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

241–250 of 435 posts

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

#241

Post by generationP »

morsch wrote: post #125
eliaspro wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're out of luck, if none of the route segments is served by Deutsche Bahn (which is often the case for regional routes), because then you'll be unable to buy your ticket using the most common nation-wide app DB Navigator.

That's not true, they sell tickets for many regional transport associations. https://www.bahn.de/angebot/regio/verbuende Not all of them, I'm sure, but all of the major ones seem to be covered. I'm using it every day, because it's better than using the association's own app, which is not saying much. Or I used to, anyway, now I'm doing the 49 EUR thing.

DB Navigator for regional transport is hit-and-miss. I've been using it a lot around the southwest, but it's fickle and sometimes fails to offer me tickets for no clear reasons (seemingly at random; the same connections by the same companies work on other days). And don't forget that a lot of the German hinterlands has very spotty to no mobile data.

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

#242

Post by pjmlp »

panick21_ wrote: post #205
woodpanel wrote: post #60

As some comments here mention uncomfortable means of buying tickets across German transportation systems: I’ve been working on multiple software projects that tried to solve it and I can tell you that the reason is not sinister but rather that each system is funded locally. Which means it is subsidized locally and the need to cross those boundaries was always a luxury issue (by people like us - the E-Mail caste). Eve…

Its kind of ridiculous to call it a luxury issue. Its a luxury issue if you make it one. In Switzerland 85 year old grandmothers travel between cities to go for light walks. 15 year olds go to football tournaments in other cities. Claiming that only some elite cast of digital nomads profits from it is utterly ridiculous. In Switzerland city to city travel is more common with trains then with cars, and a huge part of…

Also most people end up buying demi-tarif card, to make travel affordable.

Although a great thing of Swiss trains used to be being able to switch trains quite easily between destinations, regardless of the train type.

No idea if that is still a thing nowadays.

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

#243

Post by roamerz »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #160
bahnkenner wrote: post #43

The biggest advantage of the new Germany-wide ticket is not the price, but rather that it simplifies things. This is a map of German public transit companies: [0]. I've heard the current fractured system be compared to the Holy Roman Empire. Every little region has its own ticketing system. If you arrive in a new city, you have to figure out how to buy local transit tickets, often with quite complicated rules (e.g.,…

Exactly. The new ticket is an excellent example of when national government can be superior to more local government: when the national government forces coordination to solve fragmentation problems, where local agencies lacked the... motivation to solve things on their own. On a technical level, it was always possible for different transit agencies to cooperate to simplify things for consumers, but they didn't, and…

Agreed. Another much needed example would be nationwide reciprocity for concealed carry firearms. It’s too easy to be on the wrong side of the law when crossing state lines and the regulatory nuances are difficult to understand state to state.

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

#244

Post by mqus »

rebyn wrote: post #229

I got the Deutschlandticket for May and am tempted to travel from Berlin to Stralsund. Using RE/RB for this journeh takes more or less three hours without any train change (so not having to deal with the possible delay(s) and missing connecting rides), however I do hope the operator supports reserving a seat in advance with this subscription, cause otherwise showing up at the station not knowing for sure I'd have a s…

reserving seats in rb/re trains? Never heard of it.

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

#245

Post by rconti »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #239
bahnkenner wrote: post #43

The biggest advantage of the new Germany-wide ticket is not the price, but rather that it simplifies things. This is a map of German public transit companies: [0]. I've heard the current fractured system be compared to the Holy Roman Empire. Every little region has its own ticketing system. If you arrive in a new city, you have to figure out how to buy local transit tickets, often with quite complicated rules (e.g.,…

Your comment is a fascinating take on perspective . To you it's a fractured, difficult system. To this American, it has been absolutely futuristic every time I've been there. Wish we could get such an awful system anywhere near where I live.

Yup. As an American, I found it quite easy to navigate transit systems every time I visited Germany; most recently Berlin. Especially these days with things like Google/Apple maps transit directions that work more-or-less flawlessly. But maybe it's because I'm used to systems like Caltrain that don't even have a functioning app, and which just randomly cancel trains for huge chunks of the day, or BART, which has an even-more-insane pay-per-distance system than anything I've seen elsewhere.

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

#246

Post by generationP »

rebyn wrote: post #229

I got the Deutschlandticket for May and am tempted to travel from Berlin to Stralsund. Using RE/RB for this journeh takes more or less three hours without any train change (so not having to deal with the possible delay(s) and missing connecting rides), however I do hope the operator supports reserving a seat in advance with this subscription, cause otherwise showing up at the station not knowing for sure I'd have a s…

Very few regional trains allow for reservation. See https://www.bahn.de/angebot/zusatzticket/sitzplatzreservieru...

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

#248

Post by panick21_ »

jakub_g wrote: post #147
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It will only get higher if we try to intentionally decrease worker productivity by forcing them to 'serve a year of their life for public services'. That's blatantly false. It works in Austria quite well. The healthcare and social service systems would not be able to function without the mandatory and voluntary unpaid 9 months work of the 17 - 19 year olds before they hit off for university. What worker productivity…

Do you have some links / google keywords about the teenagers working in healthcare/social services in Austria?

If you are interested in the Swiss system:

https://www.ch.ch/en/safety-and-justice/military-service-and...

If you want to see open positions for the system you can see here (not in English):

https://www.ezivi.admin.ch/ivy/faces/instances/eZIVI/PublikB...

You can search for different keywords to find open positions. For me personally I worked in:

- Hospital as a Programmer (they made position for me)

- In another hospital as Technician (hanging up stuff, changing light-bulls, assessing damage, configuring doors and so on)

- Old people home, I worked for in technical service, including garden work.

- Old people home, I also worked as a cleaner, mostly windows, floors and so on.

In the hospital you can also work as a bed mover for example. You can work directly in old people care and things.

In general there are 100s of position, some position are even going with international aid organization to other countries. A friend of mine did his in archeology departments digging up old stuff. Another friends simply did farm work with a mountain farmer, that's the easiest to get (he in fact simply was to lazy to get a job so they assigned him to a farmer).

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

#249

Post by atq2119 »

lakomen wrote: post #16
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 deterio…

By this point, there can't be too many "Beamte" left in Germany's railway and public transit systems. After all, nobody there has received that status since the 90s.

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

#250

Post by akavi »

willyt wrote: post #240
f_allwein wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Rome, you can now just tap contactless payment cards (/ smartphones, I assume) to readers in buses/ at underground stations. Huge step up from the previous system, which was based on buying paper tickets from newsagents.

But now Italian newsagents don’t get to laugh at us pronouncing the ‘g’ in biglietti. Makes me feel a bit nostalgic/sad for some reason.

The "g" is pronounced (in a sense). In Italian, the digraph "gl" represents a single sound /ʎ/, which is distinct from the sound represented by "l" alone (/l/)
Post reply on HN