Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 435 posts

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

#11

Post by zimpenfish »

timellis-smith wrote: post #9
bleep_bloop wrote: post #2

Controversial opinion: Public transport should be publicly owned.

Theres a really interesting graph showing rail usage under both public and private ownership in GB. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/GB... I'll let you draw your own conclusions From this page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail

Doesn't really cover a lot of things you'd want to know like price, satisfaction, reliability, etc. - all of which, I believe, are strongly negative compared with 30 years ago. Also doesn't tell you if it's long distance or commuter or both - which is an important distinction since many more people commute these days.

In summary, it's a meaningless piece of chartjunk [edit: in the context of nationalisation vs privatisation, at least.]

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

#12

Post by TekMol »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #10
TekMol wrote: post #7

The problem is that in Germany, the city-to-city trains that can be used with this ticket do not have WIFI IIRC. Can anybody confirm this? Traveling time without WIFI is a much higher burden to me than normal traveling time, where I can work on my projects. I actually like working on the train. It is a nice environment. But without that possibility, long train rides are a chore to me. And it will be interesting to se…

Just use mobile data? That's what the trains are using anyway.

In my experience, the mobile connection is very flaky on the trains in Germany.

I would think the train can have a much more powerful antenna to talk to mobile towers and then relay that to the passangers. So that WIFI is better than mobile data.

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

#13

Post by dstick »

TekMol wrote: post #7

The problem is that in Germany, the city-to-city trains that can be used with this ticket do not have WIFI IIRC. Can anybody confirm this? Traveling time without WIFI is a much higher burden to me than normal traveling time, where I can work on my projects. I actually like working on the train. It is a nice environment. But without that possibility, long train rides are a chore to me. And it will be interesting to se…

From my limited experience on the German rails (Amsterdam - Berlin 5/6 times in the last 4 years) the mobile 4G/5G connection was pretty good. Only dropping off when travelling through very remote rural areas. In the Netherlands we have unlimited data subscriptions, I assume Germany has something similar? That should be enough to get some work done in the train :)

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

#14

Post by inglor_cz »

bleep_bloop wrote: post #2

Controversial opinion: Public transport should be publicly owned.

In Europe, ownership of public transport is a pretty wild mix, and corporations that are publicly owned (or indirectly so) do not seem to work substantially better than private corporations that won public contracts.

Aside from ideological arguments, can you support your opinion by pointing out examples that show that public ownership of means of transport improves customer experience? Because as someone who travels all the time with public transport, I definitely care about my customer experience. I spend quite a lot of time in trains and trams, and I want the time spent there not to be arduous.

Notably, once you look at the related field of airlines, many publicly owned airlines were outright atrocious (looking at you, Alitalia). The traditional Czech airline, ČSA, was blown apart when the local social democrats appointed their useless crook of a colleague (a former minister who was looking for a nice job) to be the CEO, and he ran the airline to the ground with alarming speed.

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

#15

Post by _s »

TekMol wrote: post #7

The problem is that in Germany, the city-to-city trains that can be used with this ticket do not have WIFI IIRC. Can anybody confirm this? Traveling time without WIFI is a much higher burden to me than normal traveling time, where I can work on my projects. I actually like working on the train. It is a nice environment. But without that possibility, long train rides are a chore to me. And it will be interesting to se…

With 5G speeds and unlimited data* - do you even need WiFi? Not to mention most companies nowadays have clear policies of (not) connecting to free public wifi's or even working in public spaces where your screen may be visible.

* Usually the first 50gb is max speed and then it drops to 25/25 etc - which is still really fast.

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

#16

Post by lakomen »

bleep_bloop wrote: post #2

Controversial opinion: Public transport should be publicly owned.

Well, the problem is, especially in Germany. If someone is a "Beamter" which can't be fired, has low income, there's no motivation to make a good job.

It took me 3 months to get a Bescheinigung über Daueraufenthalt" .

In theory, yes, transportation as well as communication should be owned by the public and available for free. A state that has 100 billion for buying weapons can afford that too.

Buy Germany has deteriorated into a corrupt state and it still has a system endemic Nazi problem.

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

#17

Post by Escapado »

TekMol wrote: post #7

The problem is that in Germany, the city-to-city trains that can be used with this ticket do not have WIFI IIRC. Can anybody confirm this? Traveling time without WIFI is a much higher burden to me than normal traveling time, where I can work on my projects. I actually like working on the train. It is a nice environment. But without that possibility, long train rides are a chore to me. And it will be interesting to se…

And also the inner city transport - at least in hamburg. Which is a great datapoint I think. Because this was true for all three months if I recall correctly and it means that there is absolutely a lot of public demand for inexpensive/free ways to travel. I work in an area with a lot of publicly subsidised housing which hosts mostly families that are less well off and I sometimes get to talk to these people and what I hear time and time again is how they had trouble paying for public transport and so they put off doctors appointments, can't have their child join a soccer team because they would need a monthly ticket to get to the field or have to compromise on other parts of their life that are completely non-negociable for many others. So there are many higher order effects where making public transport financially accessible to everyone could have positive benefits for financially underpriviledged people. Also higher public transport usage might lead to less cars and hence less polution, less road damage that needs repair and less crashes and accidents so there might also be other positive effects downstream. I would be interested in a full economic breakdown of this, although that might be hard or infeasible to do. Yet I would not be suprised if it turned out quite positive for most.

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

#18

Post by ivan_gammel »

bleep_bloop wrote: post #2

Controversial opinion: Public transport should be publicly owned.

Ownership is no more than a collection of rights on what to do with the owned asset that is recognized by society. Regulate more and there won’t be much difference between private and public property, so ownership is less relevant than financial and incentive framework around public transportation system.

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

#19

Post by [deleted] »

TekMol wrote: post #7

The problem is that in Germany, the city-to-city trains that can be used with this ticket do not have WIFI IIRC. Can anybody confirm this? Traveling time without WIFI is a much higher burden to me than normal traveling time, where I can work on my projects. I actually like working on the train. It is a nice environment. But without that possibility, long train rides are a chore to me. And it will be interesting to se…

[deleted]

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

#20

Post by tempaccount1234 »

TekMol wrote: post #7

The problem is that in Germany, the city-to-city trains that can be used with this ticket do not have WIFI IIRC. Can anybody confirm this? Traveling time without WIFI is a much higher burden to me than normal traveling time, where I can work on my projects. I actually like working on the train. It is a nice environment. But without that possibility, long train rides are a chore to me. And it will be interesting to se…

Mobile data usually works fine in German regional trains. But if you want trips longer than 2 hours, you probably want the higher speed trains anyway (which now might have less annoying poor people in them) What’s more annoying is that the price - in regions without good public transportation it’s actually too expensive, but it’s a nice gift to big city dwellers.
Post reply on HN