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Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month

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Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month

#31

Post by netrus »

ffritz wrote: post #25
valenterry wrote: post #3

Mind that the ticket excludes all fast trains, it's only for local trains. Still pretty good, but you shouldn't get the wrong idea and think you can suddenly use every train.

This is correct and to show what that means: Frankfurt to Berlin with a fast ICE: 4 hours, no changes. With regional trains only: 10-14 hours, 3-6 changes. With a car this trip is 5 hours. No one in their right mind would ever do such a trip with regionals only, it is extremely painful. In addition, the chance that one of the connections will be missed is extremely high.

Sure, but if you miss your connection you can just take the next train. Frankfurt to Berlin might be impossible, but Hamburg to Berlin is manageable (4-5h), if money is tight, as is Hamburg to Sylt (3h) and many other connections in the 200-400 km range.

Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month

#32

Post by lispm »

febeling wrote: post #19

So this is a public transport ticket for urban areas. It's a good idea to make them valid across regions. If they can make it work, that is. There is still the task to distribute revenue in some adequate way, and currently politicians like to in indulge in wishful thinking and disconnect from reality in Germany, so let's wait if anyone has bothered to solve the hidden problems behind this. Could play out like the dis…

> So this is a public transport ticket for urban areas

It isn't. It is a ticket for all of Germany.

Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month

#33

Post by [deleted] »

adithyasrin wrote: post #29

I switched to this ticket in Berlin and the process was (surprisingly) straight forward, could do it in online so I wrote about it. They did try to make the digital ticket default instead of a physical card. https://www.arbeitnow.com/blog/bvg-monthly-ticket-to-deutsch... You can already apply for your monthly subscription to change to this ticket. That's what I did. So instead of 66 euros for Berlin (VBB area) a mont…

[deleted]

Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month

#34

Post by ntauthority »

Aachen wrote: post #21
smcl wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's at least good that they're moving in this direction at all. Maybe the pricing isn't spot-on, or the capacity isn't there, or there are debates over the ticketing or there are some other issues. But it seems to me that Germany has recognised the importance of encouraging rail travel, and they're taking the first steps in doing so.

I earn enough to afford the current "BahnCard 100", but the pricing versus value is such that I'm not remotely considering it. That means that taking public transport is a hassle: - always need to buy a ticket: talk to a driver (who usually acts annoyed on behalf of the whole bus that you are holding up) or waste time trying to figure out ticket machines when you should be catching a connection; - always need to carr…

> talk to a driver (who usually acts annoyed on behalf of the whole bus that you are holding up)

It is still an interesting cultural observation that here in NL, even people who manually buy a ticket at the driver while struggling using the card terminal do not seem to get an annoyed response inherently even on a half-filled bus, whereas in Germany it seemed almost expected to get chewed out for not having exact change or taking more than 10 seconds to gather a pile of coins - in the pre-app era, of course.

Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month

#35

Post by Zetobal »

perceptronas wrote: post #20
pph wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One benefit of the flat pricing is that it saves a lot of overhead on having to check eligibility. I'm not arguing whether that's good or fair, but it does simplify the system.

Conductor still needs to check the ticket itself. You would have to show your student/pensioner ID in addition to the ticket. Overhead of eligibility check is negligible in my opinion

It's not about the conductor...

Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month

#36

Post by benj111 »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #13

I'm somewhat surprised that they go for this model. It's 49 Euro per month with restrictions to regional services. However that ticket is available for tourists, students, pensioners, workers and regular people at the same price point. I would have assumed they make that ticket only available yearly and with discounts to students or pensioners. The way the Austrian ticket works (91 Euro per month for regulars, 68.5 E…

>because it also enables some level of competition

Does it? How do railways work in Austria? In the UK companies bid to get monopolies on routes. So you don't really have competition anyway.

>and it lets the rail companies charge higher prices for tourists.

Is that a good thing? I assume at least one of the reasons is to get people out of cars. It's unclear to me why a tourist not using a car is worse than a local not using a car.

Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month

#37

Post by Zetobal »

pph wrote: post #12
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is “fast” here just the higher-speed inter-city services, or would some intra-city services also be excluded?

"Fernverkehr" (long-distance: ICE, IC, EC) is excluded, "Nahverkehr" (RB, RE, S, U, Bus) included.

Most IREs are included as well.

Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month

#38

Post by locallost »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #13

I'm somewhat surprised that they go for this model. It's 49 Euro per month with restrictions to regional services. However that ticket is available for tourists, students, pensioners, workers and regular people at the same price point. I would have assumed they make that ticket only available yearly and with discounts to students or pensioners. The way the Austrian ticket works (91 Euro per month for regulars, 68.5 E…

Depending on the location, students might already have it with their student card. When I was studying it was around 130 per semester in the end for multiple things including the train ticket. Although it was limited to one federal state.

Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month

#39

Post by Zetobal »

febeling wrote: post #19

So this is a public transport ticket for urban areas. It's a good idea to make them valid across regions. If they can make it work, that is. There is still the task to distribute revenue in some adequate way, and currently politicians like to in indulge in wishful thinking and disconnect from reality in Germany, so let's wait if anyone has bothered to solve the hidden problems behind this. Could play out like the dis…

In most of Germany urban areas and metropolitan cities are just a 30-45min train ride away. At the normal ticket pricing you will pay 32 euros for the roundtrip. Now you pay 49 for the whole month. It's a game changer for a lot of people living in rural areas despite everyone without any knowledge living in those areas arguing against it but it's Germany of course everyone and their mom will argue against it with arguments that have no meaning for the people it really effects.

Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month

#40

Post by Aachen »

lispm wrote: post #27
Aachen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I earn enough to afford the current "BahnCard 100", but the pricing versus value is such that I'm not remotely considering it. That means that taking public transport is a hassle: - always need to buy a ticket: talk to a driver (who usually acts annoyed on behalf of the whole bus that you are holding up) or waste time trying to figure out ticket machines when you should be catching a connection; - always need to carr…

> always need to buy a ticket I buy all my tickets online. That's largely possible in Germany. I can't remember when I last needed to buy a physical ticket.

Bahn afaik isn't allowed to sell you tickets when the start and destination are within a regional operator, and my regional operator (to get to work) doesn't have a web shop.

The bus drivers are comically confused when I try to buy "einen Viererkahrte zu Aachen, drei Stück" so that I don't have to deal with it every other office day (this I can pay with a convenient 50€ bill and lasts about a month, give or take). Then I still have to stamp them per trip and will be last in line for a seat, but at least I don't have to bother the driver most days.

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