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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

#451

Post by switch007 »

owisd wrote: post #435
theendisney4 wrote: post #139

The real puzzle imho is to get people to use public transport for the mostly empty route and time combinations. There are many of those for different reasons. Trains are so heavy it doesnt really cost or save anything if there are people inside or not. Its like restaurants throwing away food.

The UK offers aggressive discounts for advance purchasing tickets on long distance routes at quiet times, which works well.

Which are used to justify expensive non-Advance tickets.

£80 if I have the audacity to go to greater London today without having planned ahead (3 hour journey + tube). And the same cost coming back - off peak of course. £160! Vs £55 in petrol

Travel at quieter times to benefit from cheaper off peak tickets they used to say. Hah.

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

#452

Post by nsokolsky »

CalRobert wrote: post #438
nsokolsky wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> has huge ongoing costs in terms of resource and energy use TxDOT (government organization responsible for road maintenance) has a budget of $30B/year or about 10% of the total state's budget. Not that big of a deal for Texas.

Do they pay for the streets in low density suburbs or do local towns and cities? Also, water infra, electrical infra, etc.

That figure includes every single government-owned street, AFAIK. Total infrastructure costs are higher but don't seem that much higher than in Germany?

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

#454

Post by fire_lake »

owisd wrote: post #435
theendisney4 wrote: post #139

The real puzzle imho is to get people to use public transport for the mostly empty route and time combinations. There are many of those for different reasons. Trains are so heavy it doesnt really cost or save anything if there are people inside or not. Its like restaurants throwing away food.

The UK offers aggressive discounts for advance purchasing tickets on long distance routes at quiet times, which works well.

Does it though? Trains are almost empty most of the time.

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

#455

Post by nine_k »

Aeolun wrote: post #332
kyleee wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good comment except for the first word. Obviously cars enable all sorts of movement and economic activity, so why not just admit it? The rest of your comment is just talking about how rail may do all those things to a greater extent than cars. You don’t need to deny benefits of cars, it doesn’t bolster your arguments. Better to just be honest and then extol the virtues of rail and other transportation methods.

Of course a car does, but does that mean you should ignore all the benefits brought by bicycles? And if we go that far, should we overlook our own muscular locomotion? It all enables the same mobility after all.

Cycling at 110F ambient temperature can be outright hazardous (speaking of Texas).

Cycling at 80F is okay as long as you have a shower at the destination. (Most offices don't.)

Also, cycling in a city, when you cycle for 2-3, maybe 5 miles, is fine. Cycling for 20 miles is pretty taxing and time-consuming, but in a low-density, car-oriented environment 20 miles correctly qualifies as "nearby".

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

#456

Post by Tade0 »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #414
bastawhiz wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This analogy simply doesn't work because transit isn't fungible. Trains and air travel or cars simply aren't "the same park". The benefit of trains is objectively not just the carbon footprint. The money spent by the government benefits the public in other ways, not just environmentally. Ignoring the wear on (and cost of ownership of) personal vehicles, for instance, dismisses a huge amount of savings for folks who c…

All the things you listed are examples of "other axes" that I listed as being valid objections. I also agree that it's hard to estimate the dollar cost or benefit of these things. But I think we do have to attempt to estimate it, since we have no other sensible way to decide how to allocate public funds. It's not even all that difficult to estimate, really. For example, every business does it, of necessity.

Can you estimate the dollar value of happiness?

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

#457

Post by Pamar »

jamil7 wrote: post #445
_cenw wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system simply doesn't have more capacity right now. Germany neglected or even removed their rail infrastructure, especially for the past 25 or so years, after privatization. These "subsidies" are a course correction. These investments also make it a real pain to use the system right now, because a lot of lines are closing months at a time and the alternatives are already overloaded. I'd rather have a car for the…

For people less familiar. Germany privatised its national rail company in the 90s but the federal government is the only shareholder. It’s a weird model that doesn’t make much sense. DB is a monopoly so the rules of competition don’t apply (and don’t work with railways anyway) it’s led to perverse cost cutting incentives and fat bonus programs for C level employees. Combine that with a conservative government’s auste…

Expat in Germany since 2014. (Also, I do not own a car).

I can confirm that Dbahn service was not so great from the start, and became noticeably worse after COVID.

I live in Rostock. 2 weeks ago I landed in Hamburg at 2:30pm and tried to return home by train. Distance is 185 km, and I arrived home at 10:00pm

Reasons: works on the line that forced us to go to Lubeck first, then take two more regional trains to reach Rostock. On top of that, one train from Lubeck to the next stop was so full that a hundred passenger could not get in (me included).

The next train was canceled.

Finally we got a (packed) train at around 8pm.

All "fine" except that this is the third time in the last 12 months that the same line undergoes maintenance forcing you to move to Lubeck first and adding 1 hour to your trip.

Rostock-Berlin: similar story. For three times in the last year there were some problems between Oranienburg and Berlin, forcing you to either travel around it with a 1 hour detour or to disembark in Oraniemburg and move to S-Bahn (sort like BART).

In other words: railways are overstressed and failing repeatedly causing massive delays; Oraniemburg is 40km from Berlin Central Station. I find it unconceivable that you have to repair the same short segment thrice in 12 months.

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

#458

Post by sooheon »

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're right, subsidies aren't enough. They should tax carbon, road use, and car ownership also.

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

#459

Post by Tade0 »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #378
jordanb wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's "we"? The public is mostly not made up of consultants and do not appreciate consultant logic being applied to everything. People would prefer to define values and then act on those values.

That isn't "consultant logic", that's the way the world works. Resources are finite. We can't do everything everyone wants to do, so we need some means of prioritizing which things we are to do. You can call names all you want, but this is an unavoidable reality of existence.

Here's an alternative proposition then: try those things and if there's demand - stick to them.

No need for estimations, especially that they're typically wildly off, as the world is too complicated to summarise it on a spreadsheet.

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

#460

Post by nkmnz »

Tade0 wrote: post #456
akoboldfrying wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the things you listed are examples of "other axes" that I listed as being valid objections. I also agree that it's hard to estimate the dollar cost or benefit of these things. But I think we do have to attempt to estimate it, since we have no other sensible way to decide how to allocate public funds. It's not even all that difficult to estimate, really. For example, every business does it, of necessity.

Can you estimate the dollar value of happiness?

Can you estimate the additional happiness brought by trains?
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