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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

#751

Post by aleph_minus_one »

punchmesan wrote: post #749
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it differently: for example the fact that the US government spends a lot of money on military can in my opinion clearly be called a subsidy for the military-industrial complex.

So then if the government buys pens and reams of paper, then it's the government subsidizing office supply stores? But it's not a subsidy if a corporation spends money on the same supplies? My employer does business with the DoD and with private corporate entities. Both the government and the private sector spend the same money and receive the same products and services. I appreciate that you have a different perspec…

> So then if the government buys pens and reams of paper, then it's the government subsidizing office supply stores?

If the government is a particularly important customer: yes.

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

#752

Post by rstuart4133 »

eru wrote: post #673
PaulRobinson wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a fundamentally different model of the social contract to me. We're unlikely to ever agree. However... I believe that relying on individual purchasing power ("utility"), to improve the average quality of life is an experiment (often referred to as "Reganism" or "Thatcherism"), that after 40+ years of trialling has shown to be net negative to social mobility, overall net happiness and other factors important…

What social contract? That's a convenient fiction, but no one ever agreed to any social contract anywhere. My adopted home of Singapore goes a lot harder on private initiative than Thatcher and Reagan ever dreamed off. And thanks to that, and some other factors, they went from third world to first world (or arguably zeroth world) in less than a generation. > The core problem with free markets being used as a mechanis…

> What social contract? That's a convenient fiction, but no one ever agreed to any social contract anywhere. My adopted home of Singapore goes a lot harder on private initiative than Thatcher and Reagan ever dreamed off.

Do you chew gum when you are at home in Singapore? No, you don't, because it's illegal. Did you agree to that, were even you given a choice? No, of course not.

Singapore is more authoritarian than most liberal democracies. That means you do as your told. That's the social contract. If you disagree with the people in power to loudly, you got to rot in jail. https://www.smh.com.au/world/lee-kuan-yew-a-towering-figure-...

As it happens, Singapore got lucky. The people in charge are good at running a country efficiently. In particular, they didn't line their own pockets too aggressively - certainly not in a way that was out of line with liberal democracies. The Singapore it's an outlier compared to other authoritarian countries. Generally, once politicians eliminate the competition, they use their control to milk the economy for all they are worth.

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

#753

Post by iggldiggl »

addandsubtract wrote: post #343
barrkel wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars also have a huge subsidy in the form of roads

A more fitting complaint about cats would be the Pendlerpauschale, which is paid out to people driving to and from work in their car. It's a much larger sum than the €3b spent on the train ticket subsidy.

It used to be different, but these days that one is paid to everybody who commutes, no matter by which mode. And people who commute by public transport are actually slightly privileged, in that they can claim their actual ticket costs if that works out more advantageous, whereas everybody else is limited to the basic km-dependent allowance, even if their car commutes maybe actually costs more.

And while there are arguments to be had about negative incentives posed by it with regards to incentivising people to commute farther than necessary, the original basic principle is quite simple: Just as companies are mostly only taxed on their profits, so workers ought to pay their income tax only on the money made after deducting any work-related expenses.

And Germany hasn't solved the cost-of-housing problem, either, so a certain degree of commuting is unavoidable. In fact, recently the housing minister basically declared her defeat by announcing that her latest plan for dealing with that problem wasn't building more where people want to live and can make a living, it was subsidising people to move back to the countryside.

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

#754

Post by retinaros »

RandomThoughts3 wrote: post #746
finikytou wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in Paris (and pretty sure that applies to pretty much any big western city, new york for instance is worse in a few of the criterias ill reference) subway increase stress, frequent delays(if you have 2-3 train as part of your commute you will experience it daily), pollution down under is high, virus/covid transmission is high, pickpockets are everywhere if not worse, bedbug, pee smell, junkies. Id take a car any day.

The Paris metro is amongst the most frequented in the world and operates near peak capacity. You absolutely can’t compare it to anything in Germany. Germany doesn’t really have a city which can be compared to Paris. Berlin has the most populated urban area and it has less than half the population of the Paris one. The only similar city in Europe is London. Plus there is no bed bugs and pickpockets are an oddity outsi…

pickpockets an oddity? brother I took all the suburban trains you can think of, the paris subway on a regular basis ive seen people injecting their arms on the wagon, antisemitic attacks, stabbings, punching, people shit on the floor, drunks and pickpockets are a daily thing in paris in EVERY public transportation. some bus lines in non-touristic areas are even so infamous that everyday legions of comments tell stories of how people got robbed their phones or wallets. ill take a car any day and guess what? that is what every rich person including the city mayor will do once they ban outsiders from having car in the name of greenwashing. they will ban cars in paris for middle class and then have people that drive ubers coming from poor suburbs and exploit them to drive around while us commoners have to live through the criminal hell that is paris public transportation.

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

#755

Post by retinaros »

CydeWeys wrote: post #645
finikytou wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in Paris (and pretty sure that applies to pretty much any big western city, new york for instance is worse in a few of the criterias ill reference) subway increase stress, frequent delays(if you have 2-3 train as part of your commute you will experience it daily), pollution down under is high, virus/covid transmission is high, pickpockets are everywhere if not worse, bedbug, pee smell, junkies. Id take a car any day.

So I live in NYC, and constant honking and worrying about being run over by cars when I'm trying to cross the street contribute way more to my stress than the state of the subway in NYC. Driving, or being around vehicles driving, is incredibly stressful. Also, I was in Paris last year and I found your subway system more pleasant than ours. Methinks you doth complain too much.

I lived years in NYC and in Paris, it might be more pleasant on the touristic places and crime is definitrly less violent. for everything else it stays true and id take crossing the street and honking anyday versus having to deal with public transportation with all the drug addicts and violence that is in NYC subway. hell I was commuting walking 40 min morning 40 min night not to deal with subway

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

#756

Post by retinaros »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #603
finikytou wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you have free parking? cities are making money out of parking spots. a lot of money. so much than one would say they have an incentive to reduce parking space to increase price and reduce expenses

Cities and councils should not be making decisions based on how to raise revenue. They should be making decisions based on how to improve quality of life for residents. Parking should exist where public transport is not a viable option. Ideally the work to make public transport an option should be prioritised over the work to making parking exist. Cities and councils can make money from public transport too, it'll wo…

public transportation is not a viable option in the west. too much crime too many lenient judge. in asia it is top notch. because people are educated and this just works. once we fix this you can take our cars.

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

#757

Post by retinaros »

CydeWeys wrote: post #647
PaulRobinson wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities and councils should not be making decisions based on how to raise revenue. They should be making decisions based on how to improve quality of life for residents. Parking should exist where public transport is not a viable option. Ideally the work to make public transport an option should be prioritised over the work to making parking exist. Cities and councils can make money from public transport too, it'll wo…

> Cities and councils should not be making decisions based on how to raise revenue. ... although if they were, the price of parking would be way higher. The optimal price for parking is a time-and-day-dependent price set high enough that around 10% of spots everywhere in the city are free at any given time, so that people who need parking can generally find it conveniently nearby to where they're going.

parking costs over 200euros a day in Paris. the city also is on the board of private parking companies…. conflict of interest is high, corruption is also knocking at the door. greenwashing is the new criminal activity for suits

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

#758

Post by drawkward »

kortilla wrote: post #630
drawkward wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ths US military is not sustainable on its own... Or maybe, governments have programs that are funded by all to benefit all, because they are onlt beneficial when they are society-scale? 1/350,000,000th of the US army won't be very useful to any individual American on its own.

Yes, that is the argument for subsidies. What’s your point?

There seems to be, implict in the term "subsidy," the notion that it is government largesse. My notion is to rebut that pointing out we do not expect a positive ROI on most government expenditures.

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

#760

Post by greyw »

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…

So it is still a state enterprise in all but in name.

The swiss federal railyway has the exact same model (a company fully owned by the federal government) and it works very well.

Blaming the ownership model for the DB's woes is just wrong in my opinion. German railways have been chronically underfunded, overburdening the company with below cost ticket and the company has some perverse incentives with respect to rail maintenance and other things.

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