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Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket

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Re: Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket

#191

Post by Symbiote »

bombolo wrote: post #183
bombcar wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every transit system should have a “tourist day pass” that is moderately expensive but allows you to use anything for 24 hours or so.

Yes like in london. I bought a 24h pass at 8pm, only to find out it's 24h only if you buy it at 00.00, because they all expire at midnight. They are basically running a legalised tourist scam over there. I can imagine hundreds of thousands of people falling for this.

In London, aren't you pushed towards using a contactless credit or debit card?

(They expire at 4am, though the point remains.)

Re: Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket

#192

Post by willio58 »

As an American I am increasingly jealous of European countries and their public transport (among other things cough health care cough gun control).

It feels like the only way we will ever get there as a country is one state at a time, and even then you see projects like California's high-speed rail that's massively over-budget and overdue. At least the blue states seem to _get_ it, meanwhile those who live in red or purple states will just be left behind as always because of how intensely politics has carved a divide between people and led to so many unfounded lies being propagated to their citizens.

All that to say, good on Germany. Now U.S., get your shit together.

Re: Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket

#193

Post by ghaff »

wpietri wrote: post #178
TulliusCicero wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The new ticket is an excellent example of when national government can be superior to more local government: when the national government forces coordination to solve fragmentation problems, where local agencies lacked the... motivation to solve things on their own. On a technical level, it was always possible for different transit agencies to cooperate to simplify things for consumers, but they didn't, and…

Which reminds me to give a shout-out to the Clipper card. The SF Bay Area really did the right thing here. 24 different systems, all of which use the same card: https://www.clippercard.com/ClipperWeb/where-to-use.html And they have now expanded that card-based system to include a mobile app, Google Pay, and Apple Pay, so now I just tap my phone and I'm all set.

Yeah, not as much in the Bay Area these days, but the Clipper card is a huge improvement over the previous system. And I imagie by the time I eventually run down my Clipper balance I'll be fine with my phone.

Re: Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket

#194

Post by Symbiote »

ghaff wrote: post #128
riedel wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that vending machines are really a mess. However I recommend the Deutsche Bahn Navigator App. If you have an account you can easily get most tickets. Also states like Baden-Württemberg got their act together recently and made it possible to book tickets all way through. I recently was in Netherlands trying to get from the Hague to the islands south of Rotterdam and it was also quite confusing. but the new tic…

I was just in Amsterdam. One of our locals there said that, although there's an ongoing switch to just tapping contactless credit cards, he advised just getting a contactless transit chip card because even if it cost a few dollar more it would more reliably work everywhere. Things have improved in most places over time but it can still be confusing for the occasional visitor. I remember at some point pre-pandemic I w…

The UK has since simplified that into one ticket, possibly also a receipt of you ask for it.

Prior to this, the ticket and seat reservation were seperate bit of paper.

Re: Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket

#195

Post by ipaddr »

lispm wrote: post #190

Nice features here in Hamburg: Subscription tickets for Hamburg which cost more than 49€ are now automatically reduced to 49€ and are changed to a Deutschlandticket. Employer subsidized Deutschlandtickets can be reduced upto 50% for the employee. Kids from low-income families get the Deutschlandticket for free. Students can upgrade their public transport ticket for monthly 18 Euros... School children pay 19 Euros mon…

No senior discounts? How are older people viewed in Germany?

Re: Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket

#196

Post by mahathu »

throwaway60607 wrote: post #158
patall wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is complex about the B/C border? That Hönow is B? Because else, it is literary the federal state border. A/B is the S-Bahn-Ring. Sure, three zones are not super simple and where zone C ends is somewhat arbitrary. But aside from that, it's the most logical and simple solution possible.

Do you mean that the airport is outside of Germany? Or what else is "federal state border"? And what is a S-Bahn ring anyways? I visit Germany often and yet this makes no sense to me. Don't assume it's so simple for everyone.

The airport is located in Schönefeld, a municipality in Brandenburg, just outside of Berlin, which is also a state.

S-Bahn ring, usually called ring for short, refers to a prominent circular route around the city center of Berlin.

Re: Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket

#197

Post by meghan_rain »

helge9210 wrote: post #72
nforgerit wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German speaking here. Keeping people busy with bullsh*t jobs just for the sake of keeping them busy is not a good investment, not financially nor for the sanity of the people themselves. In fact, in Germany you can see that it leads to government paralysis everywhere. In contrast, they should free "Staatsbeamte" from those stupid jobs and encourage them to start thinking themselves instead of blindly executing top-do…

I live and work in Germany for almost two years now. I witnessed at least two panic attacks caused by the implementation of your suggestion to "encourage them to start thinking themselves instead of blindly executing top-down commands".

elaborate?

Re: Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket

#198

Post by formerly_proven »

cmarschner wrote: post #131
riedel wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that vending machines are really a mess. However I recommend the Deutsche Bahn Navigator App. If you have an account you can easily get most tickets. Also states like Baden-Württemberg got their act together recently and made it possible to book tickets all way through. I recently was in Netherlands trying to get from the Hague to the islands south of Rotterdam and it was also quite confusing. but the new tic…

The company that runs the DB system (HAFAS) provides this system for half of the European railways though. And, interestingly enough, also for BART. https://www.hacon.de/unternehmen/

Their codebase has to be a wild ride. There are still traces from the days it ran as Windows binaries in CGI fashion (very much doubt they still do it like that, just like a large number of eBay URLs still contain the ebayISAPI.dll bit from the time the site was literally a Microsoft IIS plugin). On the DB instance it also outputs like five different generations of UIs depending on the exact parameters you hand it. You can also find several different iterations of APIs, like one search API will output actual, non-trivial JS code to fill auto-completes, another gives you JSON with a totally different format and yet another XML with everything slightly different again. From their job postings it follows their backend is C++.

The previous system came from the 80s and ran on multiple Tandem/Nonstop clusters.

Re: Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket

#199

Post by yarg »

ipaddr wrote: post #195
lispm wrote: post #190

Nice features here in Hamburg: Subscription tickets for Hamburg which cost more than 49€ are now automatically reduced to 49€ and are changed to a Deutschlandticket. Employer subsidized Deutschlandtickets can be reduced upto 50% for the employee. Kids from low-income families get the Deutschlandticket for free. Students can upgrade their public transport ticket for monthly 18 Euros... School children pay 19 Euros mon…

No senior discounts? How are older people viewed in Germany?

At that price point, does it even matter?

Re: Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket

#200

Post by water554 »

willio58 wrote: post #192

As an American I am increasingly jealous of European countries and their public transport (among other things cough health care cough gun control). It feels like the only way we will ever get there as a country is one state at a time, and even then you see projects like California's high-speed rail that's massively over-budget and overdue. At least the blue states seem to _get_ it, meanwhile those who live in red or…

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