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Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

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Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#71

Post by micromacrofoot »

eigenspace wrote: post #70
micromacrofoot wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but wouldn't the whole system be cheaper if it were paid for by taxes? because at that point you don't have to maintain a point of sale? hundreds of fare boxes, communication systems, physical barriers, auditing, accounting, printing cards, employees to maintain and operate it all... you even save a little time it takes tapping a card to get people on the tax system is also progressive, so the people who are most cap…

No, it's not even close. Those fares don't cover the whole operation of the train system, but they actually go a long way to covering a very large chunk of it. The cost of operating the fare system is a rounding error relative to the sums of money talked about here.

ok, but hear me out

let's say the fare system costs $1 million to operate and maintain

and let's say the fare system collects $10 million in fares

couldn't you just collect $10 million in additional taxes, just add a "railway fare" line item, and save everyone the $1 million?

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#72

Post by ivanbakel »

euroderf wrote: post #44
comrade1234 wrote: post #9

Nice pass. Would be perfect for my wife and I since we don't commute for work. There is something similar here in Switzerland but not as good. Funny fact: there are cities here that have tried to make public transport free. But the constitution says public transport must have a "reasonable charge". It's obvious that law was created to not overcharge but the courts have ruled that it also means that there can't be no…

What's the largest-value coin in circulation ? Charge one of those. Drop a coin in the gumball machine, get a token.

Is this a knowing joke? Switzerland's largest (very much in both senses) coin is 5Fr, around 6 USD. Not a token amount by any means, though it wouldn't even cover most public transport journeys in cities.

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#73

Post by bluGill »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #69
rootusrootus wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in American suburbia and that's how I live. I can walk or bike whenever I feel like it, drive if it suits me. I sometimes wonder what the average European assumes American suburbia to be. Endless tract homes? Such places do exist, true. But that is far from universal.

Of course you can walk. But can you walk to your workplace, your kid’s nursery, your local bakery/supermarket, your doctor, your dentist, the pharmacy?

I bike to all of those. Only work is typically so far away that you need to drive, the rest exists in every suburb and is in bike distance.

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#74

Post by bluGill »

andrepd wrote: post #53
test1235 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

having a nominal charge would probably lead to less abuse of the system, and any contribution to the upkeep/maintenance would be welcome, I'd imagine

On the other hand, no charges mean you can get rid of a lot of cruft: no tickets, no gates/turnstiles, no machines, no payments, no paperwork thereof, no ticket inspectors, etc etc. So in fact having 0 charge is unequivocally better than having a residual charge. In other words: charge price = cost, or don't charge at all and get funded by public revenue.

In every city I know of, the fares for public transit more than pays for the cost of collecting. Also, in every city I'm aware of, even the ones with high transit ridership (Tokyo), there is lots of room for adding more transit and getting even more people on, but money is lacking to do that.

I'm also aware of no place where people who use transit to consider cost one of the major barriers to using it more. The barrier, even for the poorest people, is almost always not cause, but the service just doesn't meet their needs. Which is to say most transit systems need to raise their fares a little more and use that extra money to give people the service they actually want.

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#75

Post by eigenspace »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #71
eigenspace wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not even close. Those fares don't cover the whole operation of the train system, but they actually go a long way to covering a very large chunk of it. The cost of operating the fare system is a rounding error relative to the sums of money talked about here.

ok, but hear me out let's say the fare system costs $1 million to operate and maintain and let's say the fare system collects $10 million in fares couldn't you just collect $10 million in additional taxes, just add a "railway fare" line item, and save everyone the $1 million?

1) It's not a 10:1 ratio though, it's much more than that. These fare collection systems are very cheap relative to the money they bring in.

2) If there's sufficient money and will available to fund the transportation system to that level, then sure, that's great. But in most cases, I think it's better to just direct expansions in government train budgets towards expanding the network, not making it cheaper. Most people who drive cars don't drive because trains are expensive, they drive cars because there's no train at the time and place they want. Making trains cheaper doesn't address this problem.

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#76

Post by joe_mamba »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #69
rootusrootus wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in American suburbia and that's how I live. I can walk or bike whenever I feel like it, drive if it suits me. I sometimes wonder what the average European assumes American suburbia to be. Endless tract homes? Such places do exist, true. But that is far from universal.

Of course you can walk. But can you walk to your workplace, your kid’s nursery, your local bakery/supermarket, your doctor, your dentist, the pharmacy?

>But can you walk to your workplace

In most of my jobs in Europe(Austria specifically) I couldn't walk to my workplace because most tech companies in my current city put their offices in ugly concrete industrial techno parks outside the city where I don't want to live, meaning driving to work mostly as public transportation there is slow busses only every 30 minutes or one hour of biking. Similarly my GF needs to drive 40 minutes to work outside the city, to one of the few employers in her field. Not everyone lives and works in the city center to be able to walk to work.

So walking to work is such a weird and subjective metric since not all companies in everyone's' area of work will be clustered in your vicinity of your house unless you're lucky or you make active efforts to keep moving close to work which might be in undesirable areas for living.

>your doctor

My current one yeah, but she's terrible and to change her, the only one I found that accepts new patients is on the other side of town so no walking there either, unless I like walking for an hour each direction every time.

MY point is Europe can be highly spread out as well, with people and businesses fleeing inner cities due to space constraints and rent costs, leading to commute distances too long to walk economically. That's why you see traffic jams at highway ramps at rush hour. It's not like those people were too stupid to realize they could walk to work instead of driving if that was an option.

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#77

Post by joe_mamba »

netule wrote: post #38
usrnm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the Netherlands and have absolutely no need for this ticket. When I need to go somewhere, I just walk or bike there, never takes more than 20 minutes. I cannot even imagine living in American suburbia

I moved here from The Netherlands in 2004, and have now lived in Florida, California, and Mississippi and stayed for prolonged periods in many US cities for my job. I wouldn’t feel safe riding a bicycle anywhere here considering the speed of traffic, the size of the vehicles, and lack of dedicated biking infrastructure. It’s a completely different world when you share the road with angry F150 drivers blasting past yo…

[flagged]

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#78

Post by netule »

joe_mamba wrote: post #77
netule wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved here from The Netherlands in 2004, and have now lived in Florida, California, and Mississippi and stayed for prolonged periods in many US cities for my job. I wouldn’t feel safe riding a bicycle anywhere here considering the speed of traffic, the size of the vehicles, and lack of dedicated biking infrastructure. It’s a completely different world when you share the road with angry F150 drivers blasting past yo…

[flagged]

And? What's the gotcha you're implying?

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#79

Post by micromacrofoot »

eigenspace wrote: post #75
micromacrofoot wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok, but hear me out let's say the fare system costs $1 million to operate and maintain and let's say the fare system collects $10 million in fares couldn't you just collect $10 million in additional taxes, just add a "railway fare" line item, and save everyone the $1 million?

1) It's not a 10:1 ratio though, it's much more than that. These fare collection systems are very cheap relative to the money they bring in. 2) If there's sufficient money and will available to fund the transportation system to that level, then sure, that's great. But in most cases, I think it's better to just direct expansions in government train budgets towards expanding the network, not making it cheaper. Most peo…

> If there's sufficient money and will available to fund the transportation system to that level

there is! the system is already funded... people are just paying a portion of it out of pocket now and a bigger chunk out of taxes... the out of pocket part is really the same money but less efficient

Re: Dutch Railways offers unlimited off-peak train travel nationwide for €49/month

#80

Post by pfannkuchen »

netule wrote: post #14
muyuu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at that price, the British mind cannot comprehend such good a deal. An equivalent pass in the UK would be easily 10x that to even cover just a much smaller region than The Netherlands.

For sure. I currently live in the US (fairly rural) and I would kill to have my transportation-related costs reduced to about $150/mo. But where I live, I simply need to have a car to do any basic thing since the moment I step off my driveway, there aren’t even footpaths.

> I would kill to have my transportation-related costs reduced to about $150/mo

Lots of people have had their transportation-related costs reduced to $0 by killing! Just be sure to get caught or it won’t work.

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