Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month
261–270 of 345 posts
Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don’t need to mention that you are in the top 50% to make your augment stronger. You should probably even actively avoid saying it so that people don’t think you’re relying on selfless reasons, (hey everyone I’m the nice one in the room) to further your point, because others may not feel that way about themselves.l, at least not to random strangers in the bottom 10%. Anyway, making more money is just a measure of…
What exactly do you mean like by “ I think it might make sense to create countries or places where people in the bottom 10% live with minimal conveniences, a place like Thailand when everything is cheap.” Like a “full service convenience place” for the part of society that doesn’t want to work and outsource that to a cheap third world country and make their population work at low cost for the unemployed of the first…
I think you'll have to read a couple of Ayn Rand novels to truly understand what they mean. But I think the gist of it can be reduced to: "I'm very smart and upset that I have to pay taxes. Also, I don't like it when I see homeless people, after all it's their own fault they provide no value and are therefore poor. Can't we just send them to Thailand where I went on holiday recently and the can of Pabst Blue Ribbon that cost a reasonable $19 here in San Francisco only cost $15 at this "bar" some guy took me to to meet his sister. That's very cheap."
Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 li…
> 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%
True, for many people 49€/ month is still too expensive - e.g. low wage, low pension or living on welfare.
In its current form, it's mostly a relief for the middle class living in areas with good public transportation.
I'm definitely happy to pay just 49€ for all over Germany instead of 80€ just for Berlin. I'd be ready to pay more and think it would be fair if the amount was tied to the taxable income, like union memberships are.
Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that the infrastructure investments required for public transports would be even higher, taking into account that roads are also required for public transports... 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.
You set unreasonable expectations/ demands on public transport. There will always be some walking / biking to/from bus/tram stops. That has never been a problem. You are likely trying to compare the USA car-centric suburbs and frankly that choice makes distances larger but that’s life. USA has a tremendous disadvantage due to the car-centric nature. Yet even that can be changed, it will be costly, but there is no tec…
I am in Europe and I am replying to a claim that public transport can be made so good that it is people's first choice... and so the point I am making is that this is indeed setting an unrealistic expectation on public transport!
If you need some biking or walking just to reach public transport, then wait, then travel through the network then there is always a level of inconvenience that you may not face if you use individual private transport instead.
Even in Europe most people live is suburbs. Even if they are not car-centric (and they are in most cases) that increases inconvenience and cost of public transport.
Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Of course they shouldn't follow a strict schedule. > 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. What an interesting clash of cultures. I don't fully understand your point though, if you can't be sure the bus arrives at 10:23 h, you have to come earlier to the station and wait, no?
There's usually an app that tells you in real time when the bus will arrive, including possible congestion. When it's minutes away it's never early so it's not a problem. The bus is almost never early from the scheduled time because it's usually the minimum time. So the bus might be late, but at least it's not standing idly while you're already in it, intentionally wasting everyone's time.
There's also a stop button to make sure the bus doesn't waste everyone's time stopping in stations nobody wants. Which is pretty pointless if we're now wasting the time earned by standing idle.
If I want accuracy, it's my responsibility to go ahead of time and pad my margins. Not the buses' job. It seems selfish to me to waste everyone's time for people who need accuracy, it's their responsibility to waste their own time getting better margins.
Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month
#266> 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.
If German had designed the high speed network in a sensible way, and had moved quickly on creating all those line, that would improve speed and punctuality.
The problem with the fast trains is exactly that the lines are either missing or end way to early, or start to late, only to then share to few local lines with local trains.
Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Germany has very few fast trains ... going fast (not many train tracks are built for fast trains). It got better in the last few years, but there is still a lot to do (and catch up with France). As for the "regional" trains (that this offer is talking about), they go really slow and are just for people commuting. This kind of monthly offer would be sort of interesting if it were to apply to the ICE trains, as current…
Are you american?
The idea that trains are for 'commuting' is nonsense, they are for 'living'.
Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
China has 1.4 billion people and 150000km rail tracks. Germany has 0.082 billion people and 40000km rail tracks. Japan has a very different train system on an island. Germany is in the middle of Europe with a mesh of trains, long-distance and local - connected to all of Europe. One can take an excellent French high-speed train going from Germany to Paris/France. From my home-town there are freight trains directly goi…
Lets be real, Germany long distance ICE trains have a big punctuality problem. Other German trains are mostly good, but the ICE system has lots of issues.
A lot of those are political, the planning and execution of their high speed network is totally messed up.
They had a reasonably good plan in the 80s but then the reunification happens and of course building lots of highways into East Germany was higher priority.
All these things can be fixed, but it has persisted for quite a while.
Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's at least good that they're moving in this direction at all. Maybe the pricing isn't spot-on, or the capacity isn't there, or there are debates over the ticketing or there are some other issues. But it seems to me that Germany has recognised the importance of encouraging rail travel, and they're taking the first steps in doing so.
I earn enough to afford the current "BahnCard 100", but the pricing versus value is such that I'm not remotely considering it. That means that taking public transport is a hassle: - always need to buy a ticket: talk to a driver (who usually acts annoyed on behalf of the whole bus that you are holding up) or waste time trying to figure out ticket machines when you should be catching a connection; - always need to carr…
We have non of these problems in Switzerland, this is all just organizational.
Buy the ticket at the bus station or use your phone.
I don't know how often you do intermediate stops, that seem nice case to me. But even then, you just add 'via' when you book your ticket and that's it. Easy as pie.
> - in many regions, you can't buy a ticket online via the national rail company, you need to separately deal with the local line operators to make your trip planning even more fun!
Is this actually the case in Germany? That's crazy, we solved this long ago in Switzerland.
Re: Deutschlandticket for regional bus and rail services to be offered for €49/month
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't have to pay upfront. 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.
That's not what it says here though ? https://www.bvg.de/de/abos-und-tickets/alle-abos/vbb-umweltk... Says i need to pay 1 year upfront for the discount otherwise it's 63 euro per month Edit: okay their website is just a nightmare and eventhough they say it's 63 euro they bill 29 euro
The 29 eur price is only currently offered a month at a time, extended a month at a time, and the ticket is only offered a year at a time. Technically you are on the hook for a 63 eur contract on sale for 29 eur for a limited time. (It is a mess.)