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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

#391

Post by insane_dreamer »

potato3732842 wrote: post #335
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reason nobody uses public transit in America is it's always packed with transients or dangerous people. That's a lie told by people who sell fear as a product to people who always want new reasons to live in fear.

>That's a lie told by people who sell fear as a product to people who always want new reasons to live in fear. They don't just sell fear. They sell confirmation bias too. The man who lives in an ivory tower in the suburbs is happy to read the news about a stabbing on the subway as it makes him feel less bad for not putting his money where his mouth is and riding it himself.

And he pays no attention to the reports about car crashes on the road because those aren’t even reported.

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

#392

Post by insane_dreamer »

nemo44x wrote: post #324
ggernov wrote: post #203

The reason nobody uses public transit in America is it's always packed with transients or dangerous people. I took public transit all the time living in Melbourne since it was clean and silent nearly 98% of the time. Same in the Netherlands.

The main reason is because Americans are unbelievably wealthy and can afford large homes that require multiple cars for the family to get around. It’s a positive sign of American prosperity and the envy of the world hence the massive immigration demand and relative lack of expatriatism. If America gets to a point where that’s no longer possible and people have to live in smaller and more densely populated areas not b…

That’s a nice but false narrative. The Swiss are wealthier than the Americans and yet they use public transport extensively.

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

#393

Post by ic_fly2 »

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…

You make a very valid point.

I’d ignore unpriced other externalities, that is a large rabbit hole. (Do people increase consumption of other goods thanks to the savings of this ticket…)

I’d rather look at the project, subsidies again and the cost and realise that at this scale there are few individual projects. So this is a very large knob to dial down the emissions.

Secondly, the subsidies go into the German economy. The rail system is very domestic economy heavy, so at a time where the German economy is going into a recession, spending 3bn to subsidise transport and reduce people’s cost of living and pay for German workers and investments is not such a terrible idea.

So while the price tag is high, the money isn’t turned into trees or buried like in pure abatement projects and at this scale it is a nice leaver to pull.

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

#394

Post by zdw »

intellix wrote: post #362
okanat wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When installed and kept up properly with good policymaking railways are always a positive for the economy. They cause a huge amount of cheap movement that increases business activity. Little towns that become railway stops develop much faster. The bigger stations are great for shops and food. The access to education and high-value driving extracurricular activities increase for younger people too. They overall make t…

As someone who's been to both China and Japan I'd say railway is far ahead in China than the rest of the world. Again, according to GPT, the price per kilometre between them is €0.03-0.06 in China vs €0.15-0.26 in Japan. I know Japan has a lot of high speed rail coverage but so does China and the difference in price is absolutely insane. Rail between Beijing and Shanghai for example has an average speed of 300kmh. I…

Most of these numbers are probably due to differences in wages and the size of the respective countries.

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

#395

Post by zdragnar »

nerdbert wrote: post #340
smcl wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same word applies to roads that do not pay for themselves through gas tax and/or tolls. It’s very weird how people talk about roads as a sort of universal public good whose construction and maintenance needs to be financed by local authorities and taxation. Yet rail is expected to not just stand on its own two feet but to yield a profit. Both facilitate commerce and improve a regions productivity (rail inarguab…

> why is rail treated so differently? Because there's a huge ecosystem that is substantially dependent on private use of roadways - car manufacturers, sellers, insurers, storage facilities, cleaners, and repairers; petrol extractors, refiners, transporters and sellers; and so on. Each of these parties has a vested interest in maintaining the perception that driving is the baseline mode of transport and anything else…

There's also a large percentage of the country that simply wouldn't benefit from rail in their day to day lives, because most of the country doesn't have the population density to make rail make sense. It would at best be an alternative to flying, assuming it didn't take longer.

These are the same people for whom owning a car is an essential part of life.

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

#396

Post by Asmod4n »

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…

We are paying 70bn€ annually for roads. And gain 25 in taxes for it.

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

#397

Post by chii »

jordanb wrote: post #327
resonious wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gp said they know about these other factors but doesn't know how to price them. Do you know a way?

"These things aren't important unless you can wedge them into my spreadsheet" is the time of consultant-brained nonsense that got us the world we're living in.

so how do you propose the limited public money ought to be spent on which project? Perhaps just feel good vibes?

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

#398

Post by raverbashing »

nsokolsky wrote: post #326
lotsofpulp wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars destroy walkability, cyclability, ability for kids to freely play outside, enable sprawl (hence more energy consumption hence more carbon emissions). There’s no free lunch with using more surface area, which cars greatly expand people’s ability to consume.

True to a degree but cars also make parenting easier: you get bigger houses, bigger backyards, don't have lug your kids around on public transit, deal with the weather, don't need to worry about rail worker strikes, etc. All America's missing is laws that allow kids to walk to school and adding more sidewalks to enable this, but this is changing over time (see Utah's free range parenting law).

Here's easier parenting: walk from your house/apartment to a close by square, and play with your kids there

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

#399

Post by geysersam »

thehappypm wrote: post #352
dpe82 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a car also entails massive subsidies; when taking that into account the all-in costs per unit traveled are basically always cheaper with rail.

[flagged]

Almost every road project is paid by public money.

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

#400

Post by chii »

komali2 wrote: post #379
usefulcat wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that if they had to do those things every time they used a road it would be more obvious (like buying a train ticket).

They do have to do it every time, through the fuel tax. Driving costs fuel. I guess people just don't think of it though.

it's not a subsidy if it's a user-pays system.

A subsidy is only a subsidy if users don't necessarily pay the full cost, and the rest is borne by some other group of people who _don't_ use the service.

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