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Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

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Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#131

Post by mytailorisrich »

muyuu wrote: post #130
mytailorisrich wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is not related to seeing it as a market (although in most cases it is broadly one because it "competes" against other means of transportation). It is a question of how to pay for the cost of things, allocation of resources, subsidies, best use of taxpayers' money, not least when public finances are under high strain and/or huge structural investments are needed in many countries.

but that is a market you are describing, one for the allocation of resources it isn't really, the resources are created by the structure commercialising the service, and incidentally the other means of transportation are also made expensive by a connected structure owning and operating a car in the UK is very expensive, esp. if you need to regularly park it near the most important economic centres, and this is also b…

> "the resources are created by the structure commercialising the service"

So you mean selling tickets, not subsidies?

Building railways and operating rail services cost money, a lot of it, actually. Is it a good allocation of resources, especially taxpayers' money, to make it free/almost free when people can afford to pay for it via tickets and funding/investments are needed elsewhere and (as the case may be) public finances are in a bad shape?

That's the way it is. Resources are always finite and thus there is always an issue with allocating them.

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#132

Post by muyuu »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #131
muyuu wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but that is a market you are describing, one for the allocation of resources it isn't really, the resources are created by the structure commercialising the service, and incidentally the other means of transportation are also made expensive by a connected structure owning and operating a car in the UK is very expensive, esp. if you need to regularly park it near the most important economic centres, and this is also b…

> " the resources are created by the structure commercialising the service " So you mean selling tickets, not subsidies? Building railways and operating rail services cost money, a lot of it, actually. Is it a good allocation of resources, especially taxpayers' money, to make it free/almost free when people can afford to pay for it via tickets and funding/investments are needed elsewhere and (as the case may be) publ…

no, i don't mean that at all

there is not a set number of tickets that either get bought by the consumer or subsidised, that is so far departed from the issues it's pointless to even consider

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#133

Post by whatevaa »

shifto wrote: post #122
lokar wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And drivers who themselves would never ride a bike. They see you as a nuisance.

We Dutch just hate both. If I'm on bike I hate all car drivers. If I'm in car I hate all bicycle drivers.

I think that is a general vibe. Mixing very different types of transportation on same road will always cause trouble.

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#134

Post by throw-the-towel »

geraltofrivia wrote: post #114
pjerem wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True for local lines of everyday transportation. But actually high speed trains are sustainable, at least in France. But also they are super expensive.

Prohibitively expensive! A 1.5h train ride from paris can set me back more than 100EUR some times.

Just out of curiosity, are these the lines to Bretagne/Normandy? I find the prices on southbound rail lines to be more reasonable, about 60 EUR for a couple hours on the train if you're buying the day before your trip.

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#135

Post by throw-the-towel »

souberlaf wrote: post #111

Please, this is the dutch government, who believes or trust them still? The price will be raised to 200 euro and they will make it sound like it's a good thing for you. There is this weird propoganda thing about the netherlands, where it looks like this amazing utopia from the outside, but, it's far from it. Look at the housing crisis, the immigration crisis, the incredibly stupid tax on unrealized gains, the cost of…

But then again, which Western country is not having a housing crisis, an immigration crisis and a ballooning cost of living.

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#136

Post by eigenspace »

joegibbs wrote: post #94

As an Australian, why are European train prices so high? Obviously it's due to a lack of subsidies, but why are they not subsidised? For instance, a train from London to Edinburgh (about 4 hours) is about $120 while an equivalent trip in Australia (Melbourne to Albury) is about $10 (it used to be about $40, but that's still much cheaper). Sydney to Melbourne is 900 kilometers and $80, Berlin to Paris is minimum $172.…

There is ample competition from cars and planes, europe has one of the most dense and intensive highway networks in the world, and the most dense and intensive short-haul flight network in the world.

Rather, the trains in western Europe are so desirable that the prices don't need to be heavily subsidized in order to be fully utilized.

In most of western Europe, the main barrier to increasing train usage is the physical number of tracks and trains in operation. If prices were further lowered, there'd be nowhere to even put all the extra customers the subsidies would bring in. Therefore, if the governemnt is going to put money into the trains, the first priority is infrastructure expansions, not price subsidies

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#137

Post by dredmorbius »

bluGill wrote: post #125
CalRobert wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not in every suburb. I used to live in a suburb in Sacramento and just walking to the closest grocery store was over an hour

I said bike distance not walk distance. Typically bike speeds are about four times faster than walking speed so your hour walk is fifteen minutes. I don't know Sacramento, but if it is as hilly as San Francisco you want an ebike which makes the hills level and is even faster.

Sacramento is largely flat. Topo view w/ bike routes indicated: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sacramento,+CA/@38.5615711...>

It has reasonably good biking infrastructure, for the US, but suffers badly from sprawl. There's also the summer heat.

San Francisco is hilly (tough riding), but quite compact. It's generally possible to avoid the worst climbs with modest detours.

Sacramento's sprawl means that it has roughly 1/4 the population density of Sacramento. Travel distances are correspondingly longer, and much commercial development (office, retail) is in suburban hubs / malls / office parks, rather than either downtown or in neighbourhood shopping districts, as with SF.

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#138

Post by bluGill »

dredmorbius wrote: post #137
bluGill wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said bike distance not walk distance. Typically bike speeds are about four times faster than walking speed so your hour walk is fifteen minutes. I don't know Sacramento, but if it is as hilly as San Francisco you want an ebike which makes the hills level and is even faster.

Sacramento is largely flat. Topo view w/ bike routes indicated: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sacramento,+CA/@38.5615711... > It has reasonably good biking infrastructure, for the US, but suffers badly from sprawl. There's also the summer heat. San Francisco is hilly (tough riding), but quite compact. It's generally possible to avoid the worst climbs with modest detours. Sacramento's sprawl means that it has roug…

Again that sounds perfectly bikeable. You seem to be confusing not walkable with must have a car but bikes would just fine.

While the large malls are likely only reachable by cars, I expect small malls are closer and in bike distance.

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#139

Post by dredmorbius »

bluGill wrote: post #138
dredmorbius wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sacramento is largely flat. Topo view w/ bike routes indicated: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sacramento,+CA/@38.5615711... > It has reasonably good biking infrastructure, for the US, but suffers badly from sprawl. There's also the summer heat. San Francisco is hilly (tough riding), but quite compact. It's generally possible to avoid the worst climbs with modest detours. Sacramento's sprawl means that it has roug…

Again that sounds perfectly bikeable. You seem to be confusing not walkable with must have a car but bikes would just fine. While the large malls are likely only reachable by cars, I expect small malls are closer and in bike distance.

The issues would generally be 1) traffic (a genuine hazard) and 2) bike parking. Many locations have few, if any, bike racks, and often other street furniture (signage, posts, fences) is poorly-suited to securing a bike.

Downtown / midtown areas are often far more amenable than outlying locations, particularly at malls and office parks.

This isn't to say that you cannot bike places, or take risks (collisions, theft), but it's additional friction. As I said, the infrastructure, by American standards, is actually pretty good. I'm just highlighting the limitations / caveats.

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#140

Post by micromacrofoot »

dewey wrote: post #121
micromacrofoot wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok, but hear me out let's say the fare system costs $1 million to operate and maintain and let's say the fare system collects $10 million in fares couldn't you just collect $10 million in additional taxes, just add a "railway fare" line item, and save everyone the $1 million?

> just collect xxx in additional taxes That's very easy to say, and very unpopular to actually do. People on the country side would for example not feel it's fair for them to pay for the much more complicated public transport system in the city, when they get one train going by their village every few hours for it.

the people on the country side, whose infrastructure are paid for by the revenue mostly generated by cities?

I know what you're saying, but it's silly... "we should waste more money because I don't understand how countries work" is so tired

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