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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

#101

Post by serial_dev »

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 doubt I’d ever need a car in Germany given the rail system was much more convenient

Sure, if you live in a larger city and you never leave… I lived in Munich for years and never needed a car, just comfortable shoes, a bike and occasionally a transport ticket.

Try to get to a smaller town or village, you are lucky if you only spend twice as much time getting there as with a car.

The trains get randomly cancelled, delay is basically guaranteed, the workers go on strikes relatively frequently, so you can never rely on trains working for anything remotely important.

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

#102

Post by jdietrich »

2-3-7-43-1807 wrote: post #94
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…

> Providing these €49 tickets requires an annual subsidy of around €3bn and how was this number actually calculated?

https://urban-mobility-observatory.transport.ec.europa.eu/ne...

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

#103

Post by arcticbull »

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…

What’s the subsidy to road and oil companies right now? Might be nice to just shift it over.

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

#104

Post by twodave »

adamc wrote: post #59
Larrikin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we have to pretend that routes between Montana and South Dakota have to come up when discussing ways of improving rail usage in the US? We could treat routes between Chicago, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis like Germany. We could treat high speed rail in California or the Northeast like Japan. Choosing to live in an extremely rural area shouldn't just be a "well it doesn't help" me trump card to defeat things that…

The politics at the national level are likely to be that states not helped by this vote against it.

Yep, federal income tax is a big reason. For states to fund this on their own requires additional taxation. Some places like FL don’t even have a state income tax, so they are stuck trying to get tourists to fund transportation projects somehow or increasing sales taxes or higher tolls. And of course higher tolls have the unfortunate side effect of reducing demand for the thing to begin with.

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

#105

Post by artemonster »

Glawen wrote: post #17
stavros wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you avoid the rail system?

Because waiting im Stau (traffic jam) is so much better.

Because missing important appointment (Termin) that you have arranged 3 fucking months before by waiting in a phone queue for 30 minutes because your Sbahn was cancelled because of a nonsense signal-related reason is so much better.

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

#106

Post by londons_explore »

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…

> 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 currently uses people to not need people. Sure - there would still be occasional maintenance - but nobody always on duty driving trains (automated), nobody selling tickets (online), nobody cleaning stuff (automated cleaning of trains inside and out) etc.

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

#107

Post by lispm »

eptcyka wrote: post #83
lispm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay before. That's how the transport systems generally work in Germany. In many trains you need to have a ticket BEFORE entering the train and also BEFORE entering the platform in the train station. > Further, the process for getting refunds when you miss a connection requires one to fill in forms on paper and scan them in and then send in via email. I can do that in the DB app.

The DB app? Definitely was not an option for the people who did that. Granted, we are europeans, not Germans living in Germany. Paying before just isn't always practical, but I understand that such limitations are often a non-issue for locals.

> The DB app? Definitely was not an option for the people who did that.

Yeah, it's in the app.

> Paying before just isn't always practical, but I understand that such limitations are often a non-issue for locals.

That's how it works. Typical here for local trains: there are no barriers in train and bus stations. One can just enter the train and bus without any ticket check. But you have to make sure that you have a ticket. The local trains have no installation to buy a ticket anymore. Typically one would buy them online or have a subscription ticket. How does the system make sure that people pay and don't game the system? There are random checks.

If you want a ticket, buy it before entering a train. Train stations have either ticket systems or a ticket office. But most people by now do it online either per website or app.

For long-distance trains I would always book in advance (it's often also cheaper) and book a seat, too.

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

#108

Post by currymj »

n_plus_1_acc wrote: post #100
currymj wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

among intercity trains run by Deutsche Bahn, the on-time rate hovers around 2/3. it's technically true that "most were on time", but one third being late is really terrible, especially since you often need to make a tight connection. even if your family has no justifiable basis for believing what they do about DB, they happen to be correct by luck. https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2023/en/combined-management-re...

Long-distance trains are worse statistically because they travel longer Router and therefore have more opportubities to gain delay. Across all trains, puncuality is like 95%.

that is true, but tons of highly frequent on-time commuter trains doesn't help anyone who wants to travel long distances.

right now if you want to go between two cities you always have to plan on missing your connection.

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

#109

Post by taffer »

weinzierl wrote: post #19
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 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…

I couldn't disagree more. You can say a lot of bad things about Deutsche Bahn, but of all the travel apps I have used, DB Navigator and bahn.de were the best.

SNCF Connect, on the other hand, not only had a terrible UX, but also crashed randomly, forcing me to use third-party apps to buy SNCF tickets.

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

#110

Post by Dylan16807 »

shantara wrote: post #20
geraldwhen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is smaller than California. The United States is very, very large place, mostly unpopulated. It’s hard to apply whatever Germany, a small, densely populated country does to the US, which is largely empty land.

And how many people regularly commute across the United States? The absolute majority of the journeys people make regularly is still quite short, so why not start by optimizing for them? Then continue with building high speed intercity connections between the urban areas with Why do you always think that you need to reinvent a tried and true solutions that have been proven to work across the world?

Also even if you're worried about going cross-country, that requires what, two fast lines between the coasts to get good routes? So even though those areas don't have many people per square mile, passing through would need an extremely small amount of track per square mile.
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