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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

#91

Post by fxde »

Let's see if this will have a noticeable impact on university enrollments. Personally, I know a few people who re-enrolled after finishing university, including one person who even got a PhD, solely to get the ticket for their full-time job.

It would not surprise me if universities experience a significant drop in enrollment due to this issue, especially at larger universities. An article from 2019 estimates that at one university, up to 9k out of 36k students may enroll without any academic intention.

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

#92

Post by sokoloff »

locallost wrote: post #44
ffritz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can still try that, but that's not the intention. The target audience are basically commuters. I had a colleague a couple years ago that went around 100km total both ways to work. He briefly considered switching to train but balked at the price of about 200 per month. This despite the fact that gas cost him more, his car commute was longer and he was paying for a parking spot. I guess the logic was he already pai…

I’m skeptical given that reducing your colleague’s cost from around 1000€/mo all-in (inc. parking) to 200€/mo wasn’t enough that a further reduction to 50€/mo will tip the scales.

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

#93

Post by lytefm »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #61
siva7 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not quite in the interest of the car manufacturers that public transportation is cheaper than cars which is one of the reasons this took so long.

That's why it's even more impressive it took off in Germany which is normally very protective of its car industry.

We still have massive subsidies for providing leased new cars, mostly selected from German car manufacturers, to employees (about 3 bn per year [1]).

Few people in the upper middle class and above will use public transport instead of their car, if it's provided by their employer.

The results from the 9€ Ticket also indicate that people aren't using their car that less often. They are just using the ticket to do additional journeys [2].

But I suppose that having this ticket available for longer than 3 months will motivate some households to get rid of/ not purchase a second car. Also, it will probably convince younger adults in metropolitan areas (like me) to not buy a car - or to delay it until it's needed for family reasons.

[1]: https://www.exberliner.com/politics/red-flag-why-we-should-b... [2]: https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/9-euro-...

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

#94

Post by fabian2k »

Apart from the significant cost savings for people that use local public transport a lot the biggest benefit is probably that it removes a lot of the unnecessary complexity around buying tickets for many people. The German public transport network is divided into many small providers with different tickets and rules. This can make it rather confusing and annoying at times.

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

#95

Post by Aachen »

johnchristopher wrote: post #83
Aachen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would have assumed they make that ticket only available yearly and with discounts to students or pensioners. The way the Austrian ticket works [...] It's a yearly subscription, but you can cancel monthly What's the difference between a monthly subscription and a yearly subscription that you can cancel monthly? Either way you pay for however many months you choose to have it? It sounds like the difference is that…

Yearly subscriptions are usually cheaper than 12 month subscriptions. In my country you can't cancel a yearly subscription (and I don't think you can give it to someone else either).

That's actually a cool thing in my region (Aachen) that I didn't see before: you can get the yearly subscription, billed monthly, and cancelable monthly. If you have it for 2 years and 3 months, you'll end up paying 2 yearly amounts and the last 3 months are converted into a monthly subscription so you pay a bit more on the last installment (something like 5% more for each month that wasn't a full year). Why a monthly subscription exists and is purchasable, when you can also get the yearly straight away and see for how long you want it, I don't know, that's the only quirk really, otherwise this seems ideal/fair/flexible.

(All this goes out the window with the 50 euro flat fee monthly subscription of course; this thing was 90 euros a month and didn't even cover the state, let alone the country.)

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

#96

Post by ocimbote »

NGC404 wrote: post #87
fabian2k wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure there isn't a single point in Germany that is 300km from any passenger rail station. Of course rail doesn't go to small villages, but most medium-size cities have reasonable rail connections here.

it indeed is hardly possible. See: https://www.openrailwaymap.org/

That is an amazing resource!! Thanks for sharing!

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

#97

Post by em-bee »

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…

i find this the most appealing aspect of the new ticket, that it competes with and underbids the local and regional monthly tickets. i expect in the long term many of these local offers will disappear or drastically be reduced in price.

i remember some time ago when i lived in NRW the monthly ticket for the city i was in was open to all of NRW on weekends which i thought was awesome. and now the whole country for the same price, that just adds so much more flexibility especially for those commuting across regional borders.

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

#98

Post by _ph_ »

febeling wrote: post #82
lispm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So this is a public transport ticket for urban areas It isn't. It is a ticket for all of Germany.

True, I meant say local public transport.

Germany is a small country, area-wise. You can reach large parts well with regional trains which are included in the ticket.

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

#99

Post by sprash »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #61
siva7 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not quite in the interest of the car manufacturers that public transportation is cheaper than cars which is one of the reasons this took so long.

That's why it's even more impressive it took off in Germany which is normally very protective of its car industry.

It's not that impressive if you consider that the current government in Germany is driving a massive de-industrialization campaign. Destroying the own car industry fits well in the agenda.

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

#100

Post by vanviegen »

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…

Why would it be desirable to have pensioners pay less and tourists pay more?

I imagine this model will attract quite a bit of additional tourists (without their annoying cars), which is a good thing (for most cities).

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