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Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket

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

#381

Post by RugnirViking »

cbmuser wrote: post #166
thanatos519 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more: Public transport is a public good which should be funded by fossil fuel taxes and provided to users without cost.

> Even more: Public transport is a public good which should be funded by fossil fuel taxes and provided to users without cost. A lot of public transport runs on fossil fuels. Especially, since Germany was so »smart« to shutdown all nuclear reactors so that coal has become the most important source of electricity again.

that is not incompatible with the concept? It's not as though the resaon for public transport is soley to reduce emissions/use less of a limited resource, and even if it were & all public transport used it, its still vastly more efficient to move 50 people with 1.5x the motor that would otherwise be moving 2 people

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

#382

Post by gsa »

wpietri wrote: post #178
TulliusCicero wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which reminds me to give a shout-out to the Clipper card. The SF Bay Area really did the right thing here. 24 different systems, all of which use the same card: https://www.clippercard.com/ClipperWeb/where-to-use.html And they have now expanded that card-based system to include a mobile app, Google Pay, and Apple Pay, so now I just tap my phone and I'm all set.

Clipper was an awful experience for a non-American like me when I visited last year. I couldn't install the mobile app (the app listing is region locked to the US). I couldn't set it up on Google Pay either (the Google Pay offerings were also region locked).

I then spent half an hour trying to purchase a physical card from a machine which refused to accept 4 different cards I tried (credit and debit both). In the end, I could only purchase it with an American card that I borrowed from someone.

Compare that to modern public transport systems in many parts of the world, where you can simply check in and out with a bank card. No separate purchase needed.

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

#383

Post by Zopieux »

pjmlp wrote: post #242
panick21_ wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Fairtiq system is so freaking cool: check-in the app when you board any train/tram/boat/bus, do any kind of ride, of any length, duration and connection count across the country, check-out when done. Do this any number of times in a day. Get billed the best price (excluding one-off deals) at the end of the day.

This is almost as simple as beeping your credit card when boarding. I've been so spoiled by that simplicity, I can't stand using needlessly complicated ticketing systems these days.

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

#384

Post by dehrmann »

xputer wrote: post #320
dehrmann wrote: post #318

Something I really appreciate in Taiwan is a single card works for all transit. What I found cool in Sydney was metro turnstiles would read contactless credit cards. And I'm shocked and thrilled that the Bay Area consolidated on one system. The US is pretty split up and doesn't use trains outside the NE corridor, so it's not as useful, but it'd be nice if congress would start work on unifying transit payments across…

Doesn't Kaohsiung have it's own card system?

Supposedly EasyCard and iPass both work all over the country now.

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

#385

Post by mensetmanusman »

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.,…

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