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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

#111

Post by lytefm »

fxde wrote: post #91

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…

I guess it will have a small effect. There are more reasons for a „fake enrollment“ than just the ticket.

- child support money

- free public health insurance

- private insurance is often also related to „kids being in education“

Especially if the kid under 25 just wants to travel around, play fortnight at home or work on the next big thing.

My bachelor programme (maths + cs in a small German city) pretty much only exists due to that. Great student/tutor ratio because most only enroll for the student status (low fees, no public transport ticket).

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

#112

Post by sokoloff »

Aachen wrote: post #84
ntauthority wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 chan…

I guess in the Netherlands, you have to be nearly demented to not be able to use the ov-chipkaart. Beeping it when you step in and out could hardly be simpler, but my grandparents don't want to learn a new system¹ and also don't want to drive highways anymore. It's different if a 90 year old asks for a ticket at the driver's compared to 30 year old me. ¹ Pinnen existed before ov-chipkaart to they're okay with one for…

I’m from US and periodically visit Netherlands for work; on my most recent trip, some local colleagues dropped me at the train station for the ride to AMS. They kindly asked me if I knew how to buy the tickets and were shocked when I said I just my OV card. Neither had one (which I thought was equally surprising).

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

#113

Post by yorwba »

shlant wrote: post #72
sandworm101 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, if you live near a rail line in a major city. Not everyone has that luxury. Im standing about 300km from the nearest passenger rail setvice. It is 0530, -25c, and i am about to drive 18km to work (government/military). Trains or even busses are a distant concept here.

are you in Germany? in Europe?

Germany is only slightly larger than a circle with radius 300 km.

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

#114

Post by mytailorisrich »

lytefm wrote: post #93
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 addit…

My take is that in many, if not most, cases people choose based on convenience and practicality unless one option is simply unaffordable.

In Europe in general affordability of public transport is not the problem so I don't expect that decreasing prices will have a big effect on use.

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

#116

Post by srpm »

OJFord wrote: post #66
sprkwd wrote: post #26

Wish the UK would do this.

How about we get a single return fare (even restricting to realistic commutes, not whole country) down to €49 before we worry about multiple use!

I paid £34 one-way from London to Winchester yesterday. It's a bit more than 100km and a ~1hr ride. For 2 people doing that round trip, it's cheaper to rent a car for the day.

I also paid €30 for a plane ticket to Norway recently. How is rail so ridiculously expensive/uncompetitive here???

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

#117

Post by pantalaimon »

majewsky wrote: post #56
moooo99 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its also worth mentioning that there are express connections between big cities that are relatively close. For example, there is a sprinter connection between Nürnberg and Munich that takes about 90 minutes using a regional train instead of the 60 minutes it would take with an ICE.

Same for Dresden-Leipzig. I usually take the ICE since I have a Bahncard 100. In addition to the real time saved, it also feels a lot faster if you're not stopping every 5 minutes.

ICE has also much more comfortable seats than regional trains

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

#118

Post by shlant »

yorwba wrote: post #113
shlant wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you in Germany? in Europe?

Germany is only slightly larger than a circle with radius 300 km.

yea I figured they are probably in the US or something which means their contribution to the discourse was essentially "bad public transport is bad"

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

#119

Post by Aachen »

lytefm wrote: post #93
hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 addit…

One limitation of the previous price experiment is that it was only a few summer months. Nobody sells their car for 3 months, especially when they include a summer holiday. Let's see what happens when you can count on this existing for years to come.

The germans are generally quite conscious of right and wrong (see e.g. Linux and OSM usage: it's still minorities but it's much more present than in similar countries like NL), maybe very competitive pricing does help in mass transport adoption.

In my opinion it should be somewhere between dirt cheap and free if your income is in the bottom 10% of incomes (and could cost twice as much for the top 50%, which includes me, because it has to be financed somehow anyway), but as an intermediate step, this is not going in the wrong direction.

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

#120

Post by em-bee »

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…

i don't think revenue distribution is a problem. most goes to DB anyways, and each region has local tickets that are valid across multiple companies, and they already worked out the distribution, so now they just need to extend the same process to the whole country.
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