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

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

#311
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pay…

I disagree wholeheartedly. People who have a car should absolutely have cheaper and less complicated ticket options, so that they leave their car at home more often.

well that is why some argue that buying the 49€ ticket should be mandatory for anyone owning a car.

Funnily the people I know who say so are car owners which mostly use cars and hardly ever the train, but they are also rather well off.

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

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Me and many of my colleagues ride the bike to office when it is sunny. Better than the train. It’s 30km each trip (2h). A shower once in the office seems acceptable, given the mood boost lasting for the whole day.

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

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the Netherlands and Denmark, it's not unusal to cycle to a bus stop or railway station, lock the bike there, take the bus/train, and walk at the other end. Or, to own a second bicycle and leave it at the other end. In London small, folding bicycles serve the same purpose, but they're much more expensive.

Escooters are more practical here. I see these as the future of getting to PT.

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

#314
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or take it as a benefit: half an hour of walking a day can clear your head like nothing else (not even a bike-ride).

30 minutes mild physical exercise is a terrifying proposal to the average person.

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

#315
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Firefighting vehicle doesn't need parking space

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

#316
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So energy storage and hydrogen producing is worth for both nuclear/coal and renewable

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

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> So you're suggesting… they shouldn't follow a schedule? This is the Göteborg way. Want to take a tram and go there 5 minutes earlier? Ah, there was no traffic and you see the tram already leaving anyway. Now enjoy waiting 20 minutes for the next in freezing temperature and strong winds. > and introduce electronic ticket checks at every stop Copenhagen does this on bus. Basically every stop suddenly takes 2x as long…

> Now enjoy waiting 20 minutes for the next in freezing temperature and strong winds.

Exactly. Berlin is certainly not Göteborg but its long and nasty winters are notorious nonetheless.

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

#318
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That it's also something that tourists can use is great, but you don't need to subsidize it for them. Although many places do. There are often city passes of various sorts for tourists. There are JR Rail visitor-only passes in Japan. I'm sure there are other examples.

> There are often city passes of various sorts for tourists. Absolutely, but they are usually more expensive than it is for residents. In Vienna the tourist 7 day pass is ~17Euro which comes to 2.5 Euro, if you have the yearly subscription it's 1 Euro per day. The situation is quite similar in most cities I have been to.

but this is not a tourist/residence differentiation. but more like buying in bulk or not.

i have lived in vienna for years and never got a yearly subscription but bought weekly or monthly tickets as needed. and many others do as well. a better comparison to the yearly subscription is the monthly pass which is ~50€ and transferable. so two or more people can share it, and that may turn out cheaper than even a yearly pass in certain circumstances.

i never considered monthly or weekly passes to be only for tourists. they go from the beginning of the week or month which is not flexible enough for most visitors. only more recently a more flexible variant has been introduced that goes 31 days starting any day. those are obviously more useful for visitors but they cost the same.

that said, looking up the tickets now it appears that anything but the yearly subscription is considered for visitors. when i lived in vienna this was not the case. and in other cities it still isn't. tourist tickets were/are those valid for 2 or 3 days and they often are considerably more expensive because they include things interesting for tourists that i never needed even when i was just visiting. everything else was/is for locals.

it is also worth noting that vienna in general is considerably cheaper than many other european cities. which is probably why i never bothered getting a yearly subscription myself.

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

#319

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…

There's usually an app that tells you in real time when the bus will arrive

there is now, but that wasn't always the case. taking advantage of that requires a big change for everyone. for decades people expected busses and trains to be on a schedule, and the worst thing for everyone was leaving ahead of schedule. that simply must never happen.

and even with an app, it's completely useless to know that the next bus is in 25 minutes when i transfer from another bus that arrived on time. only a schedule that makes sure that the timing of the busses is suitable for a transfer can avoid that. or the second bus simply has to wait for the first bus to arrive. a schedule is easier.

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

#320

The important point is not with rails, but with local public transport (s-bahn, metro, buses, streetcars, ...), and that the tariff zones are basically eliminated with that. 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 can pay double: 236.40€ gets you 5 rings which is most of the whole area if i read the map correctly. the outer rings beyond that are some small regions or selected lines only anyways.
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