[HN Gopher] Deutschlandticket: Germany's EUR49 ticket pushes pas...
___________________________________________________________________
Deutschlandticket: Germany's EUR49 ticket pushes passenger numbers
up 25%
Author : mpweiher
Score : 153 points
Date : 2023-08-04 17:51 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.euronews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.euronews.com)
| nologic01 wrote:
| Makes sense to try to remove any frictions from public transport
| - if not making it an enjoyable and desirable experience
| constantcrying wrote:
| >if not making it an enjoyable and desirable experience
|
| It will always be the worst part of my day and with more
| passengers and the regularly scheduled disasters that won't
| change any time soon.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| I now live in Luxembourg and public transports are just totally
| free: buses, tramways, trains... All free, for everybody
| (locals and tourists alike). No pass, no nothing: you just hop
| in the bus/train/tramway and you're good to go.
|
| You can also rent public bicycles and they're all
| e-bikes/pedelec and they're very cheap (but not free).
| slekker wrote:
| Has it helped with the traffic? I've heard that air pollution
| was horrible as well
| mk89 wrote:
| Is this something new? A few years ago it wasn't the case.
| layer8 wrote:
| Since March 2020.
| Narretz wrote:
| The most important thing is to have longterm political support
| for this ticket across the board, so that people can expect this
| ticket to exist in 5+ years, for a reasonable price (inflation
| adjusted). Plus you need bigger investments into public
| transport, and also serve routes that won't make a profit.
| Otherwise few people will use it instead of cars.
| tuukkah wrote:
| It's also a problem if the trains are full because of free
| passengers and you can't travel when you need to even if you
| paid extra.
| geraneum wrote:
| What is a free passenger?
| tuukkah wrote:
| I meant those who don't pay anything per trip e.g. those
| who have the Deutschlandticket.
|
| They are not freeloaders and I'm not blaming them but the
| more they travel the greater the burden while they aren't
| paying more. As with any other unmetered X/month service,
| the service provider has to make sure there's enough
| capacity.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| They clearly mean "not paying per ride"
| zwieback wrote:
| As an German expat in the Pacific Northwest this fills me with
| longing. We have like one train here and it's slow and
| expensive..
| munk-a wrote:
| I took the cascades train yesterday - no wifi for 80% of the
| journey, the AC was broken in one car and the train was booked
| beyond capacity. Amtrak brings incompetence to a whole
| different level.
| paddim8 wrote:
| Pacific northwest? Alaska? Canada?
| barbazoo wrote:
| > As an German expat in the Pacific Northwest this fills me
| with longing. We have like one train here and it's slow and
| expensive.
|
| Same here, all of it, German expat, PNW, longing, one slow
| expensive train :)
| pizzapill wrote:
| Grusse. I wonder if there were more trains there would you take
| it. A reasonable observation many North Americans make is that
| it would just take too long to get anywhere by train, unlike in
| Europe. AKA 300 years is old vs. 300 miles is far.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The vast majority of Americans live either east of the
| Mississippi or on the West coast at densities not dissimilar
| to Europe.
|
| You'll never take HSR from NYC to LAX but Chicago or Atlanta
| from NYC is roughly the same distance as Paris to Berlin, and
| there's a bunch of cities on the way as well.
| zwieback wrote:
| The metro areas are dense and tend to have decent public
| transport. The problem is in the smaller towns and rural
| areas. When I ride my bike around in the Willamette Valley
| I can go miles and miles without hitting even a small town.
| In Germany the next sizable town is usually minutes away.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > In Germany the next sizable town is usually minutes
| away.
|
| Maybe in Germany, but France has barely populated areas
| and yet we have one the biggest high-speed rail network
| on the planet. In fact, the fact that France is the
| biggest European country after Russia is probably the
| main reason high speed rails was invested on back in the
| 70s: the bigger your country the more you need high speed
| rail.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would think the densities are still much smaller since
| most people live in car dependent suburbs around the city.
| nickvanw wrote:
| Here in the PNW there is basically one corridor that would
| make sense as a semi-high speed (160+ kph) rail, which is
| Portland-Seattle-Vancouver. They are all under 200 miles from
| each other and connected by one road that is often very
| congested.
|
| The current Amtrak route is not frequent, fast or cheap
| enough to be a good alternative to driving for most people.
|
| Hourly service between them would be a boon to the whole
| area, and allow for a ton of flights to not happen between
| the cities for connecting traffic.
| ISL wrote:
| Especially if that service reached PAE, SEA, PDX airports.
| There's a ton of SEA->PDX flights.
|
| https://www.portseattle.org/sea-tac/flight-
| status?flight_dat...
|
| shows 23 unique aircraft flying SEA->PDX today and 32
| unique aircraft flying PDX->SEA
|
| At ~$80/seat one-way and ~80 passengers/flight, that's
| >$100M/yr in revenue.
|
| Existing trains take 3.5 hr for the journey. Existing
| flights take 1 hr for the flight + time spent in security,
| so trains aren't that far off.
|
| Furthermore, there are ~30,000 cars traveling each way each
| day along I-5 between Seattle and Portland
| (https://www.chehalisbasinstrategy.com/wp-
| content/uploads/201...) .
|
| Speedy train service really would make a difference.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Any idea of the cost of that commute (multiplied by
| 30,000)?
|
| There must be a business case in this surely, even if
| it's worked out based on minimum wage as that's a lot of
| commuters.
| vidarh wrote:
| While there are distances that are certainly "too long",
| there are _very few_ regions in the US where the majority of
| the population is so spread out that more trains wouldn 't
| enable a lot of travel to nearby towns and cities even if
| it's not attractive for long distance travel.
|
| E.g. I got in an argument with someone a while back who
| insisted on using Montana as an example, but while Montana is
| sparsely populated, Southern Montana had Amtrak passenger
| service until 1979 (ironically the only Amtrak service
| _currently_ serving Montana goes through some of the sparsest
| populated Northern parts of the state as part of the Empire
| Builder route), and has a density and distance between the
| main towns comparable to places in Norway with a perfectly
| viable regular passenger service.
|
| It's not like you need to have good train links _everywhere_
| to improve things, but often the point is not to connect big
| cities far away with _each other_ but to serve as extra life
| lines which makes it viable to move further out of the big
| cities for those in between. That means the relationship
| needs to be reversed from what Americans are used to: You can
| 't look at where there is demand for transport now. You need
| to look at where people might want to live or want to work,
| or _where you want to encourage_ growth, and where better
| transport might encourage that. And then you need to take a
| 20+ year horizon and commit to it, because only once the
| links are there will it start factoring into peoples
| decisions about where to move, and it will take many years
| before demand shifts. This is less obvious with cars because
| as long as there 's _a_ road people can forgive a lot. It
| doesn 't help to have rails if there are no trains running on
| them.
|
| And then you need to consider that it's ok to lose money on a
| per passenger basis on infrastructure if it promotes economic
| growth or positively affects other factors (e.g. reduces the
| amount of car congestion and environmental effects). You
| should still look at the economy of course, but take all the
| factors into account, because it often changes the
| calculations drastically.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Most people in the US live in urban areas and most travel is
| not that far. It only takes too long to get places by train
| because the service is poor and public transit is lacking.
| You're never going to take a train coast to coast but it's be
| nice to take one from San Francisco to Sacramento, the state
| capital 75 miles away didn't end up taking a nearly three
| hours.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Yes, there's a new high speed train from Miami to Orlando,
| but you would have to rent a car when you get to either end
| anyway because there's no realistic public transit in all
| of Florida. By the time you rent a car, you might as well
| drive around instead of taking the train.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| I've not been but Miami comes in the middle of a ranking
| of public transit cities in the US so I could imagine the
| trip working well the other way around.
| https://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-
| dade/...
|
| How practical it is will depend on the place. Yes lots of
| America has been built as suburban sprawl but there are
| lots of slightly more urban places too where modern
| regional rail would be a huge improvement over sitting in
| traffic.
|
| The frustrating thing about living in the bay area is
| that they ripped up a lot of rail in the 60s and replaced
| them with roads. Now those roads are clogged and journeys
| by car take longer than journeys by rail did back then.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > A reasonable observation many North Americans make is that
| it would just take too long to get anywhere by train, unlike
| in Europe.
|
| Well, China has built a shit ton of high speed rail across
| their country. There is _nothing_ preventing the US from
| doing just the same.
|
| NYC <-> LA is like, what, 4000km? Sounds insane at a quick
| glance, but a 500 km/h maglev train makes that an 8 hour
| ride, compared to a 6h flight plus 1h "dead" time for
| boarding, luggage, and security theatre. Not much of a
| difference. A 300 km/h "classic" high speed rail like the
| German ICE will take 13h, but hey even that is manageable.
|
| And unlike Europe, y'all have the advantage that your land is
| barely occupied by anything but a few farms.
| saalweachter wrote:
| You're going to pass through at least ten other states, and
| by or through at twenty or so other metros, and stop and
| none of them? And you expect to get the land rights needed
| to build a rail line straight enough to hit 500 kph?
| jamesaurichs wrote:
| US is actually smart enough to avoid big infrastructure
| debts. According to wikipedia, China has a 900B debt from
| high speed rails https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| speed_rail_in_China.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Yes the Chinese owe themselves 900B. They're going to rue
| the day when they find they can't pay themselves back.
| jamesaurichs wrote:
| China is rue(ing?) right now. China's local governments
| are dealing with a monumental local debt crisis from real
| estate fallout, and incidentally from too many built out
| unused rails and highways. And the center government has
| already said they are not going to rescue the local and
| provincial governments, "prefers local or provincial
| governments to sort out their own debt problems, and not
| create a moral hazard"
|
| As a result, the civil servants in China are seeing
| 25-50% paycut.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I don't know why your comment was marked as dead, vouched
| it as you make a good point.
|
| The thing is, debt isn't bad _per se_ - having a strong
| rail network can actually enable far _far_ bigger
| returns. The US is the perfect example actually...
| railroads were what enabled "going west" from the East
| Coast where the European settlers landed.
|
| If you have a strong rail network, you can move _a ton_
| of goods (or people) with barely any emissions, leagues
| better than airplanes, cars and trucks - only ships have
| a better efficiency in fuel consumption /CO2 emissions
| per passenger/ton kilometer. And rail infrastructure can
| hold up insanely long... here in Germany we're still
| using signalling systems and rails _literally built way
| before Hitler, before the first German democratic
| government, back when we still had a Kaiser_. Spread the
| 900 billion debt over 100 years lifetime and whoops,
| pretty cheap, isn 't it?
| jamesaurichs wrote:
| Thanks. I think having a few solid rails for really
| populars route is justified. The issue is building too
| many of these rails to where ridership is not even enough
| to produce a profit in the beginning, let alone sustain
| it forever. Also, cities grow and die. Can you imagine if
| US built out an expensive high speed rail from New York
| to Detroit? or Seattle to Portland?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The issue is building too many of these rails to where
| ridership is not even enough to produce a profit in the
| beginning, let alone sustain it forever.
|
| There's a ton of flights each day - the FAA says
| something around 45.000 flights [1], of which sadly there
| are no statistics if they are domestic or not. But even
| assuming just 25% are domestic, that's about 11.000
| flights that could be done on a decent HSR network,
| saving local populations in the inflight zone of airports
| from a ton of noise and _a lot_ of fuel /CO2 emissions.
|
| No matter what, CO2 emissions will make air travel
| unsustainable very fast very soon, and the US is barely
| prepared for this new reality.
|
| > Can you imagine if US built out an expensive high speed
| rail from New York to Detroit? or Seattle to Portland?
|
| Well, that is how the US grew so fast from East to West
| back in the day [2]. IIRC, a lot of the existing lines
| are the _same_ routes that were built back then.
|
| [1] https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers
|
| [2] https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-
| states-histor...
| kentlyons wrote:
| The multiple levels of governments and associated
| regulations is very much preventing it from happening. If
| any one of them in any of the jurisdictions the train might
| travel says no (or drags their feet) it doesn't happen.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| So what. Y'all managed to raise the minimum drinking age
| to 21 without passing a constitutional amendment by tying
| federal highway funding to compliance by the states [1].
| There's nothing stopping your federal government from
| doing just the same extortion again if your politics are
| too ossified for a constitutional amendment or to get rid
| of NIMBYs.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinki
| ng_Age_...
| kentlyons wrote:
| So it isn't nothing. It is something. If it were only the
| states vs the federal government, that would be great!
| Unfortunately it is also all of the county, city (and
| other??) local governments as well that have a say. And
| then in california in particular, things like the
| environmental protection laws have become weaponized as
| well to stop.
|
| I suspect it would take something spectacular (like how
| the interstate system was created) to actually make
| meaningful progress. And the irony is once it's in place
| no one could imagine life without it.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > Well, China has built a shit ton of high speed rail
| across their country. There is nothing preventing the US
| from doing just the same.
|
| It's been discussed many times. China simply does not have
| to deal with with unions, labour laws, land ownership and
| such. I don't think we want to live in such system.
|
| > A 300 km/h "classic" high speed rail like the German ICE
| will take 13h, but hey even that is manageable.
|
| No, it won't. There will be scheduled stops, weather, slow
| sections, accidents.
|
| I used to take Cologne to Utrecht for 3 months once a week
| return travel. Only once I arrived in both directions on
| time.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > China simply does not have to deal with with unions,
| labour laws, land ownership and such. I don't think we
| want to live in such system.
|
| Japan is a democracy that has all three, and yet they
| managed to build a HSR system. France has a very good HSR
| system as well.
|
| > No, it won't. There will be scheduled stops, weather,
| slow sections, accidents.
|
| The entire point of the US being suited for HSR is that
| it is so sparsely settled in the center of the country
| that you don't need frequent stops, or you can get away
| with just having every 2nd/3rd train stop at a specific
| city - with 30min of spacing between the trains, that's
| still 1h/1.5h interval for "flyover states". And a single
| train carries up to 1.000 passengers, replacing 4-5
| planes.
|
| > I used to take Cologne to Utrecht for 3 months once a
| week return travel. Only once I arrived in both
| directions on time.
|
| Please don't assume that the shit our politicians did
| with the DB network is valid for HSR in general.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > Japan is a democracy that has all three, and yet they
| managed to build a HSR system. France has a very good HSR
| system as well.
|
| Yeah, both started in 1960s.
|
| > The entire point of the US being suited for HSR is that
| it is so sparsely settled in the center of the country
| that you don't need frequent stops, or you can get away
| with just having every 2nd/3rd train stop at a specific
| city - with 30min of spacing between the trains, that's
| still 1h/1.5h interval for "flyover states". And a single
| train carries up to 1.000 passengers, replacing 4-5
| planes.
|
| And now you have 4000km of high speed rail tracks to keep
| in top notch condition. With a mountain range between the
| two coasts. And trains passing rather frequently.
|
| > Please don't assume that the shit our politicians did
| with the DB network is valid for HSR in general.
|
| Oh. Nothing to do with that. Weather, accidents, no staff
| were the most common causes.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > And now you have 4000km of high speed rail tracks to
| keep in top notch condition.
|
| Maintaining hundreds of planes is also hard and planes
| are terrible for the environment and terrible to travel
| in. Surely we can aim higher?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Oh. Nothing to do with that. Weather, accidents, no
| staff were the most common causes.
|
| Actually, _all three_ can be blamed on Deutsche Bahn. The
| Swiss for example have a ridiculously strong tree
| management program [1], which means they can keep
| operating even in storms because there is no danger of
| trees falling onto tracks which is a fairly common
| occurrence in Germany.
|
| Accidents as well... a lot of tracks, everything up to
| 160km/h, has level crossings with roads. Only above 160
| km/h you need dedicated, crossing free infrastructure. We
| could get rid of a lot of these level crossings if we
| wanted to.
|
| And no staff? DB pays shit, that's the reason why no one
| wants to work for them, and the "private competitors" pay
| even less. And if the railroad workers go to strike, the
| entire fucking country shits on them for daring to fight
| for their rights.
|
| [1] https://www.waldwissen.net/de/technik-und-
| planung/naturgefah...
| lostlogin wrote:
| > The Swiss for example have a ridiculously strong tree
| management program
|
| Without even pausing I assumed this was some business
| speak MBA crap. I cackled when I realised.
| fsh wrote:
| The TGV averages ~280 km/h on several long-distance
| routes in France. For example, Paris-Strasbourg (490 km)
| takes 1:45.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Trains travelling from Paris to Strasbourg cover a
| distance of around 246 miles (396 km) during the journey.
| ska wrote:
| This is only sort of true. There are lots of population dense
| areas of North America that wouldn't look that different than
| much of Europe. E.g. NYC to Boston is shorter than Paris to
| Frankfurt.
|
| The main problem is that the train infrastructure where
| exists is old and very slow, and typically passenger trains
| have lower priority than freight. The end result are slow,
| often grubby, expensive (e.g. more than flights), trains with
| inconvenient sparse schedules and poor services. Not exactly
| compelling.
| kriro wrote:
| Well I ordered mine through the DB app (big mistake) on the 4th
| of July. I have neither received the ticket nor have they
| deducted any money from my account (status in the portal is
| "open"/"unpayed"). I got an email stating there are slight delays
| and someone would contact me soon on the 4th. Have called the
| hotline a couple of times since, with stated waiting times of
| 10h, 8h, no lines available message and they hangup etc. Finally
| reached someone at the end of July and they told me there's
| nothing they can do, I should write an email and they gave me an
| address. Sent an email, haven't heard from them since.
|
| So basically I had no ticket for the first month, don't have one
| as of now. From my understanding, if I'd take the train and
| gotten checked it would be ok in July (they stated in the delay
| email that the email is proof of contract and the people doing
| checks are instructed accordingly and to accept it until end of
| July). However, I've already read stories that people still had
| to pay the 7 Euro administrative fee for not bringing a ticket
| (but having one in theory, so not the full 60 euro penalty).
|
| For my upcoming train trips in August I will simply buy a ticket
| and ask for a refund once my ticket is finally valid. The only
| other option would be to take the train and risk a nice argument
| about having a valid contract but no ticket.
|
| Simply ridiculous. I could go to a train station with an office
| and see if I can get it sorted there but I'd need to take the
| train to get there (only a small station where I live). Also a
| stupid waste of time.
|
| So far the most amazing business process I have experienced in my
| life :P Should have just bought the ticket elsewhere (locally,
| deutschlandticket.de etc.) but no stupid me wanted to have
| everything in one app and didn't really expect the official app
| to cause any problems.
| rob74 wrote:
| Hearing stories like this makes me glad I bought mine through
| the MVG app (operator of subways, buses and trams in Munich). I
| ordered it on April 24th, and was briefly worried that it
| wouldn't work out until 1st of May, but no problem. Which is
| not to say everything worked without a hitch, they tried to
| also offer (on short notice) a "flexible" ticket which wouldn't
| start on the 1st of the month, but that was only available in
| their customer care centers, of which there are 2 (two) in the
| whole of Munich. And sure enough, enormous queues. I wonder who
| thought that would be a good idea...
| sigmar wrote:
| Is the app's only payment method SEPA direct debit? The website
| seemed to only have SEPA last time I checked
| sumuyuda wrote:
| My girlfriend has the same problem. She wasn't able to get
| through on the hotline and no answer on the email. She went
| into a ticket office here in Berlin and they told her they
| can't do anything about the payment problems and to call the
| hotline. Total shit show.
|
| The 9EUR ticket was amazing and could be purchased without a
| subscription. Why are they forcing you to have a subscription
| for the Deutschland ticket?
| quartz wrote:
| Unlimited travel tickets like this open up so many opportunities.
|
| I booked a Eurail ticket with my wife when we graduated college
| and still can't believe how amazing it was to travel at-will all
| around Europe for weeks on end. I think we paid $350 all in?
| They've gone up a little bit in price but they're still a steal.
|
| We even sprang for the 1st class ticket, which turned out to be
| often empty and sometimes quite luxurious, since it was only
| something like $60 more.
| tuukkah wrote:
| I've learned that travelling on the 1st class Eurail/Interrail
| ticket can end up cheaper than 2nd class, as some seat
| reservations will be free or cheaper in 1st class. Also, there
| are valuable 1st class perks such as free breakfasts, luggage
| storage etc. that can easily add up.
| constantcrying wrote:
| The Deutschlandticket is _not_ a travel ticket, it is only for
| local transport and slow regional trains. It is not feasible to
| travel through the country with it.
| dgellow wrote:
| You're not incorrect, the Deutschland ticket is mostly for
| local transports. But you can travel through Germany using
| only RE, it's way slower than via ICE and requires lot of
| changes but that's definitely feasible. It's a quite nice way
| to explore the country if you do multiple halts.
| mywacaday wrote:
| I once had the pleasure of traveling from Bern Switzerland to
| Milan though the Alps in a business car all to myself.
| Attempted to get some work done for about 5 minutes and stopped
| when I realised the views made it impossible. It's over 10
| years ago but only cost around EUR90 one way. Also Milan train
| station is a work of art in its own right.
| leledavid wrote:
| I wonder how much of the uptick could be explained by seasonality
| (if somebody knows some useful data source, please share). Also
| the 1.8 Mil new customers could very well be just natural flow
| and not really incremental due to the ticket. In any case - it's
| a great initiative.
| 3rd3 wrote:
| It could also be explained by high gas prices, inflation and
| overall economic adversity.
| stephendause wrote:
| My guess is a lot of it. The 25% number is meaningless because
| they're not comparing to the proper baseline. Anecdotally, I
| was in Berlin last year, and there was a similar product, and
| locals said not that many people were taking advantage of it.
| baron816 wrote:
| I wonder how often managers forget that you can often make more
| money and profit by lowering prices.
| jonas21 wrote:
| I think you mean: you can often get more users by charging less
| than what it currently costs to provide a service.
|
| I doubt managers forget this. It's just that you need backers
| with very deep pockets (the government in this case, VCs in
| Uber's case) to make it work.
| hef19898 wrote:
| DB is not VC funded like all those food delivery shops so.
| fantyoon wrote:
| Instead its owned by the Government which can borrow an
| infinite amount of money and does for all kinds of reasons.
| Right now they spend 1.5 billion Euro each year for the
| Deutschland Ticket[1].
|
| I am super happy about the ticket and think its a good
| thing. But lets not pretend its financing would be possible
| without heavy government spending.
|
| [1] https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-
| de/aktuelles/deutschland... (German)
| Moldoteck wrote:
| Just like financing road infrastructure
| baron816 wrote:
| That's not what I mean.
| qwytw wrote:
| You can't imagine this could ever be profitable though?
| hyperhopper wrote:
| Anybody that has ever taken a 101 economics class knows
| this is true.
|
| Look up elasticity of demand.
| baron816 wrote:
| I just mean that when you lower prices, more people will
| buy it, and they'll buy more of it. That can more than
| offset the lower margin on a per item purchase.
|
| If your train has 200 seats, it's better to sell 200
| tickets at $65 per ticket than it is to sell 100 at $100
| per ticket.
| constantcrying wrote:
| It can not be. Unless you think that transport agencies
| suddenly figured out how to make everything work for half
| the price. The government just subsidizes the losses.
| That is the explicit plan, profit is not intended to
| happen.
| zwieback wrote:
| The article says that they are losing so much money that it's
| not sustainable.
| josefx wrote:
| It doesn't? unless you mean the unnamed "transport bosses"
| that used the word "might". The article linked next to it
| even mentions that the government covers the difference and I
| don't see anyone pronouncing the end of roads over that
| issue.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Public transport in Germany is losing money anyway. Even
| before the 49 Euro-Ticket, when people were paying multiple
| times that amount, public transport was usually receiving
| subsidies.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Where?
|
| The only actual claim of losing money was about the 9 euro
| ticket.("the ultra-cheap pass cost the state too much for it
| to be extended.".)
|
| The "unsustainable" comment was a theory from May which
| should be trivial shown (or not) by now but definitely not a
| claim by the article. ("There's a question mark over how long
| this year's EUR49 pass will last, with transport bosses
| warning in May that it may be unsustainable too.")
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| It's a public utility, it doesn't have to be self-sustainable
| if it is already covered by taxes, and provides mobility in
| other ways, e.g. cheap transportation means more to spend on
| holidays locally. Furthermore, a reduction in car emissions
| means lower healthcare costs.
|
| Not everything has to make money.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Well, everything needs money. You're right that some of the
| money here is extracted from people whether they use the
| service or not, but it's not great.
|
| > Furthermore, a reduction in car emissions means lower
| healthcare costs.
|
| Not necessarily - imagine a pandemic where people could
| only use public transport.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Respectfully, this mindset is myopic.
|
| Utilities are called utilities for a reason, and PUBLIC
| transportation is a utility.
|
| Better mobility means less road congestion, fewer
| emissions, less energy wasted needlessly, fewer
| healthcare costs, easier access to jobs and education
| which implies reduced crime, reduced crime means improved
| living conditions, more safety, fewer healthcare costs.
|
| The ROI on utilities is in many ways intangible due to
| the sheer complexity of our society.
|
| Measuring how much utilities make directly and using that
| to argue that they should be discontinued is naive at
| best and downright dangerous at worst.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Measuring how much utilities make directly and using
| that to argue that they should be discontinued is naive
| at best and downright dangerous at worst.
|
| I see this formulation so much. Almost these exact words,
| although the topic varies. Why is that? Thoughts are not
| dangerous, yet people keep saying they are.
|
| Incidentally the formulation often has the additional
| characteristic yours also does, which is assuming I said
| something I didn't. No one mentioned discontinuing
| anything.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| It works the same as maintaining road infra. Car/fuel
| taxes are not enough to cover it, so ppl taxes are used.
| There is no sustainable transport in this regard maybe
| except bike lanes since these require minimal maintenance
| after built and have long lifespan, but public transport
| is better (cheaper to maintain) compared to car infra
| when accounting nr of passengers transported
| s1mplicissimus wrote:
| he says "reduction", you respond to "removal". i think
| that is called a strawman :)
|
| but you are right, everything _needs_ money. so it ends
| up being a political issue where ideally we
| democratically figure out how much tax money we give to
| the train operators
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > he says "reduction", you respond to "removal". i think
| that is called a strawman :)
|
| Good point. I misread - didn't mean to mischaracterise.
| constantcrying wrote:
| It is literally kept in existence by government funding. My
| local transport agency (state owned) effectively charges a
| third of what it did before. _Obviously_ they are taking
| enormous losses on this, which are financed directly by the
| federal government.
| rasz wrote:
| Except they are still losing money on this scheme, and what you
| propose works only in case of huge demand and competitor.
| Without competition limiting supply and rising prices makes
| more business sense in the short to medium term.
|
| In this instance its not about profits, even approaching even
| would be a huge win to environment, labor market, local
| industry and infrastructure.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| There are competitors to the train, buses and private cars.
| pastage wrote:
| They will need to invest in more rail if that is going to be
| sustainable. My limited experience with German trains is
| positive, but going Hamburg to Berlin has always been fully
| booked.
| maweki wrote:
| The Deutschland Ticket is only for local and regional
| transport. You can't use it with anything "bookable".
|
| But your point still stands. Germany needs to invest a lot.
| Most of the money goes to the Autobahn.
| ck45 wrote:
| According to
| https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/831740-831740, the
| planned investments for this year are 9.08 billion Euro for
| long distance railways and 8.4 billion Euro for highways.
| qwertfisch wrote:
| Interesting. But of course there is a lot of investment
| bottleneck (or whatever the translation for
| ,,Investitionsstau" is). For example take the ,,Neue
| Alpentransversale" [1][2] which was a 40 year project for
| modernizing the tracks through Swiss with connections to
| all neighbouring countries. The Swiss are finished. Germany
| did not even start and will be ready around 2040, for just
| 190km of tracks.
|
| [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Eisenbahn-
| Alpentransversa... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRLA
| [deleted]
| qwertfisch wrote:
| If the German government would have sticked to the plan of
| building a Transrapid track between Hamburg and Berlin instead
| of upgrading the current tracks being able to support an ICE
| with only 250km/h (which took as many years as building the
| Transrapid track would have), then there would be much more
| capacity of transporting people and a functioning an future-
| proof track for high speed transport with over 500 km/h. Take
| into account the very short entrance times, compared to flying,
| and you save even more time. Air routes between Hamburg and
| Berlin would have been pointless for many years.
|
| There were a lot of political changes at the end of the 90s,
| some spurious arguments were made, also saying ,,it would be
| too expensive", despite having a huge history of building train
| stations and airports for much much more then the planned costs
| ... this was just an excuse to not build it because they did
| not want it.
|
| They said the passenger estimations were too high and it would
| not be profitable. Today this route is the most used one in
| Germany with 17000 passengers per day and a capacity of 8.7
| million per year[1].
|
| Transrapid (already the model TR08) would have been able to
| reach the destination in way under 60 minutes, including two
| intermediate stops. The ICE was able to do this in 90 minutes
| (when the reconstructed track was finished in 2004), but today
| the scheduled duration is 104-110 minutes. Also the track is
| shared with local trains.
|
| [1]:
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnstrecke_Berlin%E2%80%93Ham...
| s1mplicissimus wrote:
| Greetings from Austria!
|
| We have a similar thing going on where you can buy an every-
| train-and-other-public-transport-in-Austria ticket. It is called
| the "climate ticket" ( https://www.klimaticket.at/ )
|
| The price is EUR 1.095/year for regular adults (1.205 for the
| family ticket [=1 adult + up to 4 kids] and 825 for
| youth/seniors)
|
| I'm a happy owner since it's 2 year existence and have recently
| been baffled by the prices DB is asking when I did a trip to
| Berlin by ICE...
|
| It's a great peace of mind to just hop onto any bus/tram/train in
| the country and not have to worry about tickets, and i think it's
| a great step towards getting more traffic from the streets to the
| rail.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Wow that's a low price in Austria. In the Netherlands it's 4200
| euro per year for just the trains, you still have to pay for
| bus and metro on top of that.
| thepangolino wrote:
| [dead]
| mudita wrote:
| That sounds more like the BahnCard 100, which costs 4.339 Euro
| per year. The Deutschlandticket is only valid for slow,
| regional trains, not faster long distance trains.
| s1mplicissimus wrote:
| is the Bahncard 100 popular? Asking because it seemed to me
| recently every 2nd passenger (#samplesize) pulled out their
| Klimaticket for the ticket checks.
|
| I'd expect the 4k option for all of germany to be less
| popular (in % of ticket holders/population) due to pure odds
| (aka chances are high an average person won't regularly need
| to journey from hamburg to munich, but they might regularly
| journey somewhere inside their Bundesland. so it's less
| likely it's "worth it" for people?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >is the Bahncard 100 popular?
|
| I went to uni in Cologne and a lot of banker types who
| would daily commute from Cologne to Frankfurt always had
| one. Very popular with business people doing these mid-
| range round trips. For regular travelers too expensive
| though.
| looperhacks wrote:
| Very few people own a Bahncard 100. It's only useful if you
| need it for your job/business, otherwise it probably won't
| pay for itself. Most people prefer the car or plane (if you
| frequent between big cities) anyway
| barrkel wrote:
| Internet connectivity is surprisingly poor on German
| trains. In 1st class, between Basel and Hanover, most of
| the time my phone (with Swisscom SIM) got better
| connectivity than the onboard wifi. Considering that this
| route connects Zurich and Frankfurt, you'd think there
| would be a smidgen more investment in bandwidth.
| phreeza wrote:
| The wifi on the trains comes from the cellular network,
| too. If you experienced cell phone working better than
| the on board wifi, that was almost certainly some other
| issue, the performances are very correlated. The problem
| is not so much with the trains, it's just that cellphone
| coverage is just terrible in Germany generally,
| especially compared to Switzerland.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| If there's one thing Germany is uniquely terrible at,
| it's internet connectivity. Absolutely mindblowingly bad,
| speaking as someone who grew up with Telkom monopoly in
| South Africa in the 90s.
| thesaintlives wrote:
| There is also bahncard 25 and 50. It basically means how
| much of a percentage you get off the ticket price.
| Bahncard 50 first class is quite good if you travel a few
| times a month. Soon pays off and first class is usually
| not bad..
| majewsky wrote:
| I am a BC100 owner. Work pays for it in lieu of a company
| car, so I only have to pay taxes on it, which comes out
| to about 160 euros per month. Like you say, I'm in the
| "it doesn't pay for itself" camp, but like the thread
| starter says,
|
| > It's a great peace of mind to just hop onto any
| bus/tram/train in the country and not have to worry about
| tickets
|
| It's like with theme parks: I prefer paying one big sum
| at the start and then getting to enjoy myself for the
| whole day over being nickle-and-dimed at every ride.
|
| I don't do it very often, but I've more than once visited
| other cities in the area on a whim because the marginal
| cost is zero. That specialty shop in another city 400
| kilometers away? Suddenly within reach, if the only cost
| to get there is time. And being on a train instead of
| driving a car means I can work while getting there and
| back.
|
| And then there's the other perks of the BC100 that make
| travelling generally more chilled: Large stations have
| frequent-travelers' lounges with free drinks and working
| spaces. On long-distance trains, there's a section of the
| train (usually a quarter of a railcar) that's reserved
| for frequent travellers and BC100 owners, so I don't have
| to worry about seat reservations even when the trains are
| crowded. The purchase price for a 2nd-class BC100 also
| gives enough bonus points for 8-9 free upgrades to First
| Class per year; I use those when I know I'll be going for
| a particularly long distance.
| jokteur wrote:
| It's 3860chf in Switzerland, valid for any public transport,
| even boats. However, they are talking raising the price once
| again, and Switzerland is not interested in making this
| cheaper.
| [deleted]
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