[HN Gopher] Germany is offering a summer of cheap trains
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Germany is offering a summer of cheap trains
Author : paul-graham
Score : 110 points
Date : 2022-05-29 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| _448 wrote:
| In Cornwall, UK, the local council has started something similar
| but not just for summer. Now a person can buy 7 day ticket for
| PS10 and can travel anywhere in Cornwall on any bus. The stated
| goal for this policy is to encourage people to use public
| transport as much as possible, and to nudge older citizens to use
| public transport instead of driving themselves.
| paul-graham wrote:
| This should be a standard scheme all across Europe. Given the
| high population density and relatively short distances - such a
| scheme would greatly reduce congestion and provide a cheaper way
| of transport (apart from reducing dependency). This scheme should
| be made permanent.
|
| The lack of access to high speed ICE trains is a hinderance.
| There should be a way a 9Euro ticket allows access to ICE trains
| twice a week with advanced booking.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > The lack of access to high speed ICE trains is a hinderance.
|
| The ICEs are already quite overcrowded without the 9 Euro
| ticket though, at least during "prime time" (weekdays in the
| mornings and early evenings, and at the start and end of
| weekends). Adding more trains may also be problematic because
| (1) those trains probably don't exist yet, and (2) the trains
| are mostly already on 1hr interval which is probaly hard to
| increase.
| lispm wrote:
| > There should be a way a 9Euro ticket allows access to ICE
| trains twice a week with advanced booking.
|
| We'll finance expensive high-speed train infrastructure with
| 9-Euro-Tickets. Very funny.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| As someone who just made the switch from planes to trains (I
| regularly travel on an inner-german route where planes do make
| sense): If the hordes would invade ICEs, I would go back to the
| airport. Long-distance rail is over-encumbered as it stands,
| and more people means less reliability.
| [deleted]
| Zak wrote:
| Even regional trains are often crowded at regular prices, which
| is particularly problematic given there's still a pandemic and
| noncompliance with the mask rules on trains is high. I don't
| imagine wanting to take advantage of the almost-free travel
| except at odd times of day when demand is low.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" such a scheme would greatly reduce congestion"_
|
| It might reduce congestion on roads, but would greatly increase
| congestion on trains. And many are full already!
| dang wrote:
| I appreciate the submission but can you please pick a different
| username? Celebrity names are a variant of trollish usernames
| [1], and we don't allow those on HN [2] because they subtly
| troll every thread they post to. Inevitably this leads to low-
| value off-topic stuff.
|
| We've learned from experience to just deal with the problem
| early, so I've temporarily banned this account. If you'd like
| to pick a neutral, non-trollish username, we can change it for
| you and unban it.
|
| [1]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
|
| [2]
| https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
| [deleted]
| nixass wrote:
| What if someone has same name as some "celebrity"?
| dang wrote:
| We'll figure it out.
| PixelOfDeath wrote:
| "We are sorry to inform you, but a big multi billion dollar
| company has selected a snipped of your video/music/name and
| registered it within our copyright/trademark system.
| Therefor we will automatically delete all of your content
| and sue you for one hundred million dollars in damages on
| their behalf!"
|
| Dang sounds like a copyright/trademark troll to me! Really
| disappointed that they allow something like that here.
|
| Edit: I only know graham crackers?! But I guess that's not
| it?
| pvg wrote:
| HN implodes and disappears in a puff of logic. So don't
| tell such people about HN.
| dekoruotas wrote:
| https://archive.ph/GxXWn
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| I must confess that I've used the train system in Berlin many,
| many times and never paid because I didn't realize (at first) and
| later forgot.. Have things changed so that you need to go through
| a turnstile or similar ticket entry system, or is this just for
| the RE trains?
| MandieD wrote:
| Can't speak to Berlin within the past 3 years, but I've never
| seen any sort of gate/turnstile entry to German train or
| subway. There are little punch machines in the stations most
| places, or just use that city's transit app - Nuremberg's is
| well-integrated with Apple Pay.
|
| Enforcement is anywhere from routine and uniformed (IC/ICE),
| semi-routine (RE/RB/S-Bahns), to random and plainclothes (most
| subway systems).
| thebrain wrote:
| This is very interesting to hear. In 2014, my wife and I went on
| a vacation in Germany and I found that it was cheaper and more
| convenient to rent a car than it was to use trains as we've
| typically done countries like Italy and France for our vacations.
| I chalked it up to Germans being a big fan of cars.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| This is first and foremost a subsidy scheme to give public
| transit providers some more money - many people will buy the 9
| euro ticket which before did not buy monthly tickets - and for
| each such ticket, the state will give the public transit provider
| the difference to a full month ticket, up to 200 Euros.
|
| 1. The casual public transit rider will get one of these tickets:
| 9 Euros is like three rides on the Berlin subway ... they ride
| cheaper beginning with the fourth.
|
| 2. The commuter will save some money on the monthly ticket for
| three month.
|
| 3. Because of the media frenzy about these 9 Euro tickets, many
| non-users will buy it with plans to go sightseeing, as this
| ticket still is cheaper than most individual routes. Not all of
| them will actually use it.
|
| 4. Sylt (think 'the German version of Nantucket/Martha's
| Vineyard') will burn to the ground.
| foepys wrote:
| > This is first and foremost a subsidy scheme to give public
| transit providers some more money - many people will buy the 9
| euro ticket which before did not buy monthly tickets - and for
| each such ticket, the state will give the public transit
| provider the difference to a full month ticket, up to 200
| Euros.
|
| Do you have a source for that? Considering that the federal
| government considers 2.5 billion Euro enough to cover the
| costs, this sounds false. As far as I'm informed the transport
| authorities will just get their current costs covered.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| My source is from an internal (FDP) party newsletter I've
| read when the idea first was announced. I seem to have since
| deleted it...
|
| But to put that into context: with 2.5 billion Euros, you
| could finance 12.5 million such 200-euro-subsidies, or a
| ticket for three months for about 5% of the population, which
| I think is not too pessimistic - I'd wager that's about twice
| the number of people who have a net-wide ticket for their
| respective OPNV-Verbund today.
|
| The Lander of course consider that money too little and are
| trying to get more cash assigned, though.
| la_fayette wrote:
| Sylt is windy and cold also in summer, for a family holyday I
| woudn't recommend. Let's see how this turns out. The typical
| summer tourists go south...
| St_Alfonzo wrote:
| regarding number 4: for more information or to team up with
| other people, see the 'official' subreddit
| https://www.reddit.com/r/sylt51/
| blueflow wrote:
| Sylt ist fallich!
| realPubkey wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKmSLO6QNwg&ab_channel=Wobin.
| ..
| ValentineC wrote:
| > _4. Sylt (think 'the German version of Nantucket/Martha's
| Vineyard') will burn to the ground._
|
| As a non-American, I'd appreciate some further elaboration.
| gpvos wrote:
| The suggestion is that it will get overrun with more tourists
| than it can handle.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Sylt is considered "the holiday island for the uberrich".
| When the idea was first considered, their mayor carelessly
| spoke to the media that he feared the plebs coming to their
| island and do lower-class stuff, in short, getting on the
| nerves of 'regulars'.
|
| Which was the inspiration for Germany's youth to - very
| loudly - start planning the invasion of Sylt to drink cheap
| beer from tincans and do lower-class stuff.
|
| Add our liberal-democratic federal finance minister to the
| mix, who will get married on Sylt in mid-June, and you got a
| perfect storm.
|
| Something very similar happened in the 1990s, when the Bahn
| had a cheap ticket - back then, riot police was sent to Sylt
| to avoid lower-class tourists getting too annoying. This
| time, though, it's likely going to be a lot worse, because of
| things being more organized thanks to the internet.
| brazzy wrote:
| It's an island that has been a high society hotspot for
| decades. Think celebrities and politicians sipping champagne
| in overpriced beachside restaurants.
|
| But even though it's an island, it's reachable by train via a
| dam, and the locals are worried about being overrun with day
| trip tourists, and the clebrities are worried about being
| crowded by _poor people_.
| esel2k wrote:
| As Swiss (just southern country of Germany fyi), the push for
| cheaper train is always interesting. However I expect the same
| level of punctuality and reliability when I would be ready to use
| train vs my car for work or business trips. I did regularly go to
| Germany for work (Stuttgart, Karlsruhe and Frankfurt) and
| regularly had issues with either people causing trouble and
| police needed to board, suicide (sad but a reality) and most
| often technical problems. These often lead to missing important
| connecting trains.
|
| So all in all for me the first step is not to reduce price but to
| ensure reliable infrastructure...
| JuettnerDistrib wrote:
| If passenger rail increases, then goods rail must decrease and go
| onto trucks. Or, one could let goods rail go at night, but
| Germany is noise -sensitive, so that's unlikely to happen. In the
| long run building more tracks are probably the only real
| solution.
| brazzy wrote:
| Uh... Goods rail _is_ running at night in Germany, and lots of
| it. So much in fact, that some connections are utilized at full
| capacity pretty much 24 /7 and causing huge problems when
| they're blocked.
| winkelwagen wrote:
| As someone using the German railway for a large distance
| destination couple a weeks ago it was a total disaster, we got
| stranded in a unfamiliar German city. Deutsche bahn told us they
| didn't have any of their (partner) hotel rooms left. Just arrange
| something yourself. That was very nice because all the hotels
| were full anyway. It took us another 2 hours of calling to find
| something. I was exhausted when I finally checked in somewhere at
| 1 am.
|
| I try to avoid flying, but the German railway is giving me
| nightmares. I frequently travel through Germany and it is the
| exception if there aren't any large issues.
|
| The article itself is very thin when giving its reasons. I'm sure
| it's oke for people without the money to spend, but I would
| rather pay more for increased reliability. If the German summers
| are similar to how the Dutch maintains their railways, I'm sure
| they will plan a ton of construction while the masses of people
| that usually take the trains for work are on holiday. So I'm
| inclined to see this promotional as compensation for bad summer
| train service.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| That's really unlucky. Before the Covid thing I took a long-
| distance train at least once per month for two decades, and I
| never managed to get stranded anywhere even when I chose late
| connections. Normally DB knows the connections passengers have,
| and it seems that if the last train of the day gets delayed the
| other trains wait for it to make sure no one gets stranded. I
| would really have enjoyed staying in one of those Intercity
| hotels at DB's expense.
|
| The worst thing that happened to me was that the ICE train
| broke down in the middle of nowhere and the DB had to send
| another train and evacuate everyone from the original one over
| a gangway (it's not allowed to let passengers deboard in the
| middle of nowhere). Took more than four hours of waiting in an
| overheated train during summer. They sent me a box of really
| good chocolates as a "We're sorry" gift.
| alexott wrote:
| DB is nightmare. I had so many cases of missing trains when
| they had 1 hour delay on 1.5h track, connecting trains no
| waiting even for 5 minutes, cancelling train in last minute,
| etc.
| chromanoid wrote:
| I do not share your experience. I used to commute weekly for
| 1,75 hours in one direction with ICE. I had rarely problems
| that lasted more than 5 minutes. There was no change of trains
| required which might help here.
| jotaen wrote:
| Same here: I regularly take long-distance train rides
| throughout all Germany, both with ICE (the fast one) as well
| as RE (the regional one), and for me it works smoothly for
| the most part.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Let me guess: Your commute was in East Germany? Reliability
| is a lot better there [1]
|
| [1] https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10652-bahnmining_-
| _punktlichkeit...
| chromanoid wrote:
| No, it was the route from Hamburg to Munich or similar.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| rjzzleep wrote:
| The mess of DB isn't that much different from how the oligarchs
| in a lot of eastern European countries came to be.
| Privatization without real plan. Privatize the profits and
| socialize the losses.
|
| The rails near Hamburg Altona are rotting, but the Bahn didn't
| want to foot the bill. So they came up with a horrible new
| station somewhere else. As a result the city chipped in to make
| a better one and pay of it from tax money.
|
| I'm the last person to favour the government institutions in
| Germany. They're slow, lazy and full of old lazy hierarchies
| that must have been productive 30 years ago, but what is the
| point of privatizing something when the structure itself
| doesn't change and the privatization does nothing but siphon
| money out of the system and pump tax money in anyway? Half the
| ICE fleet is out of commission nowadays.
| eisstrom wrote:
| DB is not privatized, it is 100% state-owned. As far as I
| know, all ICE power cars are still in use today, except for
| the one destroyed in the Eschede accident.
| serial_dev wrote:
| > what is the point of privatizing something when the
| structure itself doesn't change and the privatization does
| nothing but siphon money out of the system and pump tax money
| in anyway?
|
| _That_ is the point.
|
| Gigantic projects like nuclear reactors, stadiums, high ways,
| bridges, airports (hallo Berlin) trains (and big software
| projects and wars, too) are just different ways of funneling
| a significant percentage of the tax payer money funding the
| project into the politicians' and decision makers' circle's
| wallet.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| In summary: because corruption.
| tpmx wrote:
| So, echoing what eisstrom wrote: Deutsche Bahn is fully state
| owned. That phrase about "privatizing the profits and
| socializing the losses" is a common but still mindless form
| of dross in this case. I do understand why it gets a
| particular group of uninformed people to upvote your comment
| out of reflex though. You use it as click-bait, sort of,
| while building a convoluted argument that presumably very few
| of those upvoters actually grok.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Bahn
|
| _Deutsche Bahn AG is the national railway company of
| Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a
| private joint-stock company (AG), with the Federal Republic
| of Germany being its single shareholder._
| rjzzleep wrote:
| It was privatized in 1994. It's actually interesting that
| to the outside world people believe that it wasn't
| privatized because of the weird holding structure that it
| has.
|
| They actually brag about how the privatization in 1994 was
| a huge success. The history of the privatisation of the
| Staatsbahn is so convoluted that it's hard to tell what
| actually happened.
|
| https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/erfolgreiche-
| weichenstellung-...
|
| EDIT: just because privatization isn't the kind of
| privatization you like doesn't mean it didn't happen.
| especially since the people here have no idea about the
| actual internal structure of the institution and who the
| leadership answers to.
| [deleted]
| tpmx wrote:
| That article describes Deutsche Bahn being converted from
| a government agency to a fully state-owned "private"
| (public) company.
|
| The word "private" as used here does not mean what you
| think it means.
|
| ("Mit der Bahnreform entstand ein Wirtschaftsunternehmen
| in privatrechtlicher Form. Der Bund blieb zwar alleiniger
| Eigentumer der neuen Bahn AG, er sollte allerdings nur
| noch bei strategischen Entscheidungen mitreden durfen.")
| josefx wrote:
| The problem is probably more the EU directive that caused
| the privatization, because it requires that all European
| rail services compete commercially. Which means they are
| all required to make a profit even if it is a net
| negative to society. I can't wait for an EU directive
| that requires our firefighters to compete commercially,
| following the example of Marcus Licinius Crassus this
| would seem quite doable.
| tpmx wrote:
| Wait, what problem? Do you also believe that Deutsche
| Bahn was privatized, as in the ownership being
| transferred from the government to private citizens? If
| not, can you please clarify for the benefit of other
| readers of the thread?
| josefx wrote:
| The problem that it __acts__ like a for profit privately
| owned company.
| tpmx wrote:
| Ah. I guess that involves bourgeoisie things such as
| attempting to balance their budget.
| yakak wrote:
| Yes, the rail system needs to grow up and be like the
| wonderful privatized road system that charges tolls on
| all levels of streets to make sure it is not stealing
| from tax coffers to encourage pollution.
| pftburger wrote:
| Ive had a Bahncard 100 (yearly pass for all fast trains in the
| country) for six years now and while there are problems, its
| about once a year, working out to about 1% of my train trips.
|
| For air travel, Id guesstimate I get delays about 10-20% of the
| time.
| jotaen wrote:
| Maybe worth noting that the 9-euro ticket is only for local
| public transport, such as buses, subways, or regional trains.
| Only the latter (RE) are operated by Deutsche Bahn, whereas
| buses and subways are mostly ran by local companies.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Okay, but when you compare to the US, it's still _amazing._
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| Okay, but the US is 50x larger.
| f6v wrote:
| China has trains.
| bombcar wrote:
| I like trains.
| durnygbur wrote:
| trains
| rat9988 wrote:
| Why is it downvoted? He has a point.
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| And China has an agenda and a government that is
| supporting the building of railways. It's successful.
|
| In US the government was supporting the development of
| roads a century ago. It was very successful.
| objektif wrote:
| So is it about the size of the country or corrupt
| government?
| rat9988 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Europe is bigger than US surface wise.
| layer8 wrote:
| You're right (had to look it up), though it's only bigger
| by 3.5 %.
| Reason077 wrote:
| If you take a traditional definition of Continental
| Europe, including islands like Britain and Ireland, and
| going all the way into Russia as far as the Ural and
| Caucasus mountains, then Europe is slightly larger than
| the USA.
|
| But if you're talking about just the European Union, then
| the EU is much smaller than the USA. Less than half the
| land area.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Continental Europe, including islands like Britain and
| Ireland,
|
| Continental Europe doesn't include Britain and Ireland..
| That's kind of the point of the phrase.
| bonzini wrote:
| Yeah he meant the European continent (the western half of
| Eurasia) rather than Continental Europe.
| [deleted]
| jtc331 wrote:
| And we'll over 2x the population.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Eh?? I thought they were quite similar... Mmm, yeah, EU
| population is only 447 million. You must be counting
| Russia and other countries too but those are outside of
| the socioeconomic system we're talking about.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| The EU alone is under half the surface area of US,
| though, so it's like 3x the population density.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Okay, but with a GDP and population to (out)match, sooo not
| really relevant. Per capita and per square km, "German
| train system quality" is a bajillion times better than in
| the US.
| esrauch wrote:
| Sure, feel free to compare the trains in New York State vs
| Germany then.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The primary issue in NY is the subway service and the
| Amtrack trains coming in via the soon to be replaced
| portal bridge in NJ plus general Amtrack crappiness from
| other routes (not an NY problem). The commuter lines are
| decent. Though, with ridership destroyed it remains to be
| seen what impact the revenue shortfalls will have going
| forward.
| Tainnor wrote:
| I've definitely had my "I hate DB" moments in my life and
| experiences similar to the one you describe, but for me, most
| of the time, I don't experience major issues (I don't count
| "train is half an hour late" to be a major issue, although I
| agree that it's kind of laughable that this happens so often -
| but I got used to it). It's definitely easier if you don't have
| to change trains or you don't take a super late train or
| anything.
|
| Then there's also things that are consistently bad, like
| regional trains in NRW. They're never on time.
| geff82 wrote:
| If you beed to be on time, national flights with Lufthansa for
| me are close to 100% reliable whereas Deutsche Bahn turned out
| to be a catastrophe in about 50% of the cases. I still don't
| get it: they own the complete network, they control every train
| on it and arriving on time at a place is like playing roulette.
| Neither air travel nor traveling by car gives those headaches
| (especially when you listen to your dynamic GPS that routes
| around traffic jams). You can reduce the bad luck a bit by
| planning longer stops when changing trains, still making pauses
| longer reduces the attractiveness of trains even more.
| Personally, I love taking trains when it works. It is
| comfortable, fast and you arrive in city centers. Even first
| class tickets have acceptable prices. But as I usually don't
| travel for pleasure, but for business and don't want to waste
| my time, German trains have become a no-go for me.
| _Microft wrote:
| Lufthansa rarely gets "Personenschaden" ("injury to persons",
| an euphemism for "suicide") on their flight paths while
| Deutsche Bahn has frequently to deal with that. A delayed
| intercity express train definitely delays departure of other
| trains that are considered Anschluss(zuge) ("connecting
| trains"). It then ripples through the network.
| geff82 wrote:
| Then how do other countries get to a reliable service?
| Japan, Switzerland, France...
| dmd wrote:
| What does large/long distance mean here? Do german railways
| extend outside of Germany proper? I'm confused because the
| longest distance I can find between two major cities is Munich
| to Hamburg, and that's only about 400 miles!
| f6v wrote:
| You book a train from Aachen to Berlin. The first leg in your
| connection is late, you miss the ICE in the middle of nowhere.
| The next one is in four hours. You get in, the DB staff looks
| at you like you shit in their coffee. Booked a bike place and
| reserved a seat? The best they can do is to offer to stand
| between the carriages.
| eunos wrote:
| From various comments here and also some advice from friends.
| Consider not taking a trip for more than 2 connections or 2 hour
| trips with this scheme. A journey delayed will be percolated up
| to your final connection.
| martinald wrote:
| Is there actually the capacity to offer this? I understand it
| excludes IC/ICE trains but surely going to induce a hell of a lot
| of demand on regional trains?
| belter wrote:
| Discussed recently.
|
| "9-Euro-Ticket (bahn.com)":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31445822
|
| Consensus is that is not really that interesting as it might
| sound.
| MandieD wrote:
| Especially if your interest is long-distance travel and you
| haven't discovered the difference between ICE (Munich to
| Nuremberg in 1:10, perhaps a stop in Ingolstadt - Airbus +
| Audi) and RB (Munich to Nuremberg in 2:30...ish, stop in all
| the little towns)
| baybal2 wrote:
| > When the German parliament approved a new measure this month
| slashing public transit fares nationwide for three months this
| summer, the move reflected the severity of the nation's energy
| crisis. To reduce its heavy reliance on Russian gas and oil after
| Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Germany is desperate to find ways
| to reduce its fuel consumption and push more drivers to take
| trains and buses.
|
| The entire premise that Germany is "mortally reliant" on Russian
| gas is plainly wrong.
|
| Double digit of gas Germany imports ends up as its electricity
| exports. Only 20% of the gas actually goes to the industry.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Already well-covered on HN:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31445822
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(page generated 2022-05-29 23:01 UTC)