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

#201

Post by jamespetercook » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 3:15 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…

Are you in the UK by any chance? Sounds just like my old commute before I started working from home, and my partner’s current one

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

#202

Post by kitkat_new » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 3:17 PM UTC

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #196

msavio wrote: post #105

> But the Deutschlandticket is not the end of the story: to make it still more attractive, German Rail is also planning to introduce more modern and faster trains. According to the Federal Ministry of Transport, this will create almost 20,000 new seats on long-distance services. The mentioned trains are ICE long-distance trains. Exactly those that are not included in the ticket the article is about. It does not make…

We don't need faster trains in Germany. We need trains that are more or less on time. Punctuality is a complete disaster and probably the main reason why people hate taking the train in Germany. If you have a connection that requires changing to another train, the chance that you miss your connection is too damn high.

fast is important, too

For instance, 1:30-2h by car takes 3h train + 1h cycling for me when the trains are on time.

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

#203

Post by dathinab » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 3:19 PM UTC

alexanderchr wrote: post #178

w-m wrote: post #143

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…

Would be nice if it was complemented with a €2 hour ticket, a €5 day ticket and a €20 week ticket, then they could probably get rid of the other tickets.

Nice yes, but...

Part of the reason why the 49€ ticket is that cheap (compared to a lot of other monthy more limited local tickets) is because you commit to it for a month.

This ticket is meant to make abandoning cars easier for Germans and be also a nice pressure reduction for some of the people hit hardest by inflation (low income, can't afford a car anyway(1), but not (nearly) no income in which case the state pays your ticker anyway (oversimplified)).

Providing a hour, day or week ticket would defeat that purpose. It's explicitly not meant to reduce cost for people which have a car and just from time to time buy a ticker or tourists (through it's still grate for tourists which tour multiple cities in Germany if they stay ~2 weeks even through they "lose" 2 weeks).

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

#204

Post by machina_ex_deus » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 3:23 PM UTC

codethief wrote: post #192

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in Berlin once as a tourist and I was surprised how bad is the planning of buses. They stop and wait in the station until their time arrives (in the middle of the route), with 20 people on them, wasting everyone's time. That's just incredibly dumb planning. I get that the point is to be more "reliable" and "on time" but what's the point of being accurate if you're so slow?! At some points Google maps suggested…

> They stop and wait in the station until their time arrives. So you're suggesting… they shouldn't follow a schedule? The bus only ever needs to wait when there are no people getting on/off the bus at multiple stops in a row (e.g. at night-time), so then those stops will be skipped. As a consequence, the bus will be a few minutes ahead of time and so at some point the driver will stop and wait to make sure the bus is…

Of course they shouldn't follow a strict schedule. You either value the time or the accuracy. If you're slowing everyone down to the worst case timing, you're wasting everyone's time just to be "on schedule". The schedules were clearly artificially longer than needed, because buses were frequently waiting in stations. I'm not talking about night buses, this happened during the day and frequently.

It was very obvious to me as an outsider that the planning is wrong. When the buses are frequently waiting minutes in stations with 20 people on them, it's watching hours of human hours wasted for an artificial accuracy. Accuracy is useless, the purpose is to have good average case end to end timing. Never have I had Google maps suggesting half an hour walks in European cities with pubic transport over public transport. Just shows how bad is the management of timing. They are waiting so frequently you might as well just walk.

Maybe it's just a cultural thing. You value how much the ticket costs and whether the timing is accurate. I value my personal time.

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

#205

Post by drowsspa » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #179

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 was in Berlin once as a tourist and I was surprised how bad is the planning of buses. They stop and wait in the station until their time arrives (in the middle of the route), with 20 people on them, wasting everyone's time. That's just incredibly dumb planning. I get that the point is to be more "reliable" and "on time" but what's the point of being accurate if you're so slow?! At some points Google maps suggested…

Do you mean at every station? Or only at the start of the route?

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

#206

Post by kmlx » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 3:28 PM UTC

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #196

msavio wrote: post #105

> But the Deutschlandticket is not the end of the story: to make it still more attractive, German Rail is also planning to introduce more modern and faster trains. According to the Federal Ministry of Transport, this will create almost 20,000 new seats on long-distance services. The mentioned trains are ICE long-distance trains. Exactly those that are not included in the ticket the article is about. It does not make…

We don't need faster trains in Germany. We need trains that are more or less on time. Punctuality is a complete disaster and probably the main reason why people hate taking the train in Germany. If you have a connection that requires changing to another train, the chance that you miss your connection is too damn high.

> We need trains that are more or less on time.

i keep seeing these kinds of comments.

10 years ago i made the mistake of crossing the whole of germany by train. was a complete waste of my time.

since trains are basically a solved problem (see japan, china etc), i don't get why these issues still happen in developed nations.

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

#207

Post by Aachen » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 3:31 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #112

Aachen wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

There's some 14 million cards active on a population of 18 million. That they don't have one surprises me also! But yeah, there are some stubborn car people, particularly in the more rural places when you aren't often in a place with good public transport connections. Having one is essentially free, though, so there's not really a reason to not keep one on hand for when you do visit any of the cities anywhere in the country. It's more of a "I hate shared transport so much that I refuse to even look at how this card system works" type of mentality.

Note that "rural" in NL means civilization is virtually always (Rant: The bus companies keep reducing frequency, operating hours, and stop count due to unprofitability and, guess what? Line profitability keeps going down! It's surprising, really. When it's made so inconvenient to use mass transit, why would anyone choose to buy a car? It's beyond anyone's understanding..!)

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

#208

Post by drowsspa » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 3:33 PM UTC

codethief wrote: post #192

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in Berlin once as a tourist and I was surprised how bad is the planning of buses. They stop and wait in the station until their time arrives (in the middle of the route), with 20 people on them, wasting everyone's time. That's just incredibly dumb planning. I get that the point is to be more "reliable" and "on time" but what's the point of being accurate if you're so slow?! At some points Google maps suggested…

> They stop and wait in the station until their time arrives. So you're suggesting… they shouldn't follow a schedule? The bus only ever needs to wait when there are no people getting on/off the bus at multiple stops in a row (e.g. at night-time), so then those stops will be skipped. As a consequence, the bus will be a few minutes ahead of time and so at some point the driver will stop and wait to make sure the bus is…

I mean, yes? It must be infuriating to see a bus artificially stopping just to get the exact schedule. Of course the starting from the first station it should leave on time, but on intermediate stations I find it pretty ok to be a couple of minutes off.

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

#209

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 3:37 PM UTC

dav_Oz wrote: post #168

Don't expect German "Pünktlichkeit" on German railways, though.[0] The Austrian and especially the Swiss railroad systems are far superior. Since the "Bahnreform" of 1994 the infrastructure progressively deteriorated from the passenger's perspective. One hard fact: about 20% of the railroad network has been dismantled since 1994 (44.600km to 33.400km [1]). Way too much. Reasons for this are a confluence of excessive…

[deleted]

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

#210

Post by AnonymousPlanet » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 3:38 PM UTC

JanSt wrote: post #188

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's obviously not convenient for everyone - but no single measure is. I'd also cut down on your walking time by taking a bycicle - you could probably save 20 minutes by that alone. My wife also takes a bike ride to the train station (and she packs quite a few bags on the bike). Nonetheless - yes, there are situations in which cars are still way better.

Unfortunately, it's not possible to bring a bike into a crowded commuter bus and the stretch between home and bus stop can't be efficiently used by bike without commiting several traffic violations. I can, however, do the entire trip by bike (which I often do in summer), using a different route. That takes only slightly longer than the trip via bus.