Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail • Hacker News Board

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

#341

Post by jordanb » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 1:46 AM UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #336

jordanb wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"These things aren't important unless you can wedge them into my spreadsheet" is the time of consultant-brained nonsense that got us the world we're living in.

Nobody said that. But if you're gonna spend the public money, you need some way of determining "how much are we willing to pay for this good thing".

Who's "we"? The public is mostly not made up of consultants and do not appreciate consultant logic being applied to everything. People would prefer to define values and then act on those values.

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

#342

Post by EasyMark » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 1:46 AM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #229

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 was in San Francisco recently, and, okay, maybe San Francisco is special or something, but the public transport seemed basically fine? Insofar as it existed; coverage wasn’t great, but it didn’t seem particularly threatening where it existed.

BART is different than most systems. Generally people are talking about buses in my experience. Most trains/subways are relatively tame compared to buses. I was carless for a couple of years in college and had to live off campus to afford rent and riding the bus I encountered more than a few times that made me nervous.

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

#343

Post by addandsubtract » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 1:46 AM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #142

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…

Cars also have a huge subsidy in the form of roads

A more fitting complaint about cats would be the Pendlerpauschale, which is paid out to people driving to and from work in their car. It's a much larger sum than the €3b spent on the train ticket subsidy.

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

#344

Post by Aeolun » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 1:47 AM UTC

dietr1ch wrote: post #72

lispm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're a tourist, it's not meant for you. Sorry. Tourist&foreigners can use the Deutschlandticket, too. But: it's a monthly subscription automatically renewing every month, so one has to cancel it early enough when planning to leave the country. You'll also typically need a smartphone for the ticket.

Well, on mobile they make you think you need the app, but it's region locked. I happened to email them about how this is annoying for tourists yesterday and got a very German response, "Downloading the Deutschlandticket.de app from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store is only possible in certain countries." (ikr, it's THE problem)

Is a response repeating the thing you just concluded in your mail to them very german?

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

#345

Post by Aeolun » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 1:48 AM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #116

emaro wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprised how positive you're writivg about the German public transport. The Deutsche Bahn doesn't have a good reputation in central Europe. I guess my frame of reference isn't average, given I live in Switzerland. Edit: the 49-euro ticket is great though!

As a UK citizen living in Berlin, I assure you that for all the cancellations and repair works, there's many places which look up to the German system. (I've also been to the USA, and (IMO) Amtrak makes the UK look good).

The UK is so expensive though. I thought I was looking at airplane fares.

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

#346

Post by nerdbert » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 1:49 AM UTC

okr wrote: post #273

immibis wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The far-right Berlin government is currently doing its darnedest to build the most expensive highway in all of Germany, that nobody actually wants, through a cultural area. Probably because their friend owns the highway construction company.

Oh please, far-right? It is leftists, that sees everything beside them as far-right. I would call it conservative. Something the 'left' forgets, that there are also some real people, who do not want to pay for the leftist dreamworld. Yuck.

> people, who do not want to pay for the leftist dreamworld

Except that time and time again, it turns out that the "leftist dreamworld" is actually cheaper.

Providing subsidized housing for poor people costs less in the long run than dealing with homelessness.

Providing nationalized or strictly regulated healthcare costs less than fully privatized systems where healthcare operators do as they please.

Facilitating active transport such as bike lanes costs cities less, and moves more people more quickly, than focusing exclusively on cars.

What these people actually want is not to save money, but to carefully ensure that any money spent suits only their preferences and identity groups rather than benefiting society as a whole.

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

#347

Post by xyzzy123 » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 1:52 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #337

nsokolsky wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True to a degree but cars also make parenting easier: you get bigger houses, bigger backyards, don't have lug your kids around on public transit, deal with the weather, don't need to worry about rail worker strikes, etc. All America's missing is laws that allow kids to walk to school and adding more sidewalks to enable this, but this is changing over time (see Utah's free range parenting law).

Do bigger houses make parenting easier, do bigger backyards? I’m inclined towards a large communual yard (a park, if you will) being many times more efficient at keeping them busy, especially if you have a single child. Lugging your children around on public transit builds character that chauffeuring them around in a car does not. They’ll be exposed to a variety of people and situations they’d otherwise never experie…

The other great thing about public transport is you don't have to "lug" / "chauffer" them at all after about 8 or so (what age makes sense depends on area and the kid of course). They can exercise some independence.

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

#348

Post by Sabinus » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 1:53 AM UTC

klipt wrote: post #303

kortilla wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not a weasel word, it’s a word used to describe any program provided by the government that does not bring in enough revenue on its own to pay for itself. The same word applies to roads that do not pay for themselves through gas tax and/or tolls. If the government pays for something through a general fund from income/property/corporate taxes, it’s subsidized. It’s important to call these out whenever they are be…

Most of the value created by public transit goes into the land near the stations. Employers want offices near stations and employees want homes near stations. You can recover as lot more money from taxing the land than from fares.

I read about train infrastructure development that was privately funded and built from the profits from land speculation near the new stations.

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

#349

Post by braiamp » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 1:57 AM UTC

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.

> First it started as 9€ ticket for 3 months

Someone said in other comment that that 9 ticket was one time only

> 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

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

#350

Post by simonhorlick » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 1:58 AM UTC

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…

Germany actually subsidises fossil fuels to the tune of €20bn/year, so in that context €3bn doesn't sound so bad. Some of the latest estimates of the true cost per ton of carbon put it around $1000 USD, so in purely economic terms it's still a win.