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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

#561

Post by cdrini »

The 49 euro ticket is a phenomenally good deal. Normal transit tickets vary per city, but for example in Berlin it's 3.50 per trip. So if you take transit twice a day for 7 days, you already recoup the cost of the Deutschland ticket, which lasts the entire month! This makes it good even for tourists who stay for ~a week.

At 59, it's 9 days of two trips to recoup the cost -- still very worth it for someone living in Germany, but a bit more borderline for a tourist.

Compare with eg Toronto's monthly pass, which is $156. A single trip is $3.35, which comes out to 24 two-trip days to recoup the cost of the card. That's almost exactly the number of business days in a month. And that card's only for Toronto!

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

#562

Post by macbr »

Paradigma11 wrote: post #382
luckylion wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that moves the needle a lot unless you're making _everything_ fully automatic, i.e. including the infrastructure creation & maintenance and streamline that extremely well. If you take a ride from Hamburg to Berlin with the ICE, there's maybe 8 staff on board, 200-300 passengers, it takes ~2 hours and the average ticket price is 77€ according to some travel app. Even if you get rid of all 8 of them, the price…

Why would there be 8 staff on board? Isn't there typically one train driver and one attendant?

For some high speed routes there’s a limit on how many carriages one attendant can supervise (maybe to ensure timely evacuation?) so a 12 carriage ICE train needs 3 attendants to fully operate.

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

#563

Post by briandear »

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…

How many tons of CO2 are in 1 degree of global temperature? This idea that removing “a lot” is somehow “helping” just seems hand-wavy to me. If the goal is “reduce temperatures,” then what precisely is the goal number? And then, how much CO2 equals that? And how much is the cost per degree to reduce and what is the cost per degree to not reduce?

There is a lot of “modeling” but has anyone actually proven “reducing 8000 tons of carbon reduces temperatures by n degrees?” And is it beneficial to lower temperatures? Are there benefits to higher temperatures that haven’t been quantified?

Just seems like the plan is “spend whatever it takes forever” — when whatever it takes isn’t even quantifiable. Basically investing without ever knowing the return on the investment.

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

#564

Post by dgellow »

server_man3000 wrote: post #2

Didn’t this start as unlimited anywhere for 9 euros no strings attached? I LOVE the German transit system (although Denmark wins in cleanliness). However, Germany is a bit predatory with this new system. You can ONLY purchase this ticket as a subscription model. If you’re a tourist, you must cancel before the 10th of the month or you get auto rebilled. Additionally, there are so many apps that resell the ticket as so…

It’s not really made for tourists from outside the country, you already have special tickets for people who visit for a short time. It’s for the local population. The price hike is from 49€/month to 58€/month next year. It’s the opposite of predatory IMHO, you have it on your mobile app in a few tap and can cancel easily

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

#565

Post by chgs »

jajko wrote: post #491
SECProto wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funding road repairs, construction, and expansion from general tax revenues is similarly subsidizing a different mode of transit, and it's likely a much higher value than the 3b€ you mention (and likely more than overall railway sector subsidizing, tho I'm not familiar with Germany's budget). Also recognizing that other positive externalities exist, but pricing them at $0, seems silly.

German chancellor plans to put road repairs into 2% mandatory defense budget to meet NATO requirements, so not that much of a load to overall german budget. Not trying to detract discussion, just finding it hilarious that when facing a potentially existential threat from russians who repeatedly claim they will wipe them out, they will do just about anything rather than making their military into something a bit bette…

A strong German military with an ascendant far right party. What could possibly go wrong.

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

#566

Post by andrepd »

Happily2020 wrote: post #443
SECProto wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funding road repairs, construction, and expansion from general tax revenues is similarly subsidizing a different mode of transit, and it's likely a much higher value than the 3b€ you mention (and likely more than overall railway sector subsidizing, tho I'm not familiar with Germany's budget). Also recognizing that other positive externalities exist, but pricing them at $0, seems silly.

Not to mention subsidised parking spaces. Free and even paid street parking is highly subsidised by the city and by other tax payers. There's also the environmental cost of not having that land be a park or nature and instead have it contribute to being an urban heat island with all its asphalt.

Absolutely. Next time you see a free parking spot mentally calculate the rent of ~10m² on that part of the city to understand how much of a subsidy that is. Then multiply by 50 parking spots in a street. Then think how many thousands there are all over the city...

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

#567

Post by jahnu »

rawgabbit wrote: post #320
jahnu wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European here. Spent a week in NYC with a 9 month old. Traveled all over 4 of the 5 boroughs and never felt in the slightest threatened. The only major issue was the lack of elevators. Fortunately NYC people are really friendly and helped us with the stroller every time.

Maybe you came at the right time? https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-york-deploy-750-nationa... https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2024/05/02/new-tea...

It was back in 2013. Oh god… feels like only yesterday but it’s been 11 years :(

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

#568

Post by chgs »

withinboredom wrote: post #497
jona-f wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but we can look at the amount of misery, that is prevented by not using cars. Traffic jams, pollution, accidents, waste of resources,... The difference is so huge, we don't need to put a number on it. Public transport might be unpleasant for the individual, but is clearly very much better for everyone than using cars.

> Public transport might be unpleasant for the individual Where is this true?

When it’s overcrowded, typically caused by policies such as work from office.

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

#569

Post by dgellow »

pjmlp wrote: post #48
Glawen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany is a dense country with a developed rail network, you are never far from a train station. Bear in mind that this includes also city transportation, which makes it a great deal. My gripe with the ticket is that traveling with bikes in regional train became a gamble, you never know if you can get in as there is so many people inside already (and even more when the previous train got cancelled, which happens a l…

Yeah, but doesn't make the Bahn more punctual, or reduce those comute times from 3h down to the 1h that is possible by car, not having to jump across four connections, with related delays and dropped connections.

3h, that’s like Hamburg-Berlin, and would not be covered by the Deutschland ticket anyway

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

#570

Post by dingaling »

thrance wrote: post #310
londons_explore wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> requires an annual subsidy of around €3bn I suspect the key is to find ways to run railways cheaper. It has been a long time since railways were under severe cost competition encouraging people to look for efficiencies. I think the main one would be to find a way for railways to operate with no staff. Just like a typical road operates most of the time with no staff. That means you need to redesign everything that c…

Opening the railways to competition has utterly ruined the UK's rail network. Ticket price has skyrocketed while service quality has fallen. In the 30s, French rail companies begged and lobbied the government to nationalize them, so they could exit the burden that was maintaining a rail network. Rail just isn't profitable, but is vital to society, and will become even more so as gas becomes increasingly expensive/lac…

There is very little true competition on UK railways. Most services are run on Government-granted franchises which give a monopoly or at best a duopoly on specific routes.

There are a handful of open-access train operators who operate outside the franchises, but they can't just decide to compete on a route if that route is already covered by a franchise.

To create true competition, the infrastructure and stations would need to be taken into public ownership and the train operators would run whatever services they see fit.

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