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9-Euro-Ticket

bahn.com

201–210 of 598 posts

Re: 9-Euro-Ticket

#201
post #42
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a matter of perspective. The ticket is not aimed solely at people with median income of a tech worker (or the typical HN crowd), but help out the general populace as a whole. Including those who can not even afford a car. Now I think when the times comes (3 month from now) for the program to run out, we might see discussions about continuing it at a price that makes it a more sustainable, permanent offer. But…

> more sustainable, permanent offer Seems pretty unlikely that they'll be able to after a 3 month period of operating at a loss (for the government) and likely having more issues due to increased usage.

It is a political decision, whether the government wants to pay the costs out of the federal budget. If the government is serious about CO2 reduction and also shifting commute traffic from cars to public transport, this might be an surprisingly cheap option. As the high energy costs also mean increased tax revenue, it might not even be a large load for the budget (and compared to many other things, spending like €10B/year on public transport isn't really much anyway).

Re: 9-Euro-Ticket

#203
post #128

Hmm, so social distancing is truly gone and they don't fear this action massively spreading the COVID virus?

Feels like the European governments' (I generalize...) thinking is, the vaccine is available, it's good enough, and Omicron is "not that bad" anyway, so, if you don't want to get vaccinated, it's on you, but let's get on with our lives...

The EU has a 78% vaccination rate and a 52% booster rate. Mask usage in public places is generally very high. The EU never turned vaccination and masks into divisive political and cultural issue.

All of this compares very favourable to the US where vaccination is 65% and boosters are 31%. Plus vaccination, mask usage and lockdowns became deeply decisive topics, substantially reducing the effectiveness of all of them. In the end it’s place the US in bad spot for resolving the the pandemic quickly.

Re: 9-Euro-Ticket

#204
post #36

I'm sure the private bus operators, who usually are the only cheap option to travel in Germany, are just thrilled by this additional market distortion.

[deleted]

Re: 9-Euro-Ticket

#205
post #154
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not German, I live in a Swiss village and drive zero km a day. But I spend almost an hour/leg in public transport traveling door-to-door to the office when I go there (well, before covid much more often). I can also work in the train most of the time - 45 minutes of said hour - so that it counts as work time too. So, no reason to drive at all. I only take the car at weekends for doing shopping or doing some visits, e…

The reason I ask is that there's a stereotype that German-speaking Europeans especially all go everywhere with hyper-efficient trains that come every three minutes and are only a little bit less on-time than the ones in Japan, and that can't actually be true out in the countryside.

And yet, it is true. Not everywhere trains obviously, but you'll have bus links to every dump - at least 5-6 a day and the closer you get to civilization the more often (up to every half an hour or whenever you have the train to the nearby station). They do come within a few minutes of schedule, no legend here - sometimes they even come a bit earlier and sometimes also wait hehe. Edit: my village has trains to the main city every half an hour and I can walk 10 minutes to the station or take a bus if the weather is nasty.

Re: 9-Euro-Ticket

#206

I would argue making it free and keeping it free would have been a cool move. - Less/no expensive accounting - Less/no personnel for checking tickets - Less/no personnel for prosecuting people who don't have tickets - Less/no ticket vending machines (and all the maintenance that comes with it) - Less traffic on the roads since you can't beat "free" and hence less emissions (at least in hamburg trains operate on green…

> - Less/no expensive accounting

Not quite. Many people (eg commuters) have monthly train passes, almost all students have a "Semesterticket" (university enrolment is about 350 EUR every half year, but that includes all public transport in the region).

Now, the 9-Euro-Ticket is cheaper than those options, so out of fairness the holders of all those tickets are getting a refund of 3 months worth of their pass minus 3x9=27 EUR, which is a huge administrative burden for the public transport providers and universities. That substantial burden would not have been reduced by having the ticket for free.

Re: 9-Euro-Ticket

#207
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the Americans. Converting from euros to USD and liters to gallons, gas is roughly $12 a gallon at this moment.

Your math is off by 50%. A gallon is 3.785 litres, and the euro is roughly $1.05. So 2 euros per litre = one gallon costs $8.

Thank you for the correction. I should have done my math a bit better. I do appreciate this community for calling out incorrect data. One of the very few communities left that call errors out in a thought out way.

Re: 9-Euro-Ticket

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there cross country but regional rail lines?

Yes, there are! For example, I have travelled between Strasbourg and Basel (Switzerland) on a regional train, as well as between Milan and Nice, and between Nice and Barcelona (changing trains at the Spanish border due to the change of rail gauge). There's also a regional line connecting Barcelona and Puigcerdà (a town in the Spanish Pyrenees) which at certain times continues its service a further ~5km and terminates…

There are also trains between Denmark and Sweden, and I'd be surprised if there's not similar things going on in the Benelux area.

Re: 9-Euro-Ticket

#209
post #91
post #2

I think it's great, but honestly, placing it at 15€ would have made only a little difference to the consumer, who is already getting a lot for the value, and helped the railway operators a good deal. As a compromise the age of kids who can travel together with their parents for free could have been raised from 6 to 8 years.

Isn't the taxpayer paying the shortfall, rather than the "railway operators"?

Right, it is tax-funded.

Don't ask me how exactly they assign the tax money to the train companies, but probably they get a fixed amount per ticket sold, which would be another reason why it is important to "sell" those tickets.

Re: 9-Euro-Ticket

#210
post #128

Hmm, so social distancing is truly gone and they don't fear this action massively spreading the COVID virus?

FFP2 masks are still mandatory and it isn't as if the regular trains were not crowed before.
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