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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

#461

Post by MandieD »

luckylion wrote: post #122
londons_explore wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> requires an annual subsidy of around €3bn I suspect the key is to find ways to run railways cheaper. It has been a long time since railways were under severe cost competition encouraging people to look for efficiencies. I think the main one would be to find a way for railways to operate with no staff. Just like a typical road operates most of the time with no staff. That means you need to redesign everything that c…

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…

The staff on board also contribute to keeping the train safe and pleasant - if there’s an unruly passenger, or a washroom malfunctions, I’m happy to have paid a bit extra for my ticket for a couple of people to be on hand to deal with the problem instead of being trapped for two hours.

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

#462

Post by mpweiher »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #414
bastawhiz wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analogy simply doesn't work because transit isn't fungible. Trains and air travel or cars simply aren't "the same park". The benefit of trains is objectively not just the carbon footprint. The money spent by the government benefits the public in other ways, not just environmentally. Ignoring the wear on (and cost of ownership of) personal vehicles, for instance, dismisses a huge amount of savings for folks who c…

All the things you listed are examples of "other axes" that I listed as being valid objections. I also agree that it's hard to estimate the dollar cost or benefit of these things. But I think we do have to attempt to estimate it, since we have no other sensible way to decide how to allocate public funds. It's not even all that difficult to estimate, really. For example, every business does it, of necessity.

Society is not a business.

Markets are a useful tool that societies use to optimize certain kinds of capital allocation and goods production, where that makes sense. No more no less.

Most of the things societies value most highly don't fit into the market hole.

If trains were exclusively a mechanism for capturing or avoiding carbon, then the metric of $ / tons would be valid. Trains very obviously are not that.

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

#463

Post by panda-giddiness »

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 spends some 70 billion euros maintaining the road system, only about a third of which is offset by taxes on drivers [1]. If we accept that investments in roads reduce carbon emissions by 0 million tonnes per year, then that works out to NaN € per tonne -- much worse than other carbon abatement methods!

Naturally there might be other positive externalities to owning a car, but I don't own a car and therefore wouldn't be privy to them. Instead I rely almost exclusively on Germany's public transport for my daily commutes, which I find perfectly satisfactory for this purpose and significantly more convenient than parking and maintaining a car.

---

[1] https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/oekonomie/au...

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

#464

Post by looofooo0 »

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…

Health care cost decline as people walk more compared to car transit!

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

#465

Post by looofooo0 »

Happily2020 wrote: post #443
SECProto wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funding road repairs, construction, and expansion from general tax revenues is similarly subsidizing a different mode of transit, and it's likely a much higher value than the 3b€ you mention (and likely more than overall railway sector subsidizing, tho I'm not familiar with Germany's budget). Also recognizing that other positive externalities exist, but pricing them at $0, seems silly.

Not to mention subsidised parking spaces. Free and even paid street parking is highly subsidised by the city and by other tax payers. There's also the environmental cost of not having that land be a park or nature and instead have it contribute to being an urban heat island with all its asphalt.

Healthcare cost also decline, and people become less sick because you have to walk some amount to get to the train.

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

#466

Post by rudnevr »

oersted wrote: post #9
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…

I don't have the details, but every single time I have heard the mention of Deutsche Bahn in the last few years it has been accompanied by comments of how broken it has become, with constant delays and cancellations, to the point where for many people it is no longer a viable option for commute or for anything where you cannot risk to be up to several hours late. I guess it's all relative. If you come to rely on an e…

Last time I frequented Boston Amtrak it would delay about 28% of travel.

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

#467

Post by beAbU »

intellix wrote: post #329
netsharc wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of this Swedish office on a train https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HbrI3refig , made for a company which had an hour train commute from Stockholm. It's even got 8 telephone line (4 in and 4 out)! I guess a lot of people would use work booths/conference rooms on trains, but the price/profit has to work for both sides (the train company and users). As for trains, the old-fashioned 6 seater compartments…

you could also work from a car if someone else is driving it like a taxi, but imagine the price difference to travel such a long distance every day over rail versus metro + rail. Another point I haven't seen mentioned much is safety. Rail is vastly safer than cars and results in less strain on the medical system.

I like your taxi idea. I hate driving myself.

We could bring down the cost of the taxi by putting more people in the car, to share the cost of the driver. That'll bring the costs down significantly.

If the car is sufficiently large, we can get, say, 50 people in a car with a single driver. That should make the extra cost of the driver split between the 50 lassengers significantly cheaper.

We could go further and link multiple cars together, with a single driver up front. They will be driving on one another's slipstream vastly improving fuel efficiency which will bring down costs even further.

Imagine if we can get them to run on some sort of rail or metal track, which makes rolling resistance of the wheels basically 0. No more expensive rubber tyres that need replacing and yet again improved fuel efficiency. This will bring down the costs even further!

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

#468

Post by piyuv »

looofooo0 wrote: post #465
Happily2020 wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention subsidised parking spaces. Free and even paid street parking is highly subsidised by the city and by other tax payers. There's also the environmental cost of not having that land be a park or nature and instead have it contribute to being an urban heat island with all its asphalt.

Healthcare cost also decline, and people become less sick because you have to walk some amount to get to the train.

The air quality improving should also be a factor.

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

#469

Post by luckylion »

Paradigma11 wrote: post #382
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…

Why would there be 8 staff on board? Isn't there typically one train driver and one attendant?

I don't know. They have the restaurant car on some trains so that's another 2-3 people, and I really have no idea about their operation so I added some buffer. I wouldn't expect there to be more than 8 on a train unless it's some special event.

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

#470

Post by hskalin »

Hugsun wrote: post #54
lispm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It sounds amazing. All these prices seem crazy low. A significantly zone limited monthly commuter ticket here in Denmark costs over 500€

That sounds too high, even Switzerland isn't that expensive
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