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Klimaticket: All public transport in Austria with a single ticket for 1095 EUR/y

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251–260 of 299 posts

Re: Klimaticket: All public transport in Austria with a single ticket for 1095 EUR/y

#251
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's not exactly that you have a lot of choice for where you work, for example.

I suppose it depends on the job and the market, but many people do have a lot of choice where they work (and where they live).

I think we disagree on the "many". I would say "some" instead. Most people i know don't have a choice: they're employed in a shop somewhere or work from specific offices. Of course, the HN crowd may be more exposed to work-from-home, but that's still alien to a great part of the population, especially those who work the most precarious jobs.

Re: Klimaticket: All public transport in Austria with a single ticket for 1095 EUR/y

#252

I really want this to exist for Belgium. Right now the public transport prices are absurd here... An all year pass for just the train in all of Belgium ranges in the 10k eur/year, and there is no national metro+bus+tram access (just Brussels is 700 EUR / year for that with no access to other cities). It's absurd and caused by fragmentation of services between Flanders, wallonia and Brussels with no coordination betwe…

> ranges in the 10k eur/year That's brutal. But I just visited (out of curiosity) www.belgiantrain.be and it says 3286 Euro for an "Unlimited Season Ticket" that "can be combined with other transport networks (STIB, TEC and De Lijn)" (I guess those are the local transport networks).

Season ticket is newish and it’s just a few months iirc.

Stib is the Brussels bus service, de lijn is Flanders, TEC is Wallonia.

Re: Klimaticket: All public transport in Austria with a single ticket for 1095 EUR/y

#253
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every passenger wears on the system. It is fair that you pay a part of things you use.

Every road user also uses roads paid for by every tax payer so there's that.

Well that's good, isn't it? I mean if i had to choose between my taxes financing public roads/trains, and my taxes financing cops to beat up my neighbors and silence political dissent, i would without any form of hesitation choose the former.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a democracy so there's not exactly a choice beyond what brand/color of corrupt overlord we'd like to see ruin our lives for the next 5 years.

Re: Klimaticket: All public transport in Austria with a single ticket for 1095 EUR/y

#254
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They take the car because the train is way too expensive OEBB (Austrian Federal Railways, the state train operator) does offer a family railcard ("Vorteilscard Family"), and it's hardly expensive: "The Vorteilscard Family offers you a particularly inexpensive option to travel together with children. For only €19 a year, up to 4 children under the age of 15 can accompany you for free."

It sounds cheap, and it's probably a good deal if you ride long distances or frequently. But when I recently planned a trip from Linz to Vienna for our family it would have cost around 120€ for the train (not including tickets for bus or subway to get to/from train station). Driving costs around 40€ for gas (not including parking fees).

[deleted]

Re: Klimaticket: All public transport in Austria with a single ticket for 1095 EUR/y

#255
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it depends on the job and the market, but many people do have a lot of choice where they work (and where they live).

I think we disagree on the "many". I would say "some" instead. Most people i know don't have a choice: they're employed in a shop somewhere or work from specific offices. Of course, the HN crowd may be more exposed to work-from-home, but that's still alien to a great part of the population, especially those who work the most precarious jobs.

I'm not sure how it is in Austria, but here in the US, people on the more "precarious" end of the spectrum (non-management retail and hospitality workers) have a quit rate of (very roughly) ~50% per year. So generally they do seem to be aware that they can choose a different place to work. Do you live somewhere very rural?

Re: Klimaticket: All public transport in Austria with a single ticket for 1095 EUR/y

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The area of Luxemburg is 2500km2 and the estimated population is 633k. For comparison: the area of London is ~1500km2 with population of 8m+. Do you think that Luxemburg’s system can be scaled up?

Shouldn't it be easier in London due to higher density?

I was considering this but higher density also means more transportation is required, more people have to employed and so on. It gets very expensive very fast.

In theory population size 12x of the population of Luxemburg would make it easier to distribute the cost of free transport. But this glosses over the fact that London is huge and only zone 1 and maybe 2 are a pain to drive. Not everyone in London works in zone 1 / 2.

I wonder if there’s anyone here able to give an answer if free transport in London would be financially realistic.

Re: Klimaticket: All public transport in Austria with a single ticket for 1095 EUR/y

#257
post #164

This weekend I'll be travelling from Innsbruck to Vienna, a good chunk of the entire length of Austria. I'm not here enough (and not travelling around enough) to be interested in the Klimaticket, but here's how public transport vs car stacks up: Innsbruck to Vienna is 476km (~300mi) by road. It takes about 5 hours to drive, assuming no delays. The way the world is right now, there will certainly be delays. On the fas…

Even during the lockdowns there were times of no checkpoints on the borders again. It was such a relief to finally see them gone. I hope they aren't back again. But yes that is amazing value and travel by train is just nicer.

The border between Germany and Austria near Salzburg is a special case. Since the refugee crises there are regular big controls.

Locals avoid it whenever possible, even thought this is the most direct way for many connections.

Avoid taking a bus over that border, and if you do don't panic when they enter with dogs and machine guns and expect a 2 hour delay

Re: Klimaticket: All public transport in Austria with a single ticket for 1095 EUR/y

#258
post #140

Why should public transport cost anything at all? I mean, what's the point? You might say the service costs money. It does. The ticket prices never cover that so you're already running at a loss. You spend money on enforcement, payment and ticket machines and you reduce usage of the service. But here's the more important point: cars are already subsidized to a huge degree pretty much everywhere through roads, parking…

Free public transport means worse service. In the long term, subsidies Sometimes the fares are also higher than costs to discourage using public transport, because capacity is limited and increasing it is effectively impossible. London zone 1 is a good example of this. People who won't use public transport will walk/cycle or not take the trip at all. They won't switch to driving in any significant numbers, because that would be physically impossible.

Re: Klimaticket: All public transport in Austria with a single ticket for 1095 EUR/y

#259
post #82
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a bit silly, but more a theoretical problem, right? I'd assume (I can't actually find a map of the coverage), that people for whom a BC 100 makes sense travel mostly by train, thus live near a train station with a good connection. Which will then be in one of the 130 cities that include the public transport with the City Ticket.

Everybody I know who has a Bahncard 100 uses it for commuting. While they generally live "close" to a train station they need public transport on both ends of the journey and buy additional tickets, e.g. another ~60€/month for a Berlin ticket.

Berlin A+B is included (one of the 130 cities). Or do they live outside, in zone C?

Re: Klimaticket: All public transport in Austria with a single ticket for 1095 EUR/y

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luxembourg resident here. Free public transport is a game-changer. You don't have to think about it, you just step on the bus, or tram. This also means the bus driver doesn't have to worry about checking tickets. There aren't guards to check if people are jumping over turnstiles, etc. Moving to 'totally free' eliminates all kinds of overhead. There is no reason it couldn't scale. And the question of scaling hides an…

> why do you want to limit the usage of public transport? > If people don't take public, they will take > private transport (cars, etc) This ignores two elements: - congestion differs by time of day, and - capacity is constrained differently by mode In London: - it's cheaper to take a bus than to take an underground train, and - there are ticket types that are only valid after the morning rush hour Both of these decr…

Yes, there are also weekend tickets, zone 1, 2, up to 6 tickets. It’s pretty complex.

Increasing bus capacity might not be easy either. That requires more busses, more staff, more service, more whatever the source of power is for the busses. It all costs ££££.

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