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Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail

mcc-berlin.net

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Re: Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail

#151

Post by s1artibartfast »

Swizec wrote: post #126
ccppurcell wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the word subsidy to be a possible weasel word here. I don't know all the details but a railway system has certain costs (fuel, personnel, water, upkeep, the trains themselves and so on) and takes in a certain amount of revenue (fares and subsidies, also food etc). It might be true that the government increased the subsidy in order to support the cheaper tickets. But that's not the same as "requires". Perhaps I…

Here’s another way to think about it: Germany invested N billion into shifting behavior to rail. How many billions in subsidies has OpenAI gotten to build us a chatbot?

I'm not aware of any subsidies openAi has received. Did I miss something or is this one of the situations we're we are making up new definitions for words?

Re: Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail

#152

Post by arrosenberg »

londons_explore wrote: post #133
luckylion wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that moves the needle a lot unless you're making _everything_ fully automatic, i.e. including the infrastructure creation & maintenance and streamline that extremely well. If you take a ride from Hamburg to Berlin with the ICE, there's maybe 8 staff on board, 200-300 passengers, it takes ~2 hours and the average ticket price is 77€ according to some travel app. Even if you get rid of all 8 of them, the price…

But there is also the ~80 staff manning stations at each end and along the route, and more staff in the control room, the cleaning staff, the people who manually do maintenance checks every single night, etc.

You can get rid of the cleaning staff right now. The terminals will become disgusting and people will stop using them. There is no way around this type of overhead. If you have larger numbers of people passing through, you need cleaning and maintenance.

Your original point isn’t even true - in California there is constant maintenance of the road network and crews of community service workers doing their sentence cleaning trash on the highway shoulder.

Re: Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail

#153

Post by kristianp »

sadcherry wrote: post #29
jonp888 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Didn’t this start as unlimited anywhere for 9 euros no strings attached? The €9 ticket was a 3 month temporary offer, which was not originally intended to continue permanently at all. > I LOVE the German transit system (although Denmark wins in cleanliness). However, Germany is a bit predatory with this new system. You can ONLY purchase this ticket as a subscription model. If you’re a tourist, you must cancel befor…

Airtravel is also subsidised by the German tax payer. Much more than the 49 EUR ticket. No matter if you are a tourist or not. (Arguably mostly for tourists actually.)

What's the method of subsidy there? Contributing to Airbus shares?

Re: Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail

#154

Post by moffkalast »

jdietrich wrote: post #76

Providing these €49 tickets requires an annual subsidy of around €3bn, on top of already substantial subsidies for the rail industry. If we accept that it reduces carbon emissions by 6.7 million tonnes per year, then that works out to €447 per tonne. That really isn't good value - most carbon abatement methods cost well under $100 per tonne. I do recognise that modal shift towards rail may have other positive externa…

Well it's not just a carbon credit, it also provides subsidized public transport to everyone, reduces congestion, improves city air and likely cuts road deaths. Arguably tax dollars extremely well spent.

Re: Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail

#155

Post by Aachen »

overflyer wrote: post #150

Which I as a German simply fail to fathom. The quality of our Deutsche Bahn is so bad I would never drive by train. The worst thing is that they are incapable to have their trains be on time. Whenever you travel there is an extremely high chance you will not arrive at your destination in time.

Not every trip is time sensitive, most trains do run on time, and not all trains are operated by your nemesis. If you still refuse to "ever" take a train anywhere, that's on you rather than the system

Re: Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail

#156

Post by cycomanic »

juliangmp wrote: post #40
chairmansteve wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I don't understand why most car owners are so opposed to public transport.

Personally I'm not opposed to public transport, in fact I want to like the railway. I tried. But the German railway is in such a poor state that I never use it. Not for small trips (with regional trains that are covered by my 49€ ticket) and especially not for longer trips (long distance trains like ICEs). Every time you enter an ICE just remember that its a coinflip on whether or not you'll arrive on time to get you…

I don't know where you drive for long car trips, but going south from e.g. Hamburg on the A1, or through the Ruhrgebiet by car is a much bigger coin flip with respect to arrival times (while always being significantly slower even on good days). So why the complains about punctionality for trains, but somehow it's fine for car travel?

Re: Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail

#158

Post by mk89 »

lispm wrote: post #18
server_man3000 wrote: post #2

Didn’t this start as unlimited anywhere for 9 euros no strings attached? I LOVE the German transit system (although Denmark wins in cleanliness). However, Germany is a bit predatory with this new system. You can ONLY purchase this ticket as a subscription model. If you’re a tourist, you must cancel before the 10th of the month or you get auto rebilled. Additionally, there are so many apps that resell the ticket as so…

> Didn’t this start as unlimited anywhere for 9 euros no strings attached? That was a time limited earlier ticket. "The tickets were valid for June, July, or August 2022. The offer aimed at reducing energy use amid the 2021–2022 global energy crisis." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-Euro-Ticket It influenced the idea to come up with a permanent ticket: the "Deutschlandticket". It started 1. Mai 2023. https://en.wikip…

And if I am not mistaken, as a university student you get also that ticket for free and you just need to show your student card.

So students basically never have to pay for the public transportation which is really awesome.

EDIT: by public transportation I mean whatever is included in the D-Ticket (no Intercity or similar types of trains).

Re: Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail

#159

Post by patall »

overflyer wrote: post #150

Which I as a German simply fail to fathom. The quality of our Deutsche Bahn is so bad I would never drive by train. The worst thing is that they are incapable to have their trains be on time. Whenever you travel there is an extremely high chance you will not arrive at your destination in time.

Because it is a regional problem and some areas work mostly fine. I also fail to fanthom why people drive in rush hour, queuing every day for hours. Yet people do that. And people love to complain, especially those that only take trains on public holidays. But hey, here in Sweden the trains are worse than in Germany, but people complain far less and trains are full anyways.

Re: Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail

#160

Post by spacebanana7 »

PlunderBunny wrote: post #143
ccppurcell wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the word subsidy to be a possible weasel word here. I don't know all the details but a railway system has certain costs (fuel, personnel, water, upkeep, the trains themselves and so on) and takes in a certain amount of revenue (fares and subsidies, also food etc). It might be true that the government increased the subsidy in order to support the cheaper tickets. But that's not the same as "requires". Perhaps I…

Don’t forget too that the cost of proving roads is also ‘subsidised’ in most countries, but we’re tend to be a bit blind to that. (This is not an argument against rail - I just find that subsidies are often mentioned with respect to rail but not with roads).

Calculating the subsidy associated with state maintenance of roads for private vehicles is difficult.

Some basic level of signage and hazard prevention (potholes, ice etc) is necessary for emergency vehicles and other government operations.

Thereafter, although there is some maintenance cost associated with the road wear from private vehicles and the additional infrastructure required for higher traffic volumes, we don’t have an easy way to calculate the cost.

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