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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

#211

Post by weinzierl »

jonp888 wrote: post #31
weinzierl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I LOVE the German transit system" I have some experience with the public transport systems in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Belgium. In my opinion Germany's is the worst. Everything seems to be stuck in paper based processes, only occasionally and very listlessly digitized. The tariffs (apart from the Deutschlandticket) are overly complicated and suffer heavily under the common balkanization. The DB Navi…

> The DB Navigator is so terrible that I try to book the German leg of my international travels from one of the other countries apps whenever possible. > For a counter example look at the French SNCF Connect app. It is not perfect but it is a pretty workable solution. I am extremely surprised that you would write this. The SNCF Connect app has a lot of problems. Just for starters, it can't cope with any journey with…

"They no longer sell any international tickets, unless it's on a train actually run by SNCF."

I booked ICE trains run by Deutsche Bahn via SNCF successfully in the past, the last time three days ago. I had them even send me Deutsche Bahn paper tickets for no additional cost. (Not because I wanted them in paper, but because DB insists on their app or paper if it is not an international train)

"The DB App has train services for the whole of Europe. It can plan a journey from Oslo to Sofia if required."

You can plan that in DB Navigator just fine, but have you ever managed to successfully book such a journey. I admit that my attempts were always in the east-west direction, but I can confidently say that the DB Navigator app bails at the last step of the funnel for these journeys every time, when I can book the same trains via SNCF Connect just fine.

What I love about SNCF connect is that it shows me exactly if a train has free seats and is bookable in the inital step, where DB-Navigator lets me happily compose a whole itinerary only to tell me in the last step before payment one of the trains is booked out. Then I have start the whole process from the beginning, manually steering DB-Navigator to avoid the trains I now know are booked out but DB-Navigator still pretends were available.

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

#212

Post by jmyeet »

This last week we would've probably all seen the photos of the gridlock on I-75 as Tampa Bay residents fled Hurricane Milton. If you followed the story you know it eventually became almost impossible to evacuate.

We should also know how much more efficient buses are on roads at moving people than individual cars are. You can fit ~60 people on a bus that takes up the space of ~2 cars.

What should happen in these emergencies is there should be dedicated bus lanes and dedicates buses to evacuate people.

But beyond that, what we should learn from this is that lack of public transit (intracity and intercity) is a public safety issue. Cars simply aren't an efficient use of resources.

You can see from the comments here people will talk about "subsidies" for rail. Why does rail need to turn a profit? Roads don't. The Post Office doesn't. The Fire Department doesn't. Yet for some reason we hold public transport infrastructure to a higher standard.

Americans, in particular, love their cars. And there has been a powerful lobbying operation to associate rail with tax increases. This is so short-sighted because nobody is confiscating your car. Fewer people on the roads will improve your driving experience and travel times.

We see in the UK that it's cheaper to fly to Spain than to take intercity train journeys. As far as I'm concerned, citywide rail (eg the Tube in London, the NYC Subway) should be free and intercity rail should have a nominal cost that is cheaper than driving.

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

#213

Post by tantivy »

ggernov wrote: post #203

The reason nobody uses public transit in America is it's always packed with transients or dangerous people. I took public transit all the time living in Melbourne since it was clean and silent nearly 98% of the time. Same in the Netherlands.

Hundreds of thousands of people use public transit daily in America. Long headways, poor coverage, and lackluster maintenance budgets are a much more important problem than what you're describing.

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

#214

Post by partiallypro »

ggernov wrote: post #203

The reason nobody uses public transit in America is it's always packed with transients or dangerous people. I took public transit all the time living in Melbourne since it was clean and silent nearly 98% of the time. Same in the Netherlands.

I think this is one reason why it is rarely expanded, people associate the stops as a way for criminals to get around; but I think usage is not great largely because it hasn't expanded...it's a self-feeding cycle.

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

#215

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

ggernov wrote: post #203

The reason nobody uses public transit in America is it's always packed with transients or dangerous people. I took public transit all the time living in Melbourne since it was clean and silent nearly 98% of the time. Same in the Netherlands.

> The reason nobody uses public transit in America is it's always packed with transients or dangerous people.

That's a lie told by people who sell fear as a product to people who always want new reasons to live in fear.

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

#216

Post by risyachka »

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…

Who said rail industry should be profitable in the first place?

I would fully support if part of my taxes would subsidize rail industry and I get cheaper prices. Imo good use of tax dollars.

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

#217

Post by mkl »

Discordian93 wrote: post #194
PlunderBunny wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see the same thing in Hong Kong - the rail company practically creates new towns when they add a new station or extend a rail line.

I was under the impression Hong Kong was one big urban area already, is there really empty land new towns can be built on?

Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong#Geography, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_towns_of_Hong_Kong.

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

#218

Post by epolanski »

k__ wrote: post #120

It's pretty awesome, but it gets more expensive all the time. First it started as 9€ ticket for 3 months. People loved it, and the government talked about doing a permanent 29€ ticket. But now we pay 49€ and it's already planned to become 59€. Really sad, as it isn't affordable for poor people anymore.

It's meant to be an alternative to car drivers which are still gonna save over driving even with multiple hikes ahead.

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

#219

Post by archi42 »

lispm wrote: post #183
mk89 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Where I live, students pay for it, 29.40 €. It's a part of the semester fees, IIRC.

For those not familiar with how this works/worked: At most universities, a similar fee was collected from all students. That was then used to finance a regional "public transport flatrate".

N.b.: mk89 is technically not quite correct, it wasn't free (nothing in life is). It's usually bundled with the tuition/enrollment fee.

Implementation details differed per University, but for us the fee (80 or 100€, can't recall) was socialized across all students and payed together with the tuition fee; opting out was not possible (with some exceptions, like disabilities). The money went from the University administration to the AStA - the "general students council" (the executive section of the elected student self-government). The AStA then negotiated with the local public transport company/companies as well as with the Deutsche Bahn (e.g. to get access to certain inter-regional train connections - we still have cooperations with 3 or 4 nearby universities, and students somehow need to get there). Those negotiations can be a royal pita, and often the students were in a weak position.

Source: I was in the AStA (~12 people), but not involved with that task.

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

#220

Post by epolanski »

pjmlp wrote: post #41
lispm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except this only helped the folks living close to big train station hubs Every city has public transport. There is a large density of public transport throughout the country: trains, local trains, underground trains, busses, ferries, ... The ticket is valid there, too.

There is a big difference between doing 1h with car, and 3h with public transport.

You mean the other way around.
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