231–240 of 345 posts
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I just realized (from this site) how minimal railway system is in Greece and South Italy.
In Greece the railway might be minimal but at the same time it is very deadly.
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…
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.
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Whats the point of this comment? You're obviously an extreme outlier. Are you implying the 49€ ticket is bad because it isn't an improvement for every single citizen?
To illustrate that there are many people in this world who do not have many transportation options. People should not make blanket statements about how people should opt for "green" or more safe options when there are lots of people out there for whom there are no such alternatives. Trains are great, but only where they are available. The transportation revolution has to accommodate everyone, not just those in conven…
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In most cases it is unrealistically difficult to beat the convenience and speed of private cars. If you are in a very dense urban environments, maybe. Otherwise, no. That's why making public transport very cheap or even free does not make everyone let their cars at home.
Actually, in most cases it is unrealistically difficult to beat the convenience of public transport over private cars without MASSIVE infrastructure investments favoring cars. Being able to get places with cars requires a lot of things: roads, parking, traffic measures (signs, crossings, stoplights, onways, offramps, freeways, more parking at destination, etc etc etc). If you only build for public transport, bikes, a…
If I want a bus or a train to be right in front of my house any time I need one and I also want that bus/train to drive me exactly where I want to go, obviously the cost will be ridiculously high.
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> 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…
iE in hamburg where I live, a monthly subscription costs around 120+€ per month, assuming you only need the "center" of the city area. If you live a bit more outside, or even in some adjacent village, you have to pay for every single tariff zone you pass through, this can _multiply_ the original costs.
so this is a massive financial benefit for everyone who doesn't want to commute by car (gas is getting expensive, parking spots can cost 100€+ per month near work, ...). yes, sometimes it takes significantly longer to commute, but financially it totally makes sense now to NOT use a car for that.
Having the option to travel by train into more distant targets for free is a cherry ontop of that. even better: you can use public transport in your destination city for free now!
but for me, the single biggest benefit now is to not having to deal with these tariff zones at all, they are a huge mental energy drain. Would pay double the price just for the convenience of not having to think about this.
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Berlin currently has a 29 € ticket which is much more interesting if you don't travel the rest of Germany often. Hopefully it gets extended beyond April.
The 29 ticket is not a per month ticket. You need to pay 1 year upfront lump sum. Otherwise you pay 60 per month.
I got my card in February and I only have a 29 euro transaction in my bank statement for February, and then another for March. It is also possible to cancel at any time.
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…
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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).
pensioners should pay less because they have less income and are more dependent on public transport. tourists paying more doesn't make sense, because tourists are not going to use this kind of ticket anyways unless they are in germany for a few months. and even if they get it for just a short visit then they will hardly make as much use of it as locals, so there is no benefit for them paying more. that said, there co…
Less income than who? Twenty-somethings? I doubt that. More dependent? Many pensioners have cars. And they, by definition, don't have a job to commute to every day.
This is outdated, currently the planned start date is May 1st. However, there seem to be still discussions about implementation details (availability only in an app vs. as a chip card or on paper, use of a subscription model). It's a horrible mess - and still too expensive for people with low incomes. In hindsight, it is amazing that the 9 Euro ticket experiment last year worked at all.
It's not really that bad. Practically for most areas in Germany it can be available from May the 1st as an in-app only ticket. That is what matters. --- PS: No idea why anyone is discussion chip card, it's not an option. Every public transport system in Germany (should) have the capability to scan QR codes from APP or paper. Partially due to DB RE/RB/IC/ICE trickets having "include local transportation at start/desti…