[HN Gopher] Spain launches free train tickets for short and medi...
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Spain launches free train tickets for short and medium journeys
from Sept to Dec
Author : vanilla-almond
Score : 127 points
Date : 2022-09-02 14:54 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.euronews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.euronews.com)
| zxspectrum1982 wrote:
| Net result is there's not enough trains for everybody so 3-hour
| delays are not rare. RENFE warned Government free tickets for
| everybody on short notice was simply not doable. They didn't
| listen. News will not report this, of course, they would lose
| their subsidies.
|
| https://twitter.com/acomajuncosas78/status/15654058221207633...
| switch007 wrote:
| They could just do what everyone else has been doing for 2
| years: blame "staff shortages" for any delay
| ipaddr wrote:
| After firing those who wouldn't take a vaccine.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Overbooking is illegal in Spain, as far as I know.
|
| "Free tickets" thus doesn't translate to "seats for everyone".
| acchow wrote:
| > News will not report this, of course, they would lose their
| subsidies
|
| Uhhh...what? Is spain not a democracy?
| zxspectrum1982 wrote:
| The current leftist Government is giving the media hundreds
| of millions of euros in subsidies. Of course, that creates
| expectations and obligations on what media will report.
| googlryas wrote:
| Is that not just what train stations look like in September?
| Has there been any analysis of how ridership changed based on
| this free travel plan?
| tdido wrote:
| I would easily expect even worse than that any day during
| peak hour in any of the larger stations here in Madrid.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| I'm not saying you're wrong, but RENFE's Rodalies service
| around Barcelona has been disastrous long before free train
| tickets.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It's kinda useless if you're not already on the train at least
| once a week making the same trip. Great for commuters to save
| some money but it doesn't happen open up any options for cool day
| trips to explore the country like the German offer.
| alastairp wrote:
| The tickets are definitely pitched as "for regular commuters",
| but I'm going to take advantage of them for getting further out
| of Barcelona to cycle. I've spent 70EUR on 4 tickets and expect
| that I'll receive refunds for 2 of them (by travelling at least
| 16 times on a ticket). A return ticket to a location 2 hours
| away ends up being close to 15EUR, so even if I get no refunds
| due to not travelling enough, it's still economical to buy the
| tickets if I'm planning on using them 2-3 times a month.
| durkie wrote:
| Where are your favorite places to ride near Barcelona?
| googlryas wrote:
| Not a ton of experience biking in the region, but I rode
| from Barcelona to Montserrat and it is quite lovely. There
| are a few sections where you're on a road busier with cars
| than one would like, but I've found Spanish drivers to be
| fairly respectful of bikers*. It was about 3.5h there, 2.5h
| back, with a nice 600m climb up the mountain at the end of
| the trip. The views up there are simply stunning.
|
| * Fun story, I rode 1500 miles throughout Spain ~10 years
| ago, and had not a single bad experience with a motorist.
| When I got back to my home in NY state, literally on my
| first bike ride back, within 2 miles of my starting point,
| a man in a truck threw a beer can at me.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| I think they learned from the German 9EUR ticket - people made
| more trips due to the ticket. With the spanish system, only
| people that really have to commute long-term (job, uni, etc.)
| will benefit, without setting an incentive to take
| "recreational trips".
| cmarschner wrote:
| In the end it only makes sense if you replace trips that are
| more carbon-heavy - and the evidence that this happened in
| the 3 months seem pretty weak. If you create additional
| mobility then everybody loses. People should have an
| incentive to do fewer car and plane trips - and maybe
| substitute some of them for train trips since they are the
| least damaging option.
|
| Which leaves a question of the long-term effect - will people
| who typically had not considered taking a train for, say,
| going on vacation will do so next year?
| jkukul wrote:
| > In the end it only makes sense if you replace trips that
| are more carbon-heavy - and the evidence that this happened
| in the 3 months seem pretty weak
|
| I don't think this measure is primarily meant to fight
| carbon emissions. I think the primary goal is to help
| people who were mostly affected by inflation, i.e. lower
| and middle class so people who take regular commuter
| trains.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| By extendion, they need disincentives to make any trips,
| trains included. The most carbon-neutral trip is the one
| never made. Tourism, long trips for no better reason than
| recreation, can never be made completely green.
| ben_w wrote:
| "Never" is a long time.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| It can be made close enough by train travel. There are
| other factors to consider than just carbon emissions, the
| most carbon reducing action would simply be to wipe out
| humanity but we probably don't want that.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > The most carbon-neutral trip is the one never made
|
| The most carbon-neutral consumer is 6 feet under. Or,
| better yet, processed into biogas.
|
| I don't think this is the kind of logic we should be
| engaging in
| [deleted]
| Macha wrote:
| Wasn't the german goal to replace car (and therefore oil)
| usage in general? I'm not sure someone taking a train to the
| beach town instead of driving there because the train was
| cheap is a failure in terms of the policy goals?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| But I thought the whole point of the German thing was to give
| everyone a little something?
|
| This seems very targeted at one specific group (those
| commuting regularly) that is only a small part of the
| population affected by the cost increases. In fact train
| tickets have not increased anyway.
|
| It seems a bit strange giving one group so much and the rest
| nothing.
| pooper wrote:
| > It seems a bit strange giving one group so much and the
| rest nothing.
|
| I think it makes sense if we can encourage people who would
| have otherwise traveled by car to try out the train. I mean
| that's the whole point, right? If we want to "give everyone
| a little something", we should increase capacity as well.
| mtmail wrote:
| > It seems a bit strange giving one group so much and the
| rest nothing.
|
| In parallel there was a 0.30 Euro subsidy on petrol
| ("Tankrabatt") and a 300 Euro one-off payment for employees
| (in September I think). Plus subsidy on gas for heating is
| being discussed. Taken together a lot was given, not only
| to one group.
| solarexplorer wrote:
| IIRC you don't have to do 16 trips in four months. If do fewer
| trips, you have to pay 10EUR once (or 20EUR for the mid range
| trips). That is still a considerable discount.
| TekMol wrote:
| You can't make this up.
|
| We currently have two problems:
|
| 1: Inflation is rampant because the governments spent so much on
| fighting Covid.
|
| 2: Covid variants are still spreading.
|
| What shall we do?
|
| Let's spend _more_ government money! On what? A free ticket, so
| people will cram into buses and trains together!
| nerdponx wrote:
| Somehow I doubt that temporarily subsidizing transit is going
| to have a big effect on inflation, nor is it going to have a
| noticeable crowding-out effect.
|
| Also this particular spending is subsidized with a tax. This is
| income redistribution, not printing money.
| antaviana wrote:
| I presume quality of public transportation will certainly
| degrade but by maximizing its usage (more people using it) will
| probably reduce energy consumption for transportation overall.
|
| Reducing energy consumption should be a priority. If our energy
| consumption was 1/10th of what it currently is, all of a sudden
| all these inflation issues would be gone. Current inflation is
| a butterfly effect, caused primarily by the increase in energy
| costs.
| roystonvassey wrote:
| While it will benefit travelers, it's likely to be used by a
| large number of people as an economic necessity - travel for
| work, study , selling and buying goods and services. The
| combined net economic impact is what I assume the govt hopes
| will offset the inflation burden to some extent. Covid
| transmission on the other hand is essentially endemic at this
| time and we have to manage it, rather than try to prevent it,
| especially in such a globalised world as ours
| jkukul wrote:
| Isn't inflation only caused by governments spending money only
| if money is printed in the process?
|
| Otherwise, it's just a re-allocation of money within a fixed
| budget. E.g. instead of money being allocated to building a new
| road it is allocated to subsidising train rides. The supply of
| money doesn't increase.
| capableweb wrote:
| Inflation happens because of many reasons, not just one
| reason, or "only". Which ones are currently affecting is, is
| up for debate, but it's surely not just one reason. You can
| start diving deeper into the subject at Wikipedia that has
| somewhat of an overview:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation#Causes
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Increasing subsidies that are used by poor and middle-class
| households seems to have a stronger effect than subsidizing
| rich people. Their money tends to have higher velocity
| (instead of throwing it into the stock market and waiting,
| they will use it to buy necessities), which leads to more
| total dollars spent per year from $1 of subsidies.
| jkukul wrote:
| You're right.
|
| The point I was trying to make is that subsidising poor and
| middle-class by re-allocating resources is better than
| printing money to give stimulus checks.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Maybe people in poverty are different where you live. Where
| I am it's a lifestyle, where every spare dollar is spent on
| drugs, alcohol, and gambling at the nearby casino. I guess
| it helps the economy, but probably not the parts of the
| economy society should be investing in.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Where do you live? It sounds like they are having a lot
| of fun there and you don't like it.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Increasing subsidies that are used by poor and middle-
| class households seems to have a stronger effect than
| subsidizing rich people.
|
| Subsidising rich people increases asset prices, share
| prices and house prices, and affects us all
| eynsham wrote:
| There are other problems, including the cost of living crisis.
| This is an attempt to fix that. Maybe the tradeoff isn't worth
| it, but it's not very constructive to just deny that there's
| one worth analysing.
|
| This sort of policy, if implemented effectively, can help to
| mitigate high diesel prices. (Plausibly it won't, by
| overcrowding the system to the point where it's
| counterproductive.) It also helps to approach better pricing of
| externalities, since generally taking the train is more
| socially useful.
|
| Covid is a problem, but, post-vaccination, it's roughly as bad
| as flu, and the combination of flu and public transport is not
| really that much of a problem, from past experience.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I would say that _switching_ from private cars to public
| transportation may actually decrease inflation. Would you
| rather have the citizens spend more on gasoline, thus
| potentially increasing the price of it?
|
| Also, as far as I understand, governments spending money
| doesn't necessarily cause inflation. Inflation was rampant
| between 1998 and 2006 too, while the Spanish government was
| selling ownership on arguably most of their national
| industries.
| pvaldes wrote:
| This is not a ticket for tourists. People eligible are frequent
| travelers that were yet using trains full of people six days a
| week. The covid risk has not changed so much really. A full
| occupied train can't be filled with more passengers.
|
| Everybody in Spain had the opportunity to access free Covid
| vaccines several times yet. If denialists keep ignoring
| science, is very sad, but is their choice, they will die more
| often. Maybe they should reduce the risk and abstain to use the
| train. The rest of the people needs to move on and keep with
| their lives.
|
| If we discuss the solution as not valid, we should pick the
| correct reason to do this. The goal is to reduce our gas/car
| dependency exceptionally and temporarily in some big cities. Is
| a dumb idea? Well, promoting public transport in the middle of
| an energetic crisis does not seem so dumb to me, but better
| ideas are always welcomed.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| 3. pollution/climate?
| vkou wrote:
| Clearly, what we should do is to cram more cars onto roads.
| After all, cars and roads and gasoline are all free, and
| increased demand for all of them in face of limited supply does
| not cause inflation...
| midasuni wrote:
| You're begging the question
| k__ wrote:
| We had this in Germany and it was pretty nice. Would have been
| better with a few more trains, but whelp, that's what the years
| of pushing for cars give you.
|
| I still hope it will lead to a change.
| markvdb wrote:
| These free train trips might be nice, but they don't really reply
| to the issue at hand.
|
| The source of inflation in Europe is the godfather in Moscow
| shutting the valves on natural gas pipelines. Barring war with a
| nuclear arms power, the remedies are diversifying natural gas
| supply and lowering its consumption. I see far too little too
| late action on this front.
|
| I've been waiting for half a year now for a simple and effective
| EU wide coordinated effort. It's just not happening. Our
| political class seems to show very little sense of urgency.
|
| One example out of many. Heat pumps are still in stock in most of
| the EU, with installers available to install them. We're speaking
| of systems that easily cut domestic energy consumption in three.
| Still available, after over six months of emergency!
| fy20 wrote:
| Although I'm a big proponent of heat pumps, they are not the
| solution here. I ran the numbers for my country and it still
| works out cheaper to heat with gas than a heat pump. Natural
| gas works out to be 13c/kWh and an electric heat pump 16c/kWh
| of heat. Why would someone pay close to EUR10k to switch to a
| heat pump, if the end result is going to be bills will not
| change?
|
| The only case a heat pump would be cheaper today is if you have
| solar, as then you can produce heat and hot water without any
| grid usage for half the year (the warmer part though), and you
| probably have net billing for the other half.
|
| In my country (and most of the EU) the elephant in the room is
| a lot of the electricity comes from natural gas, so switching
| to heat pumps alone will not drastically reduce natural gas
| demand. The market rates say it's better to burn directly than
| convert to electricity and then back to heat.
|
| I hope this is finally the thing that forces the EU to
| decarbonise electricity generation and switch to green energy
| (inc. nuclear), but given how slow things have changed over the
| last decade I somewhat doubt that. We already have the
| technology but Russian energy has been too cheap, now though...
| kazen44 wrote:
| to add to this, a ton of houses are not build for heatpump
| based systems.
|
| Most radiator style heating (aka, anything build prior to the
| 2000's) will not work with a heat pump because the water
| temperature cannot get high enough to get proper cooling
| coefficiency.
|
| Replacing your entire radiator based system in many houses is
| not possible without an extreme renovation of the home.
| flaviut wrote:
| mini-split systems are incredibly efficient and much easier
| to install than central heating. I would not expect them to
| require extreme renovation.
| moltar wrote:
| Spain doesn't source gas from Russia though. Spain has some, if
| not the, lowest, prices buy far. Like 1/3 of German gas prices.
| adabaed wrote:
| reocha wrote:
| To be at that level you have to be making EUR300,000 a year,
| that level of taxation seems fair to me.
| miki_tyler wrote:
| Tax rate for income > 60K Euro is 45%. On top of that VAT
| (IVA) current standard rate is 21% in Spain. Add on some
| other taxes (property tax, municipal taxes, IVTM, etc) and
| seems pretty high to me.
| reocha wrote:
| Earning 60k a year still leaves you with net 41k. To get
| close to loosing 50% of your income to taxes you have to
| earn over 1mil (disregarding VAT). Furthermore one must
| take into account the average salary in Spain is lower than
| most other European countries.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| It's not 50%, it's actually far higher. Governments hide
| taxes from workers by taxing the employer. Individuals
| might think their taxes are low, but that money comes
| from somewhere, and it manifests in lower wages, less
| competition, and offshoring.
|
| The true tax is called the "Tax Wedge". That's one of the
| reasons someone in Spain who makes 60k a year would be
| making 100k in the USA.
| reocha wrote:
| In return, the spanish get functioning infastructure,
| good trains, a decent public healthcare system, partial
| paid sick leave, 16 weeks maternaty leave full pay and
| half decent unemployment benefits.
| vkou wrote:
| In the US, employers are also taxed, to the tune of an
| additional 7.65% in SS and Medicare taxes, with another
| 7.65% in _employee_ SS and Medicare taxes (Something that
| never seems to get mentioned in discussions of US tax
| rates...), and another two or three percent in
| unemployment insurance taxes. On top of all that, between
| the employer and the employee, another $10,000-$25,000
| /year gets spent on medical insurance.
|
| Between all of that, that $100,000 in the US gets eaten
| up pretty quickly. If you live in, say, Wisconsin, your
| take-home will be between ~$57,000 and ~$45,000,
| depending on the number of family members you have on
| your health insurance plan.
|
| You'll also get to enjoy another 5% in sales tax, and
| 1.65%/year in property tax.
|
| So yeah, if you just look at the income tax rate, the US
| looks great. But when you account for all the other
| nickel-and-diming, you'll see that the net take-home for
| middle-class people is not so different. If you're upper-
| middle-class, making over $200,000, the US system starts
| getting skewed in your favor (Because of caps on SS,
| Medicare, because insurance costs are a flat fee, etc.)
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > manifests in lower wages, less competition, and
| offshoring
|
| Switzerland has some of the highest taxes and highest
| wages in the world. Afghanistan has some of the lowest
| taxes in the world.
|
| Clearly you must consider what you get for your money.
| Countries without functional police force, court system
| and IP protection don't tend to be popular with business
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Companies don't pay taxes for their employees, that's
| some bs. They pay part of their social security cost,
| which absolutely happens in the US as well.
| Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote:
| To whom do they pay that "social security"?
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Let me rephrase: there are no taxes paid for mere
| employment; instead, taxation for social security is
| shared between employer and employee.
|
| Saying that governments "hide taxes from workers by
| taxing the employer" is inaccurate at best. Taxation is
| shared, and there aren't dedicated taxes for employers.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The net effect is that the average Joe reads his payslip
| and just see his share of social insurance contribution -
| and then complains that his employer his paying him too
| little, without knowing how much social insurance his
| employer is paying.
|
| Hiding seems appropriate.
| fsckboy wrote:
| in the US, W2 wage income tax withholding is more or less
| invisible to the employee to the extent that most people
| view their tax refund as a bonus rather than the tip of
| the iceberg of taxes they've been paying. When you work
| consulting with a 1099 you suddenly realize how much
| money you need to fork over to feed the beast. (I suspect
| changing this aspect of the law would really swell the
| size of anti-tax political parties.) I point this out to
| say it's not so simple as to say "who pays" what tax.
|
| US retirement social security and unemployment insurance
| and employer health plans may map onto european social
| security costs paid by employers, but if the cost to
| employers is variable wrt number of employees it would be
| fair to call it "paying taxes for employees" (and
| especially when you consider that in some continental
| language families "for" and "per" are the same word ;)
| because it has a very similar price elasticity effect on
| the labor market
| mkl95 wrote:
| It's worse when you consider basic foundations of the
| system such as healthcare have been declining for a while.
| What are they even doing with all that money?
| alex7734 wrote:
| The same thing every government does: pocketing it or
| spending it in whatever they think will give them the
| most votes or influence.
| [deleted]
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