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

#291

Post by makomk » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 8:08 PM UTC

nforgerit wrote: post #199

incrudible wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth about the climate is that whatever Germany does, it does not really make a difference, but also that what they have done (rolling out renewables) did not even work (high CO2 footprint, dependency on gas, coal and electricity imports).

You're parroting populist statements of political parties who actively destroyed the chance Germany had to transform their energy system and industry towards green energy. And now the same people are claiming that they were right from the beginning. The "truth" is that the Energiewende was a wise decision from early 2000s for Germany making a case that it'd be possible to transform an industry nation to renewables an…

The truth is that it's not possible to to push renewable electricity generation up to arbitrary levels by just continuing to build more and more of them, especially with the mix that Germany ended up going with, because not only are they intermittent but every solar panel produces electrity at basically the same time and stops producing at basically the same time and the same with wind. This means that eventually, extra renewable generation mostly just cannabalizes the existing renewable generation by producing at the same time as them and forcing it to shut down in order not to overwhelm the grid rather than replacing non-renewable generation. This causes a rapid explosion in cost, and those costs ultimately have to be paid for by the public somehow whether that's via high energy bills or increased taxes. Germany's renewable energy mix was particularly bad in this regard because they had a lot of solar which is cheap on paper but isn't useful that far north in the winter when energy demand is at its highest.

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

#292

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 8:24 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #234

Beldin wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#293

Post by anticensor » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 8:27 PM UTC

Beldin wrote: post #290

mytailorisrich wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> that you may not face if you use individual private transport instead. Only if you assume that individual private transport can get you door-to-door. Which is a rather unfair comparison. "cars are better because unlike public transport, you can drive up to basically any building and park there" is only true if you build roads and parkings to basically every building.

Streets have to access all buildings due to fire fighting reasons, unless you also plan to rearchitecture the firefighting infrastructure to use pipelines branching from a huge central fire extinction station.

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

#294

Post by enigma20 » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 8:48 PM UTC

tenthirtyam wrote: post #277

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…

Polite suggestion: if you can drive in 10 mins you could probably cycle in 20-30 mins depending on details. Although not, I suppose, if 8 of those 10 mins are on high speed autobahn :) When I lived in Rome I cycled everywhere. I was the 2nd fastest on the road for my 13-14km / 35min commute, but it takes time & effort to get fit. Public transport varied from 50 to 100 mins and private car was typically about 45 mins.…

I'm fit (2000-4000km distance per yer, multiple sports). But I would never bike to work/train for longer than 5 minutes. I sweat too much (armpits, feet). And taking spare clothes/shoes, and showering in the office is too much.

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

#295

Post by Aaronmacaron » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 8:59 PM UTC

panick21_ wrote: post #272

mk_stjames wrote: post #75

Traveling short, local trips via public transport most places in Europe is getting very economical, while I feel traveling distances outside those local zones is getting prohibitively expensive compared to air travel. I used to be able to get from my home in western France to Amsterdam via trains for much less than flying or driving, whereas last fall I priced train tickets and it was going to run me over 350€ round…

Its sad really, each country and the EU itself all have the totally wrong approach to high speed rail. The EU seems hell bent on turning Europe in England for some reason. France and Spain believes that High-Speed rail is basically an airline. They miss basic stuff like one line should connect to the other, and are bad in terms of connecting high speed rail the rest of the infrastructure. German has political problem…

It would be great to have real high speed trains in Switzerland. Unfortunately it's just not possible though. A train can only go very fast if the tracks are very long and straight. In switzerland there just is no space for that. The non mountainous parts of the country are densely populated. Even if you have tracks where you could go very fast such as the Gotthard tunnel it's not worth it to buy trains that go that fast for the very few passages that actually allow them to make full use of their speed. Besides if not all trains on the network can go this fast you need to increase the interval between trains which you obviously don't want to.

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

#296

Post by nforgerit » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 9:01 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #291

nforgerit wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're parroting populist statements of political parties who actively destroyed the chance Germany had to transform their energy system and industry towards green energy. And now the same people are claiming that they were right from the beginning. The "truth" is that the Energiewende was a wise decision from early 2000s for Germany making a case that it'd be possible to transform an industry nation to renewables an…

The truth is that it's not possible to to push renewable electricity generation up to arbitrary levels by just continuing to build more and more of them, especially with the mix that Germany ended up going with, because not only are they intermittent but every solar panel produces electrity at basically the same time and stops producing at basically the same time and the same with wind. This means that eventually, ex…

No from my understanding that's the old thinking with power plants like nuclear and coal that cannot be easily switched on and off.

Peaks in renewable generation would go into electrolysis to produce hydrogen which can "save" the surplus energy the same way we're heaping up natural gas to be used in times when the sun is not shining and when in addition there's no wind. Plus there are industrial processes that cannot (yet) be based on electric energy and need to run based on hydrogen or derivatives.

In addition we can save surplus renewable energy locally, regionally and in neighbor countries (e.g. Norway with its pumped hydroelectric energy storage).

This has been backed by several studies but was critically dependent on scaling up renewables massively. With the latter we failed, for political reasons.

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

#297

Post by anticensor » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 9:05 PM UTC

machina_ex_deus wrote: post #265

Pyramus wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

Padding actually makes those timings reliable.

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

#298

Post by anticensor » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 9:09 PM UTC

drowsspa wrote: post #248

konha wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great. So now you miss the bus when you arrive at the stop on time and have to wait for the next one. (Matters less when the next one arrives a couple of minutes later of course.) Route planning in congested cities is a complex problem and following a schedule as close as possible is one of the ways to ensure you can do any kind of route planning involving a change of line.

Would buses be arriving 20 minutes earlier otherwise? I'd very much rather arrive at the station a little earlier than knowing I could already be at my destination if it weren't for these artificial punctuality stops.

No, you just turn up 20 minutes earlier and take the previous bus instead.

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

#299

Post by atoav » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 9:21 PM UTC

tenthirtyam wrote: post #277

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…

Polite suggestion: if you can drive in 10 mins you could probably cycle in 20-30 mins depending on details. Although not, I suppose, if 8 of those 10 mins are on high speed autobahn :) When I lived in Rome I cycled everywhere. I was the 2nd fastest on the road for my 13-14km / 35min commute, but it takes time & effort to get fit. Public transport varied from 50 to 100 mins and private car was typically about 45 mins.…

In my case car is 25 minutes, subway is 20 minutes, bike is 15 minutes.

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

#300

Post by mytailorisrich » Sun, Mar 05, 2023, 9:37 PM UTC

Beldin wrote: post #290

mytailorisrich wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> that you may not face if you use individual private transport instead. Only if you assume that individual private transport can get you door-to-door. Which is a rather unfair comparison. "cars are better because unlike public transport, you can drive up to basically any building and park there" is only true if you build roads and parkings to basically every building.

It is obvious that a building requires road access. The issue of emergency services access has already been mentioned but there is also obviously the issue of deliveries, including large items like appliances and furniture.

I did mention the caveat that sometimes private transport (which includes bikes) may be inconvenient. That includes issues with parking space.

I'd argue that making private transport very impractical is not the same as making public transport "so good it becomes the first choice"... it's making private transport bad enough that it becomes more inconvenient than public transport...

Realistically I think people prefer private transport and will use private transport when on balance they consider than driving/cycling has become too inconvenient (traffic is really too bad, no parking as you mention, etc). But if private transport works then public transport cannot be made more convenient for obvious reasons.