Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by the_mitsuhiko » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 1:25 PM UTC

bradhe wrote: post #54

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…

There was a LOT of negotiation with the various regional providers that went into this.

Which is why I'm even more surprised that it ended up like this.

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

#142

Post by Quanttek » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 1:25 PM UTC

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #130

JanSt wrote: post #43

My wife had a daily 45km rail+2km bus trip to work which was 200€ per month. That's massive savings for many people who choose not to drive with cars. Her colleagues drive to work with cars for 2 km trips and ask her whether she does not own a car (we do). Taking the train is a) cheaper b) more relaxed (can read) c) better for the environment d) it's even faster in her case The €49 ticket could give public transporta…

I use public transport to go to work. But it's not really convenient. It takes me about 45 minutes to get there. And that's if everything goes well. Half an hour of that is walking (to and from bus stops) and waiting (you should be several minutes early because busses sometimes leave early themselves, but most of the time they are late). So there's not much reading that can be done. Also, try reading while you're wai…

considering that short journey time, have you thought about biking?

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

#143

Post by w-m » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 1:26 PM UTC

It’s a fantastic step forward, making commuting with public transport much more affordable for many. But another nice thing about the 9€ ticket was that it got rid of all other tickets for occasional users, too. If you’re using public transport just a few times each month, 49€ is too high, and you will still have to deal with 4x tickets short tickets, AB/BC/ABC zones, day tickets and whatnot. Which is unfortunate, as that’s annoying, and they have to keep the complicated ticket vending infrastructure in place as well.

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

#144

Post by skyeto » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 1:29 PM UTC

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #130

JanSt wrote: post #43

My wife had a daily 45km rail+2km bus trip to work which was 200€ per month. That's massive savings for many people who choose not to drive with cars. Her colleagues drive to work with cars for 2 km trips and ask her whether she does not own a car (we do). Taking the train is a) cheaper b) more relaxed (can read) c) better for the environment d) it's even faster in her case The €49 ticket could give public transporta…

I use public transport to go to work. But it's not really convenient. It takes me about 45 minutes to get there. And that's if everything goes well. Half an hour of that is walking (to and from bus stops) and waiting (you should be several minutes early because busses sometimes leave early themselves, but most of the time they are late). So there's not much reading that can be done. Also, try reading while you're wai…

There are ways to avoid having buses stuck in traffic. Dedicated lanes for public transport, getting more people to use public transport rather than cars, and so on. So I'd say it's more often than not a choice in planning if it's convenient compared to using cars or not.

(There's also the problem of less developed systems often being less convenient, and because of it not having the funding needed to expand due to low usage)

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

#145

Post by dathinab » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 1:30 PM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #97

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…

Interestingly the ticket the OP owns will not disappear and can still be monetarily beneficial in some cases.

While the 49€ ticket is cheaper and has (way) more reach the "VBB Umweltkarte" has some additional benefits.

Like:

- in the evening (20:00) and on week ends you can take an additional adult as well as a child along for free

- it's not person bound so you can pass it to other people

This means that e.g. for a family of two parents and one child a single card is enough to cover all weekend family trips and when the child is to old to be covered it also normal has a "school ticket" which I think is free since some years(?).

Similar there are still other tickets of relevance, e.g. a ticket to be able to take your bike on the train (in areas where it's allowed and a separate ticket is needed).

But by itself I agree, especially for people crossing regional boarders in a unlucky way this ticket is a blessing. E.g. if you live close idk ~30min by care close to Berlin you often would have to get a Berlin ABC (or BC) + 2 regions ticket which is just supper expensive to a point where many people will not even consider it and just take a car. But this isn't because it need to be that expensive but because they have no lobby behind them which negotiated better tariffs. This was shown e.g. by Potsdam universities which negotiated a Berlin ABC + "ALL regions and cities in Brandenburg" ticket at a normal student ticket price.

Anyway I love it.

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

#146

Post by sprash » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 1:31 PM UTC

siva7 wrote: post #139

sprash wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They're not destroying it but forcing them to acknowledge the truth about climate.

When is China going to "acknowledge the truth about climate"? When it finished building the hundreds of planned coal power plants? This BS is all a pure geopolitics show with obvious traitors in power of western governments.

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

#147

Post by the_mitsuhiko » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 1:33 PM UTC

laurencerowe wrote: post #134

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is precisely what it's trying to accomplish. This is BTW a very common theme for rail pricing in Europe. For instance there is INTERRAIL which is only available to EU residents and then there is EURAIL which has different prices and ticket types for non EU tourists.

Most of it seems to be pricing things more cheaply for tourists than for residents (Interail is not available in the EU country you are resident in.) And Eurail seems to be even cheaper than Interail: Interail 7 days within one month adult 2nd class €352 Eurail 7 days within one month adult 2nd class $282 (€265) I considered buying an Eurail ticket last time I went back to Britain though for my trips it made little d…

The price structure for Interrail and Eurail are different which makes them tricky to compare. They in some countries don't even include the same trains.

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

#148

Post by throwaway87915 » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 1:33 PM UTC

siva7 wrote: post #139

sprash wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They're not destroying it but forcing them to acknowledge the truth about climate.

Isn't that about the fuel and not the vehicle?

If we manufactured diesel out of wood or algae, the same cars would suddenly become very green - in case of algae cultivation for fuel, you can reach carbon negativity (the process net-decreased carbon in atmosphere).

This is likely more green than building battery electric vehicles with large capacity. Batteries are great but cars don't need more than 100km of charge. Longer trips should be on bio-diesel or bio-gas.

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

#149

Post by Tsiklon » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 1:36 PM UTC

pretext-1 wrote: post #109

OJFord wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? You (as the seller) don't care if someone buys a ticket they're not eligible to use and has to come back for another one, or never uses it, or whatever. You'd be checking eligibility at point of use anyway.

* It’s inefficient. Eligibility must only be confirmed once while ticket control happens often. Ticket control needs to be fast. * Training all inspectors to verify student IDs is much more effort compared to training people at point of sale only. * Many places also accept tickets with student badge instead of student IDs for verification. This is probably also the reason we don’t get discounted 49€-tickets yet. They…

This seems to hint at a more fundamental difference in approach.

The grandparent comment is saying that the conductors should check for student IDs to validate that the passenger is travelling with correct authorisation.

Your comment indicates that because they have the ticket they are automatically authorised to travel.

In the U.K. as an example, if you’re travelling with a student (or other form of discount) ticket but cannot produce the corresponding ID card proving this, in effect you are not authorised to use the ticket and thus subject to a penalty fare, or a fine. This makes it so that eligibility must be validated simultaneously with inspection.

Not verifying eligibility at the same time as inspection means that an ineligible user may be inclined to obtain a ticket from an eligible user.

Different systems, different attitudes.

(Of course in the U.K. a flat reduction in ticket prices across the board would ameliorate the likelihood of this occurring in the first place, but that’s secondary)

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

#150

Post by salawat » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 1:37 PM UTC

jenadine wrote: post #124

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.

If you choose to live in a remote place, you'll also have to bear the costs.

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