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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

#421

Post by fweimer »

danhor wrote: post #218
fweimer wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or worse, you can still buy the ticket, but it's not valid for any trains actually in service. This stuff is really non-obvious. For example, train operators can license certain Deutsche Bahn trademarks without accepting Deutsche Bahn tickets.

Where? As far as I know, all the Deutsche Bahn Tickets for regional traffic use the Deutschlandtarif, which is accepted in all "normal" (excluding heritage trains and the likes) regional trains in all of Germany.

The example I had in mind was for an S-Bahn in Karlsruhe (operated by AVG, using the S-Bahn trademark under license, but otherwise unaffiliated with Deutsche Bahn) which was considered a tram, not a regular regional train while it traveled within city limits. This meant that DB tickets weren't necessarily valid, and AVG claimed as much. I expect AVG recognizes the bw tarif under which DB sells train tickets, so this probably is no longer an issue.

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

#422

Post by bombolo »

Symbiote wrote: post #378
ghaff wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oyster cards still seem to be pretty common though I think you can use contactless credit cards in a lot of situations these these days.

Commuters with monthly or longer tickets will need to use an Oyster card, but anyone with only weekly, daily or individual tickets is fine with a contactless credit card. I think only foreign tourists who don't have a credit/debit card, or whose banks levy a high, fixed charge per card transaction, or who are eligible for some other discount (foreign children age 5-17) should buy an Oyster card.

I'm sure tourists are aware of all this tricks in the first 30 minutes that they are in london /s

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

#423

Post by jonp888 »

formerly_proven wrote: post #198
cmarschner wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company that runs the DB system (HAFAS) provides this system for half of the European railways though. And, interestingly enough, also for BART. https://www.hacon.de/unternehmen/

Their codebase has to be a wild ride. There are still traces from the days it ran as Windows binaries in CGI fashion (very much doubt they still do it like that, just like a large number of eBay URLs still contain the ebayISAPI.dll bit from the time the site was literally a Microsoft IIS plugin). On the DB instance it also outputs like five different generations of UIs depending on the exact parameters you hand it. Y…

As far as I am aware, although the system is very capable it started as someone's PhD thesis in the mid 80s and has been developed since then.

I worked on the data prepartion for a small HAFAS installation at one point and the specification was an absolute mess of fixed with text, delimited text and XML, sometimes all in the same file!

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

#424

Post by jonp888 »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #369
mcspiff wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will given Berlin credit here — after checking in to our accommodations (took a taxi from the airport), I poked a ticket machine, quickly saw the Union Jack flag and got the machine into English. Couple minutes later we had our 1 week passes in hand. In general I found the system very approachable, using google maps for route planning.

It is ok, but still a far cry from London for example, where you simply hold your card while entering and it automatically gives you the best price for your account. So if you drive around a lot as a tourist you just cap at the weekly price once you reach it.

If you tried that in Germany there would be a legal challenge on the grounds that a system which knows where the user travelled infringes on privacy :D

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

#425

Post by mikae1 »

bahnkenner wrote: post #74
mikae1 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With the new system, you just buy one monthly ticket, and you can ride on local transit anywhere in Germany. There's no more worrying about different ticketing systems, if city X is in transit region Y, and so on. There were some exceptions mentioned in https://youtu.be/hzuAohOSLi4 , but perhaps those were only for inter-city transport.

By "local" transit, I mean regional commuter trains (Regionalbahn, Regionalexpress and S-Bahn), not the faster long-distance trains (Intercity and Intercity-Express, the latter being Germany's high-speed trains).

Thanks!

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

#426

Post by mqus »

camillomiller wrote: post #340
mqus wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the ticket was more like 63 Euros per Month, when paid yearly

That's for AB (66,90). But you have to compare it to the ABC yearly "Abo", as you will have access to all areas. That's 88€ per month if you pay the 1056 lump sum for the yearly version. Over 100€ if you pay monthly.

GP explicitly said AB, so I don't have to compare it to ABC imho.

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

#427

Post by panick21_ »

panick21_ wrote: post #272
timellis-smith wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres a really interesting graph showing rail usage under both public and private ownership in GB. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/GB... I'll let you draw your own conclusions From this page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail

There is a big problem with this graph. Its highly misleading. Because in other parts even of Great Britain, like Norther Ireland, it was always public and it shows the exact same pattern. And many other countries had the same effect too. It just so happens British Rail happened right at the time when the basic understanding of governments in Britain and most the world were anti railway and pro building an absurd amo…

This podcast is a good history: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9gNLWRpeqg

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

#429

Post by iggldiggl »

bakuninsbart wrote: post #369
mcspiff wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will given Berlin credit here — after checking in to our accommodations (took a taxi from the airport), I poked a ticket machine, quickly saw the Union Jack flag and got the machine into English. Couple minutes later we had our 1 week passes in hand. In general I found the system very approachable, using google maps for route planning.

It is ok, but still a far cry from London for example, where you simply hold your card while entering and it automatically gives you the best price for your account. So if you drive around a lot as a tourist you just cap at the weekly price once you reach it.

With the caveat that the cap is always a fixed Monday to Sunday period, so if your stay doesn't align with that, you'll get to pay an additional capping period.

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

#430

Post by iggldiggl »

Symbiote wrote: post #378
ghaff wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oyster cards still seem to be pretty common though I think you can use contactless credit cards in a lot of situations these these days.

Commuters with monthly or longer tickets will need to use an Oyster card, but anyone with only weekly, daily or individual tickets is fine with a contactless credit card. I think only foreign tourists who don't have a credit/debit card, or whose banks levy a high, fixed charge per card transaction, or who are eligible for some other discount (foreign children age 5-17) should buy an Oyster card.

> but anyone with only weekly […] tickets is fine with a contactless credit card

1. The weekly capping always runs Monday to Sunday, so if your stay doesn't align with that, you'll get to pay an additional capping period, in which case buying a weekly travelcard aligned with your stay will likely be cheaper (as long as you know which zones you'll mainly require).

2. Having a travelcard gives you the ability to buy slightly cheaper rail tickets for destinations outside of the TfL zones. Pay-as-you-go doesn't, unless you physically get off the train in order to touch in/out at the boundary.

3. Transit nerds only: Pay-as-you-go is subject to certain maximum journey times. If you'll exceed those by staying to long within the system, you'll be presumed to have forgotten to touch out and will be charged a maximum fare. A travelcard avoids that issue.

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