moderate fare reductions, you could pay for quite a
| large bit of service improvements with that amount of money
| instead, and I believe that would be rather more effective
| in increasing passenger numbers (and especially in getting
| car drivers to switch).
|
| [1] Some of the big cities are actually even closer to
| break-even as far as day-to-day operating costs are
| concerned, so in those cases the budget would have to be
| increased by an even larger factor in percentage terms.
| thebean11 wrote:
| > Farebox recovery ratios in Germany before Covid were
| around 75 %, so abolishing all fares would mean
| quadrupling the budget for operating subsidies
|
| You aren't taking into account the money saved from
| eliminating all the infrastructure needed for collecting
| and enforcing the fares like OP mentioned..
|
| Unless farebox recovery ratio already subtracts the money
| spent to collect fares? That's not my understanding
| though.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| You're right, eliminating the infrastructure for fares
| would save some amount of money, but I'd be surprised if
| it was really that much of a substantial fraction
| compared with the actual operation of the vehicles.
| thebean11 wrote:
| I think it's significant, there must be tons of full time
| employees who are checking tickets, selling tickets,
| doing maintenance on machines, administering subsidized
| fare programs etc. I don't think it's 25% or anything,
| but I wouldn't be surprised it it was in the double
| digits.
|
| Aside from that, though, it's not as if the money not
| collected in fares is lost. That's money that people get
| to keep. It's a direct economic benefit to people using
| transit, and a smaller indirect benefit to everyone else.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > I would argue making it free and keeping it free would have
| been a cool move.
|
| Here in Germany, there were many voices in favour of making the
| ticket completely free. What I heard about the reason for not
| doing so is that the government wanted to easily measure the
| actual demand in different regions for such a "free" ticket. So
| the price is low enough that anybody who wants to ride
| practically "for free" is buying it, but so high that most
| people who do not really use it won't buy it.
|
| I expect that if the ticket is a success, it will be replaced
| by real free rides in the future. And the results of the test
| period could help determine how the costs should finally be
| shared between the different regions and local governments.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| I think the reason is that actually it wasn't meant to be
| germany-wide. The initial idea was 9EUR per public transport
| network, but they quickly figured out that this will lead to
| many problems, as some areas have huge networks, others have
| many small networks and this would be one really complicated.
| But by then the 9EUR message was out of the box and making it
| Germany-wide on a single ticket was the only way forward.
|
| Consequence of late night negotiations on top level of the
| federal government, without involving respective experts from
| states, who are running public transport. ("Wait, we're
| subsidizing fuel, so we should subsidize public transport as
| well! Any quick idea?")
| cbmuser wrote:
| We had cities with free public transport in Germany.
|
| One example was the city of Templin in Brandenburg.
|
| The project was eventually abandoned because lots of people
| were just riding the busses out of boredom and busses were
| permanently full with costs exploding for the city.
|
| See: https://www.manager-
| magazin.de/unternehmen/artikel/nahverkeh...
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| First thing I thought of even though I never heard of this
| example: It's a terrible idea if you think about it with an
| economic mind. There are very few scenarios where making
| things "free" can actually provide a long term benefit for
| the public. The reason Communist economies don't work isn't
| because there's not enough wealth in society to guarantee a
| modest income for everyone. It's because once you take the
| incentives away people behave differently than they would
| normally. In the case of a guaranteed workplace with no
| profit sharing for example you get rampant corruption at
| the top and workers who don't see the point in doing their
| job properly because they neither get rewarded for working
| hard nor can they get fired. So they just show up and do
| the bare minimum.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > there's not enough wealth in society to guarantee a
| modest income for everyone
|
| One should notice that there a no Communist economies
| anymore in Europe for more than 30 years. Democratic
| wellfare states provide in my opinion the best balance
| between individual incentives and social responsibility.
|
| I would argue that a lot of state-managed sectors in
| various European countries work a lot better than in the
| US (health care, higher education, correction, ...). One
| has to look into the details to see what works better in
| which sector.
|
| Extent and details are, of course, something that needs
| to be permanently evaluated. But in general there is
| enough wealth produced each year to provide everyone with
| an at least modest standard of living. However, the
| differences between the countries are still very large:
| GDP per capita in the EU is aprox. EUR 32.000, ranging
| from Luxemburg's EUR 114,000 to Bulgaria's EUR 10,000.
| the_only_human wrote:
| China.
| pph wrote:
| (This may be an aside, but I want to add this)
|
| While it is true that there is quite a difference in GDP
| per capita between different EU countries, please
| consider that Luxembourg has a very particular standing
| and as an outlier is not representative of the
| "wealthier" EU members. Most of those are in the range of
| 40k-50k, with only three above this: 114,370 Luxembourg
| 83,990 Ireland 57,140 Denmark
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European
| _Union
| potatoz2 wrote:
| There are many free goods people don't seem to (usually)
| overconsume.
|
| Primary school is free, libraries are free, parks are
| free, etc. To know whether public transportation is more
| like free libraries or more like free parking, you have
| to run the experiment.
| dorgo wrote:
| What is the difference to normal paid tickets? Once the
| ticket is paid I can ride busses out of boredom the whole
| day.
| wreath wrote:
| No you cant because the ticket is scoped with time and/or
| destination/direction
| bombcar wrote:
| Many places offer a "one day" transit pass that lets you
| ride anywhere you want, for that day.
|
| Random example, MTS: https://www.sdmts.com/fares/fare-
| chart - the 1-day pass is priced just above a round-trip
| ticket cost.
| johnday wrote:
| It seems like an almost-free, unlimited-use ticket would
| suffer the same way.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Well, they can distinguish homeless people without ticket
| from others. And therefore throw some homeless out (until
| people realize that is happening and donate tickets ....)
| Aperocky wrote:
| Speaking only for myself, my laziness is really the only
| reason that I've not been doing whatever things I could
| be doing. And that has been consistent throughout changes
| in my economic situation.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Nothing you said was factually wrong, but the last sentence
| makes it sound like "bored bums" were the reason it was
| abandoned. Here's the relevant part from the article you
| linked:
|
| > And not every trip seems to have been truly necessary for
| the passengers. "On rainy days the kids would take the bus
| out of boredom" says Templin's mayor Detlef Tabbert (Die
| Linke ["The Left" political party]) to manager-magazin.de.
| Groups of men with a crate of beer were also not uncommon.
| "If something is for free, it will be used - whether it
| makes sense or not", says [marketing responsible of the
| local transit provider][marketing responsible of the local
| transit provider] Pohlan
|
| In the end they went back to paid tickets, but charged
| 44EUR for an annual ticket that can even be transferred
| between people as needed. That still leaves them
| subsidizing public transit, but that's a political decision
| based on what the alternatives would be: pollution, road
| infrastructure (another form of subsidy), better quality of
| life, ...
|
| A decision that, as you might be able to tell, I personally
| happen to strongly agree with.
|
| Edit: forgot to paste the translated paragraph :P
| Aperocky wrote:
| > easily measure the actual demand in different regions
|
| A ticket for $0 would have done it.
|
| Still have to book for it, and probably should have rate
| limits like other pseudo free services (Google don't charge
| you for search, etc).
| aqwsde wrote:
| Sebb767 wrote:
| But you don't take away cars or impose a speed limit. You
| simply provide an alternative option. In fact, emptier
| streets will make every driver happy.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Do you have any kind of source for this? I heard of
| complaints regarding this ticket already, I do not see this
| coming back, let alone for free.
| Archelaos wrote:
| For example, last month in an interview of Deutschlandfunk
| the German Minister of Transport, Volker Wissing
| (Liberals), said (my translation):
|
| "We now have a one-time promotion that represents a field
| trial. At the end, we can analyse the data and know exactly
| what we need to improve in order to get people to switch to
| public transport."[1]
|
| [1] Original: "Wir haben jetzt eine einmalige Aktion, die
| einen Feldversuch darstellt. Wir konnen dann am Ende auch
| die Daten analysieren und wissen genau, was mussen wir
| verbessern, um Menschen auf den OPNV umsteigen zu lassen."
| -- https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/verkehrsminister-zum-
| neun-eur... (in German)
| pwdisswordfish0 wrote:
| >I expect that if the ticket is a success, it will be
| replaced by real free rides in the future.
|
| What's your confidence level here? Because if you can make me
| believe that the ticket is effectively a vote for
| ticketless/free OPNV I will buy them for everyone I know.
| stavros wrote:
| What's the difference between this and completely free
| rides? AFAIK, making it "almost free" is usually
| preferable, as it prevents some abuse ("it's free so I'll
| take it even when I don't really need it", which depletes
| the resource), while still making it effectively free.
| LosWochosWeek wrote:
| We've also seen the opposite being true. In Germany,
| oddly enough. It was called "Praxisgebuhr" and it was a
| 10EUR fee that you had to pay _once_ per quarter year (if
| you went to a doctor in that quarter). Turns out, once
| people paid the 10EUR they got into a all-you-can-eat
| frenzy and visited more doctors than they normally would
| have done, because "well, I paid for it, so might as
| well take advantage of it".
| stavros wrote:
| That's not so much the opposite, but I agree. If it were
| 5EUR per visit, you'd probably see a lot less of this.
| oneplane wrote:
| We have a system where you're going to pay about 350 per
| year for those little things if you use them. Going into
| a frenzy using all of that is just going to waste your
| own time as it takes quite some effort to use up that 350
| already.
|
| Then again, regardless of the rules and processes we
| make, there will always be people misusing/abusing it.
| pwdisswordfish0 wrote:
| The point is, it's rodonculous.
| wongarsu wrote:
| If the ticket is a success (both in number of tickets sold
| and in people taking transit instead of the car) I'd expect
| the program to be continued. The exact implementation will
| be subject to much debate, but once you have a cheap
| monthly nationwide ticket established it's much easier to
| talk about the costs and benefits of actually charging for
| it.
| Archelaos wrote:
| There is support for this idea across MPs of multiple
| parties, from Conservatives, Liberals, Greens and
| Labour/Left. It appears to be a comparatively cheap measure
| to reduce CO2 footprint (I am not an expert here, though,
| so this might be incorrect, but one hears this argument a
| lot) and at the same time an easy measure to improve
| mobility for the poor. (Thousands of people went to jail in
| Germany every year because they repeatedly travelled
| without a ticket and could not or prefered not to pay the
| panalty fee.) So the zeitgeist is very much in favour of
| it, and ecological topics (in the wider sense) are becoming
| more and more important for people's decission what party
| to vote for. So what initially were niche topics of the
| Greens are becoming increasingly popular and more so, when
| they coincide with goals of other parties, such as social
| policy ideas from Labour/Left and the trade unions or the
| administrative simplifications ideas of the Liberals. Note
| also that Germany is already heavily subsidising its local
| puplic transport, with the effect that everyone pays taxes
| for tickets that only a minority uses.[1]
|
| [1] At a moment's notice, I could only find old estimates
| from 2008 that amount to 25 billion Euros per year (more
| than 300 Euros per inhabitant per year) for local and
| regional transport (not including long distance transport)
| as of which only 9 billion Euros (35%) were paid directly
| from tickets or similar. This means 16 billion (65%) were
| already payed by the public (aprox. 200 Euro per inhabitant
| per year) -- see: https://www.zukunft-mobilitaet.net/wp-
| content/uploads/2013/0... (in German).
| aqwsde wrote:
| Show me a _single_ MP from CDU or CSU in favor of free
| regional transport.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Even Bavaria's CSU/Free Voters government voted for the
| ticket in the Bundesrat today.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Maybe that number includes grants for capital expenses
| (building new routes and stations, step-free remodelling,
| public transport priority, etc.) as well? According to
| https://www.vdv.de/vdv-statistik-2019.pdfx#page=35, for
| day-to-day operations farebox recovery ratios are rather
| around 75 %.
|
| Edit: Looking at your link, it seems the difference might
| be accounted for to some extent because the 75 %-figure -
| might possibly not include heavy rail
|
| - like I said definitively doesn't include grants for
| major capital projects and only looks at day-to-day
| operating expenses
|
| - is looking at things from the perspective of the local
| transport operators, respectively counties/cities that
| mostly are directly responsible for financing any
| shortfalls, so the compensation payments for the
| state-/federal-level mandated fare reductions for pupils
| and handicapped people are included as part of the
| regular farebox income
| dav_Oz wrote:
| I guess one could argue that it is technically "free" for
| personal use, as tap water is (1 cubic meter (1000 litres) in
| the Netherlands is about net cost .87EUR [0]) if one is not
| trying to abuse it for a agricultural hobby, a private swimming
| hall etc. than it actually gets expensive very quick; in the
| case of a unregistered pipe break (incentivizing inspections)
| extraordinarily so.
|
| The "price" is for ensuring fair use (on such a big
| scale)/registering the influx; yes, 1EUR could also do the
| trick but in the case of DB AG we are talking about an highly
| over-bureaucratized ... so one order of magnitude higher and
| you arrive at the current pricing.
|
| [0]https://www.waternet.nl/en/veelgestelde-vragen/tap-
| water/wha...
| javajosh wrote:
| Heck even if you're just going to move around a single City at a
| time this is a great deal. Ubahn and Sbahn tix are quite pricey a
| la carte!
| qwertox wrote:
| I think it's great, but honestly, placing it at 15EUR would have
| made only a little difference to the consumer, who is already
| getting a lot for the value, and helped the railway operators a
| good deal. As a compromise the age of kids who can travel
| together with their parents for free could have been raised from
| 6 to 8 years.
| dmurray wrote:
| Isn't the taxpayer paying the shortfall, rather than the
| "railway operators"?
| _ph_ wrote:
| Right, it is tax-funded.
|
| Don't ask me how exactly they assign the tax money to the
| train companies, but probably they get a fixed amount per
| ticket sold, which would be another reason why it is
| important to "sell" those tickets.
| phh wrote:
| Uh this offer is paid by the railway operators, not by the
| government?
| chmod775 wrote:
| No. It's paid for by the government and expected to cost
| around 2.5 billion EUR.
|
| It's part of this: https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Con
| tent/DE/Standardar...
| phh wrote:
| Thanks. Then I don't understand commenter's "helped the
| railway operators a good deal"
| archi42 wrote:
| This is a matter of perspective. The ticket is not aimed solely
| at people with median income of a tech worker (or the typical
| HN crowd), but help out the general populace as a whole.
| Including those who can not even afford a car.
|
| Now I think when the times comes (3 month from now) for the
| program to run out, we might see discussions about continuing
| it at a price that makes it a more sustainable, permanent
| offer. But that's my opinion speaking (I wouldn't even mind if
| it was mandatory like back when I was attending university, as
| long as it is affordable for people with low to lowest
| incomes).
| Tenoke wrote:
| > more sustainable, permanent offer
|
| Seems pretty unlikely that they'll be able to after a 3 month
| period of operating at a loss (for the government) and likely
| having more issues due to increased usage.
| archi42 wrote:
| My crystal ball is broken. I think there is a good chance
| that what you say will happen. But collecting the data in
| this nation-wide experiment is already quite useful when
| deciding on future policy. Until now it was always "we
| believe" or "this doesn't fit our agenda" or "this is
| socialism". Plus, if it is sufficiently popular and if the
| obstacles can be identified and overcome, then why not? If
| the new administration wants to reconnect with the people
| then employing some positive populism is quite nice.
|
| //edit: As I said, I didn't mind paying for the mandatory
| students ticket (most universities have that), even when I
| eventually stopped using. I'm in the "make public
| transportation free" camp, and think this is a good step in
| that direction; even if we end up with "affordable for all"
| instead of "free". But as I said, that's opinion, not
| knowledge.
| _ph_ wrote:
| It is a political decision, whether the government wants to
| pay the costs out of the federal budget. If the government
| is serious about CO2 reduction and also shifting commute
| traffic from cars to public transport, this might be an
| surprisingly cheap option. As the high energy costs also
| mean increased tax revenue, it might not even be a large
| load for the budget (and compared to many other things,
| spending like EUR10B/year on public transport isn't really
| much anyway).
| Shadonototra wrote:
| > I think it's great, but honestly, placing it at 15EUR would
| have made only a little difference
|
| The ticket exist to relieve citizens due to rising energy costs
|
| What a nice idea to double the price! i suggest to triple it,
| so they can make even more profits!
|
| Wait, i suggest aligning it to the cost of a similar travel
| with a car!
|
| Are you american by chance?
|
| https://www.stoag.de/en/dialog/neuigkeiten/detail/9-euro-tic...
|
| > We support the idea of the traffic light coalition to
| temporarily relieve not only drivers, but also the millions of
| public transport commuters in their mobility costs. It is a
| clear signal for local public transport as an efficient,
| climate-friendly and already inexpensive alternative to the
| car. The industry is working on a technical and entrepreneurial
| solution in the interests of passengers. The ticket is to be
| launched nationwide on June 1st.
| qwertox wrote:
| As an example, the 1-month-ticket for Stuttgart for two zones
| is 92,20EUR [0].
|
| For those affected by inflation, the reduction from 90 to
| 15EUR would already be noticeable, the additional 6EUR would
| be neglectible to the consumer in comparison to the already
| offered discount (not to mention that these new tickets can
| be used in the entire country).
|
| And those who will now leave their car in the garage will
| probably be saving even more. At least in my case it was
| always cheaper to use public transport to go to the city, at
| least if I also considered the parking cost. This for a 1-day
| ticket, which already costs a bit over 6EUR.
|
| [0] https://www.vvs.de/tickets/zeittickets-abo-
| polygo/monatstick...
| drakonka wrote:
| Why? Presumably they took into account their own financial
| situation when setting this price. Why would you want an
| organization to try and claw a few _more_ euros out of
| people when they've already agreed on 9EUR? I guess I just
| don't understand where you're coming from in terms of the
| purpose of this suggestion.
| wwwwasmistake wrote:
| Maybe this time it's because of rising energy cost, but I
| remember there was very same deal for short time, little more
| than 10 years ago when I was visiting there. If one feels
| adventurous, I can highly recommend buying this ticket.
| mtmail wrote:
| > Are you american by chance?
|
| That was unneccessary. _Microft shared several German news
| articles in the past.
| _Microft wrote:
| I don't think that the message was addressed at me but I
| agree that it was unnecessarily personal. You inferred my
| nationality correctly btw ;)
| GavinMcG wrote:
| I'm an American who has lived in Germany, and it didn't
| seem like a personal attack to me. It's a reasonable
| thing to wonder when someone espouses a profits-first
| view in response to a social program.
| _Microft wrote:
| OK, I hadn't considered that. Thanks for the perspective!
| darrenf wrote:
| Surely the question was aimed at @qwertox, not @_Microft?
| Tenoke wrote:
| >What a nice idea to double the price! i suggest to triple
| it, so they can make even more profits!
|
| Pretty sure they wouldn't be making any profit at 15e or 27e
| either.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| > Wait, i suggest aligning it to the cost of a similar travel
| with a car!
|
| I would wish they actually align their normal prices with a
| car.
|
| It's absurd that it's cheaper for two people to travel from
| Karlsruhe to Frankfurt by car, than to take an ICE train. And
| that applies to almost any train connection inside a Germany.
|
| No wonder people like their cars here.
| lbriner wrote:
| Same in the UK although unfortunately, the per-person cost
| is roughly linear on the railway and not in a car that will
| only need slightly more fuel per extra person.
|
| I guess the only way round this is that the per-person cost
| should be so much cheaper on the train that a car only
| makes sense with, say, 4 passengers.
|
| The thing is, most people already own the car so they don't
| consider tax/servicing as part of the cost of travel
| whereas on a train, this is all added to the ticket and the
| servicing is pretty extreme on the railways.
| freeflight wrote:
| The secret is to order your ticket ahead of the travel and
| not to go for flex tickets, that way it's possible to get a
| massive discount and even travel first class ICE very
| affordably.
|
| For example, Nurnberg - Berlin can cost up to 127EUR for
| second class ticket, if you buy the ticket the same day you
| need it.
|
| Buy the ticket, for the same connection, 2 weeks in
| advance, and suddenly its only 39,90EUR for second class
| and 53,90EUR for first class.
| WA wrote:
| Exactly the opposite. It should've been 0EUR, because then you:
|
| * don't have to sell tickets at all
|
| * don't have to check tickets in trains and reduce costs
|
| The overhead of selling tickets with the new price points might
| actually eat up all what's left of profits.
| k__ wrote:
| How much does checking tickets cost?
| sokoloff wrote:
| As a rule of thumb: anytime you see a human doing a manual
| task, it's expensive.
| fridek wrote:
| Germany has about 1000 railway locomotives operating 40k
| runs a day. A conductor job pays on average 50kEUR/yr. Most
| trains I've seen have more than one conductor, and you need
| to plan for weekends, shifts, time off, etc. but the lower
| bound should be easy to agree on 50MEUR/yr or 12.5MEUR for
| the duration of the program? Then there is the entire infra
| to sell tickets online, in machines and in person.
|
| At the same time there are about 2 million rail customers a
| day, so the 9EUR ticket will bring 18MEUR. I'd say they
| probably break even.
|
| Math is fun, but the entire point is a bit moot. Germany is
| a civilised country and if you laid off the entire staff
| for three summer months with no pay, the union would eat
| you for breakfast.
| dagw wrote:
| Most trains still need conductors even if they're not
| checking tickets. Having them check tickets when they're
| already there won't cost anything extra.
| Tenoke wrote:
| >Most trains I've seen have more than one conductor
|
| At least in Berlin which this covers most
| trains/buses/trams have 0 people checking and there's a
| few people going on random ones to occasionally check so
| the ratio here is probably 1 worker to 50+ vehicles.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| You don't actually check any tickets, you just pretend that
| tickets will be checked at random, regularly. Put up signs
| to with heavy fines & travel bans for breaking the rules,
| run some fake newspaper stories of heavy enforcement etc.
| Make it socially embarrassing not to pay etc etc
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I'd also be curious for actual numbers, but certainly on
| the commuter GO Train in Ontario, it's basically a 3-4
| person staffing arrangement, with one person at the back,
| one in the middle in the accessible coach, and 1-2 in the
| locomotive. Adding someone whose job it is to roam up and
| down the train checking tickets adds 25% to the personnel
| cost, which is why most fares aren't checked.
|
| But quite apart from the person and their ticket-scanner,
| there's also the whole _infrastructure_ associated with
| fare taking-- fare-free advocates argue that if you get rid
| of the machines and websites and apps, and all the
| associated upkeep, it ends up being a wash. Of course this
| only counts if you 're getting rid of _all_ fares rather
| than doing a one-off summer special.
| slightwinder wrote:
| Often, not even that much, as the check is just one of many
| jobs the personal has to execute. The other jobs won't
| disappear just because they might not check now.
| kuschku wrote:
| This ticket only applies to regional trains. Regional
| trains usually have a staff of 1 (sitting in the
| locomotive, driving the train). Tickets are checked by
| random patrols, which don't actually cost that much (in
| each given train at a given time you'll have a chance of
| encountering them every few weeks at most).
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Can't do that for psychological reasons.
|
| A free Android app attracts the worst kind of people and
| insults hurled at you on support channels. A $0.99 price is
| enough to make most support emails friendly instead.
| rdl wrote:
| 0 EUR 2nd class (presumably fairly crowded) and ~market
| priced 1st (and potentially a car or two of 2nd at normal 2nd
| fares) might be an interesting experiment.
| anaisbetts wrote:
| They still have to check tickets in trains because this only
| applies to one class of train, and they already are paying
| people to check tickets and can't/shouldn't fire them all for
| three months only to bring them all back
| Tenoke wrote:
| A lot of trains this covers don't even have first class so
| they can save on those but I'm not convinced the savigns
| are all that big.
| mrunkel wrote:
| What trains would that be? Street cars and busses are the
| only ones I can think of that don't have first class.
| Everything from the S-Bahn and "up" has a first class car
| or section.
| Tenoke wrote:
| In berlin neither the Sbahn nor the Ubahn has first
| class. The express trains (RE7, RB14, FEX) to the airport
| don't either as far as I remember and I don't see one
| when I check[0]. Similar for many other cities I believe,
| so I'd wager most travelers the 9e ticket is covering
| will be on vehicles that don't have first class anyway.
|
| 0. https://flughafenexpress.deutschebahn.com/fex-
| en/Tickets-and...
| kuschku wrote:
| That heavily depends on your local Verkehrsverbund, many
| Verkehrsverbunde do not have any first class in S, RB or
| RE.
| dx034 wrote:
| Ticket checks are incredibly rare in most cities already,
| Germans tend to buy tickets because it's illegal not to, not
| because it's more economical given the fine you pay without
| one.
|
| And selling tickets will be an extremely minor overhead,
| probably <5% including re-programming machines.
| slightwinder wrote:
| It's also an experiment. They need to know how people react
| and change their behavior with this cheap ticket. And they
| still need to check tickets anyway. And the price also serves
| as a kind of barrier to animate people to at least thing a
| moment, whether they really need the ticket and can "waste"
| the monety for it.
| captainmuon wrote:
| Officially, it is not free in order to gauge demand.
|
| Personally, I think there is an ideological and pedagogical
| element. They don't want people to get used to the idea that
| something like free transportation is possible.
|
| I heard an interesting talk a couple of years ago about
| university tuition fees. Germany has fairly low fees compared
| to other countries. At some universities it is more like a
| token fee, a couple hundred EUR per year. Many students get
| living expenses paid from the state anyway (BAFOG). It is
| silly to then pay back some of that immediately. But the
| thesis of the talk was that the tuition fees were introduced
| for educational reasons, not to cover the actual cost of
| teaching. Students were supposed think of themselves as
| customers, and of education as a good. And they could back
| this with quotes from neoliberal think tanks. As the FDP
| (free market 'liberals') is in the coalition, I'm sure one
| precondition was that the ticket couldn't be free.
| bmicraft wrote:
| A couple hundred per year? I'm sitting here in Vienna
| complaining about paying 20,70EUR per semester
| april_22 wrote:
| Students in Berlin meanwhile have to pay 200EUR for the
| public transport ticket alone.
| dagw wrote:
| _don 't have to sell tickets at all_
|
| The infrastructure for selling tickets is already in place,
| the marginal cost of selling one extra ticket type is
| essentially zero,
|
| _don 't have to check tickets in trains and reduce costs_
|
| Assuming you have to have at least one person working on the
| train anyway, for safety reasons if nothing else, having them
| also check tickets doesn't cost extra.
| kuschku wrote:
| > Assuming you have to have at least one person working on
| the train anyway, for safety reasons if nothing else,
| having them also check tickets doesn't cost extra.
|
| That's actually wrong, regional trains (where this ticket
| applies) usually have only the Lokfuhrer driving the train,
| but no additional staff. Checking tickets is done purely by
| patrols checking trains randomly.
| BoppreH wrote:
| > Assuming you have to have at least one person working on
| the train anyway, for safety reasons if nothing else,
| having them also check tickets doesn't cost extra.
|
| The trains are made of multiple cars without connecting
| doors, and the driver sits inside a locked cockpit. Tickets
| are currently checked by personnel that randomly patrol the
| trains, which are the only staff that passengers see.
|
| It's actually rare to have your ticket checked, but the
| fine is ~10x the price of the ticket, so it's still worth
| buying one.
| amin wrote:
| In Luxembourg, all public transport is free for everyone. I was
| just there, and as a tourist, it saved me a lot of hassle not
| needing to figure out where and how to buy which ticket. Jump hop
| on any train, bus or tram :).
|
| And yes, I understand why this wouldn't work well in other
| countries.
| sonar_un wrote:
| I was there last winter and the free transport was just
| incredible. Especially for a tourist. On top of all of the
| busses and trams being super new and clean, it was a dream.
| swarnie wrote:
| While interesting, it doesn't seem like a fair comparison.
|
| Luxembourg has more tax evading corporations registered than
| actual people. I'm sure i can make a public transport system
| work well for free given those conditions.
| xenago wrote:
| This is a really good initiative! I wish the Canadian government
| would encourage more efficient transport instead of cars.
| The-Bus wrote:
| This is a great idea for the US as well, if only we had a
| significant mass transit infrastructure that this could apply
| to.
| pflenker wrote:
| Traveling through Germany with regional trains was one of my
| favorite pastimes back in the 90s, but the prices have increased
| dramatically: The "Wochenendticket, which was valid either on
| Saturday or Sunday, started in 1995 costing around 11 EUR
| (inflation-adjusted), and ended costing 40 EUR in 2016 (also
| inflation-adjusted).
|
| I am happy that they are experimenting with bringing it back.
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