Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail • Hacker News Board

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

#721

Post by geysersam » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 5:36 PM UTC

jjav wrote: post #713

geysersam wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone who don't own a car have significantly less access to roads than someone who do. Of course it's possible to compare the advantages and drawbacks of different modes of transport. No society can function without roads, but it's still a question of priorities.

> Everyone who don't own a car have significantly less access to roads than someone who do. Most weeks I spend more hours cycling on these roads than driving.

Imagine how much less maintenance cost your biking causes than driving a car.

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

#722

Post by slightwinder » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 5:37 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #287

k__ wrote: post #120

It's pretty awesome, but it gets more expensive all the time. First it started as 9€ ticket for 3 months. People loved it, and the government talked about doing a permanent 29€ ticket. But now we pay 49€ and it's already planned to become 59€. Really sad, as it isn't affordable for poor people anymore.

Doesn't Germany have an extremely large social safety net? Who are these poor people that don't have 49€ for a month of transportation, and how are they possibly surviving without that much money - given the cost of everything else in Germany?

> Doesn't Germany have an extremely large social safety net?

Yes, but people will still be greedy and complain about every little thing.

> Who are these poor people that don't have 49€ for a month of transportation, and how are they possibly surviving without that much money - given the cost of everything else in Germany?

Germany can actually be quite cheap on the basic goods. I mean, it's the country who invented the concept of discount-market and is now spreading Aldi&Lidl to the world. There are also many shops and programs for supporting poor people, selling stuff for lower prices or second hand, and such things. And of course this includes offering a lower price for the ticket.

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

#723

Post by immibis » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 5:39 PM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #254

lispm wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The DB app? Definitely was not an option for the people who did that. Yeah, it's in the app. > Paying before just isn't always practical, but I understand that such limitations are often a non-issue for locals. That's how it works. Typical here for local trains: there are no barriers in train and bus stations. One can just enter the train and bus without any ticket check. But you have to make sure that you have a t…

That's how it works. That's how it works in Germany. Everywhere else I just swipe my mobile and I am done.

German people have an understandable historical revulsion to the government tracking their every move.

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

#724

Post by iggldiggl » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 5:41 PM UTC

slightwinder wrote: post #707

insane_dreamer wrote: post #685

I don’t understand why, given that Germans are generally quite precise - German engineering and manufacturing is world-famous for a reason, why DBahn can’t get the trains to run on time. This isn’t Italy after all. The Swiss and Japanese manage to do it. Can someone explain?

It's the classical combo of poor budget and conflicting budgeting with aging infrastructure and bad management. DB was privatized 20, 30 years ago, but parts of the infrastructure is public property and managed by the state. So DB willingly let rot them until the state will start renewing, which does take ages of course. At the same time, DB also started saving significant money, because that's what private companies…

> At the same time, DB also started saving significant money, because that's what private companies are doing, so they removed parts of the infrastructure

As strongly encouraged by their regulators (the Bundesnetzagentur and the Eisenbahnbundesamt), though, too, because for a long time the main political mandate regarding the railways was mainly to save money.

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

#725

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 5:44 PM UTC

VancouverMan wrote: post #650

lolc wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure if you define terms in your own strict way you can write a long comment on how everybody else is using the term wrong. Why should people use your definition though?

That isn't "my definition". Left-wing ideologies inherently promote concepts like collectivist big government, high taxation, massive government spending, and government-controlled infrastructure. Right-wing ideologies, on the other hand, inherently promote individualism, minimal to no taxation, minimal to no government spending, and privately-controlled infrastructure. That's just the fundamental nature of a two-dim…

[deleted]

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

#726

Post by geysersam » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 5:45 PM UTC

thehappypm wrote: post #708

geysersam wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just compare the entire multi purpose road network of the US to a single rail company. That's just not a serious comparison. Besides, you didn't include the cost of the vehicles or the cost of fuel for the cars. I presume the number for Amtrak include all operating costs. The truth is that different modes of transport have different strengths and weaknesses. In densely urbanized areas trains and trams are t…

There are definitely places where rail is awesome, a great example is New York to DC. Better than driving or flying by a mile. But on a purely cost basis, rail is very expensive. It just more expensive for the government to build an operate rail than it is for them to build and operate roads. You’re right that part of it is because some of the cost is shouldered by the car owner. But, even in Europe, car ownership is…

> But on a purely cost basis, rail is very expensive

I'm not sure that's true, and I don't see any obvious reasons why that would be the case. Do you have a source to back that up?

Of course we need roads. But the question is how many and how big they need to be.

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

#727

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 5:49 PM UTC

insane_dreamer wrote: post #685

I don’t understand why, given that Germans are generally quite precise - German engineering and manufacturing is world-famous for a reason, why DBahn can’t get the trains to run on time. This isn’t Italy after all. The Swiss and Japanese manage to do it. Can someone explain?

Germans are generally quite precise, which can be both good and bad. It can mean that things are done correctly, but it can also mean that people waste endless time obsessing over how to exactly implement every minute detail of a rule.

Just to give you an example of the latter: a Vietnamese-German woman (a German citizen who speaks German natively) was recently in the news because the local authorities have refused to issue her baby a birth certificate for over 6 months.[0] When she went to get a birth certificate, the authorities told her that her last name, Le Nguyen - which already appears on all of her German documents - does not meet their standards. They refuse to issue a birth certificate for her baby until she changes her last name to something the German regulations allow.

To make the situation even more absurd, the problem is that the German regulations state that double family names do not exist in Vietnamese (surprise: they do).[1] If the mother had a French double name, it would be no problem.

The problem is not even the baby's last name - it has the father's last name. The problem is that the birth certificate has to list the mother and father, and the authorities refuse to write the mother's name.

Instead of just giving the mother a bit of leeway and issuing a birth certificate, the authorities insist on inflexibly following some completely incomprehensible interpretation of the regulations. Suddenly, after thirty-something years of living in Germany, this lady has to suddenly change her last name, and until she does that, her baby - a German citizen - has no official documentation and cannot receive any government benefits.

Repeat this daily across many aspects of daily life, and you can see how it would become a problem.

0. https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/berlin/rbb-keine-g...

1. https://www.rbb24.de/panorama/beitrag/2024/10/interview-berl...

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

#728

Post by iggldiggl » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 5:56 PM UTC

guelermus wrote: post #446

It was one of the most intelligent ( and rare) decision the government took. Off course, there are parties loosing money like car manufacturers and oil producers.

It's also a decision where the federal government tries to take the credit, but in case of any financial shortfalls, for now municipalities and counties (and as far as regional railways services are concerned, the states, too, to some extent) will be left holding the short end of the stick, because the federal and state revenue support for the reduced fare comes with a hard cap.

While currently even the federal government is subject to the so-called Schuldenbremse ("debt brake"), municipalities and counties are under much stronger legal obligations to balance their budgets, and in a lot of states, public transport is an entirely voluntary matter for municipalities to provide (and even where it isn't, the mandated minimum obligation probably won't entice anybody to take public transport if you don't have to), which starts mattering in a budget crunch.

Already the first major cities have threatened future service cuts. For now that may just be political posturing, but it's still not what you would want to hear in that context, and certainly doesn't serve to encourage people getting rid of their cars, either.

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

#729

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 5:57 PM UTC

VancouverMan wrote: post #650

lolc wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure if you define terms in your own strict way you can write a long comment on how everybody else is using the term wrong. Why should people use your definition though?

That isn't "my definition". Left-wing ideologies inherently promote concepts like collectivist big government, high taxation, massive government spending, and government-controlled infrastructure. Right-wing ideologies, on the other hand, inherently promote individualism, minimal to no taxation, minimal to no government spending, and privately-controlled infrastructure. That's just the fundamental nature of a two-dim…

> Left-wing ideologies inherently promote concepts like collectivist big government, high taxation, massive government spending, and government-controlled infrastructure.

Incorrect. Left-wing ideologies promote downward distribution of power from established elites; one particular subset of left-wing ideologies (socialism) promotes labor control of the means of production, and one particular subset of socialism promotes a situation in which the working class controls the state which then acts as the vehicle through which control of the means of production is exercised (but libertarian socialism, for instance, also exists.)

Right-wing ideologies instead promote systems which concentrate power in narrow elites; different varieties of right-wing ideology justify this based in various mixes kf views of inherent merit, whether based on sex/gender, race, individual bloodline, “revealed merit” in notionally competitive environments where capacity at time t is heavily influenced by success at t-1, or whatever else.

You are confusing the left-right axis with the libertarian-authoritarian axis, which is a different axis of ideological (or sometimes merely praxis) variation.

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

#730

Post by rakoo » Sun, Oct 13, 2024, 6:04 PM UTC

xienze wrote: post #503

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.

Aren’t roads necessary from a “last mile” perspective for like, all sorts of things a functioning country needs? Last time I checked trains don’t run directly from farms to grocery stores and so we need trucks and therefore roads in order to get food to consumers, among other things.

They're necessary because cities are built around the idea that everything must be done through a car, so roads become necessary. It's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The underlying discussion is all about urban planning and how we want societies to organize space.