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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

#61

Post by lispm »

pjmlp wrote: post #41
lispm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except this only helped the folks living close to big train station hubs Every city has public transport. There is a large density of public transport throughout the country: trains, local trains, underground trains, busses, ferries, ... The ticket is valid there, too.

There is a big difference between doing 1h with car, and 3h with public transport.

maybe 3 hours in the car and 1h with public transport.

if you are in the rushhour and a traffic jam (not an unusual problem), then the train will be faster. Plus one can work in the train or relax.

My regional train here 20km going into the city center is impossible to beat by car.

77.77% of the people live in cities. 55% live in cities with >20k people. Generally Germany is a decentralized country with a lot of regions with local center cities. There are 15 cities with >500k people. France has only four.

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

#62

Post by fuzzy2 »

iknowstuff wrote: post #53
elpocko wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everything seems to be stuck in paper based processes I want to buy a ticket every now and then. I want that process to be straight forward: cash money for one-time ticket. I don't want your app on my phone, I don't want a subscription, and I don't want to be tracked. Paper based offline processes forever, please.

lol you know websites exist right. what a luddite approach. Paper is expensive, wasteful, environmentally harmful, and time consuming.

Sure. And how do you pay? I mean, really. You're forced to create an account, then link a payment method (PayPal and/or Visa/Mastercard may or may not be supported, Apple Pay almost never is). Sometimes you also have to link a mobile phone number or the number is the account identifier.

How is that an alternative?

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

#63

Post by nonrandomstring »

weinzierl wrote: post #19
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…

"I LOVE the German transit system" I have some experience with the public transport systems in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Belgium. In my opinion Germany's is the worst. Everything seems to be stuck in paper based processes, only occasionally and very listlessly digitized. The tariffs (apart from the Deutschlandticket) are overly complicated and suffer heavily under the common balkanization. The DB Navi…

> Everything seems to be stuck in paper based processes,

It is for that reason I'd love it. Accessible, universal, sustainable, resilient technology!

I once got stuck in Nuremberg overnight. The ticket office was open all night and an official looked up all my options from memory and timetable books and wrote me a diagram with pen and paper that perfectly showed me how to get to my destination. I'll never forget that helpful clerk.

Not saying you can't have your apps, but systems that lose touch with reality and human involvement are part of the emerging problem.

For my mind the smartest ticket technology I ever saw was Hungarian and used on the Budapest transit system in the 1980s - some devious discrete mathematics that coded the journey stops, used status, and allowed routes all in a matrix of hole punches on a small paper ticket. The punches (that you had to use when getting on trains, buses and trams) were purely mechanical, and so was the validating machine used by inspectors/conductors to see if you had punched your ticket. Simply genius.

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

#64

Post by dietr1ch »

weinzierl wrote: post #19
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…

"I LOVE the German transit system" I have some experience with the public transport systems in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Belgium. In my opinion Germany's is the worst. Everything seems to be stuck in paper based processes, only occasionally and very listlessly digitized. The tariffs (apart from the Deutschlandticket) are overly complicated and suffer heavily under the common balkanization. The DB Navi…

As a tourist I agree, and the Deutschland Ticket App is Region locked, so you are bound to the complexity of the system, which seems unnecessary and way too expensive as opposed to the ticket locals get.

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

#65

Post by elpocko »

iknowstuff wrote: post #53
elpocko wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Everything seems to be stuck in paper based processes I want to buy a ticket every now and then. I want that process to be straight forward: cash money for one-time ticket. I don't want your app on my phone, I don't want a subscription, and I don't want to be tracked. Paper based offline processes forever, please.

lol you know websites exist right. what a luddite approach. Paper is expensive, wasteful, environmentally harmful, and time consuming.

I don't carry a phone around with me at all times. Phones are expensive, wasteful, socially and environmentally harmful, time consuming, and they erode our freedoms.

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

#66

Post by reducesuffering »

hilux wrote: post #50
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…

I'm a big fan of public transit, but it's not entirely "baffling" why the US lags European countries (and Japan) - the US is a MUCH larger country.

But the DC to Boston line isn't

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

#67

Post by onli »

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…

> If you’re a tourist, you must cancel before the 10th of the month or you get auto rebilled.

Just in case this is helpful to someone, you can buy the ticket from one of those different transport organizations you mentioned and avoid that time limit to cancel. The one to use for that is https://www.mopla.solutions/, it's a simple app (alternatively web site) that worked really well for me (no affiliation).

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

#68

Post by fuzzy2 »

WJW wrote: post #36
waveBidder wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the same reason omnivores are sometimes highly critical of veg*ns: there's a moral claim going on, so their identity/ moral standing is threatened.

Vegans? Veg[a..z1..9A..Z]ns? Are there any vegyns out there who object to being put on the meat/no-meat spectrum? Are you afraid HN will censure you if you spell out the complete word?

Really now. It's obviously veg.+ns: vegans and vegetarians.

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

#69

Post by Gravityloss »

weinzierl wrote: post #19
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…

"I LOVE the German transit system" I have some experience with the public transport systems in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Belgium. In my opinion Germany's is the worst. Everything seems to be stuck in paper based processes, only occasionally and very listlessly digitized. The tariffs (apart from the Deutschlandticket) are overly complicated and suffer heavily under the common balkanization. The DB Navi…

One fun experience, arriving in München and trying to buy ticket for the airport train online. The app requires your birthdate. The date selector starts from present and only allows to go back one month at a time. So if you're 40 years old, you would need to click 480 times... We bought paper tickets from a machine . Machines work well compared to other countries though.

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

#70

Post by currymj »

sadcherry wrote: post #32
oersted wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have the details, but every single time I have heard the mention of Deutsche Bahn in the last few years it has been accompanied by comments of how broken it has become, with constant delays and cancellations, to the point where for many people it is no longer a viable option for commute or for anything where you cannot risk to be up to several hours late. I guess it's all relative. If you come to rely on an e…

There is a big reporting bias though. You won't see in the news "of the 40,000 railway connections today, most were on time". You only read about some train having had an AC issue or the like. I have family in Germany and they never go by train but tell me regularly about how bad the train has become. They have literally not been in one for 15+ years. But they watch the news every day.

among intercity trains run by Deutsche Bahn, the on-time rate hovers around 2/3. it's technically true that "most were on time", but one third being late is really terrible, especially since you often need to make a tight connection.

even if your family has no justifiable basis for believing what they do about DB, they happen to be correct by luck.

https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2023/en/combined-management-re...

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