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

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

#791

Post by jojobas »

xandrius wrote: post #646
jojobas wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you don't drive a car yourself you depend a lot on things delivered by road. Most of the road wear is done by trucks bringing you food, construction materials and whatever else. You can't exactly replenish your local grocery store by rail or cargo bike.

But we could definitely have 99% being done over rail and 1% by road.

Show your work.

Plenty of transportation is already done by rail. Even halving road delivery without degrading service is nigh impossible.

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

#792

Post by rtpg »

BlackLotus89 wrote: post #621
rtpg wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I.... I really don't feel like driving in a traffic jam is better than being in a train in anything except the most extreme cases of train crowding. I haven't experienced massive commuter driving but even the cases I've just been stuck in stop and go traffic for 30 minutes it felt worse than any train ride I've taken except for the few times I was in "I feel like I'm going to get crushed" levels of crowded. And like.…

> I don't know how you walk away from the 30 minute trip You never drove with the DB before I take it (die Bahn - German trains). You routinely have that a 30min trip takes multiple times of what it should. * train coming in late * no replacement * suddenly from another track * people taking their life * missing the follow train * having to wait because an ICE gets priority You don't know how many trips I had to canc…

I'm fortunate enough to have only taken trains in places where there's an understanding that people actually... really actually do need to get to where they're going.

If your network doesn't have any sort of resilliance to failure, not much to do really.

(Aside: for the longest time I was always a bit miffed at France's train network, because it's mostly "go to Paris"/"move away from Paris" and very few sideways connections. Germany's transit map has always looked more evenly spread out! But every German I know who tries to take train transport complains about this lack of resiliance and now I'm pretty convinced that the network is too thinly spread out)

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

#793

Post by caseyy »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #39

Well, of course, if we didn't have traffic ministers again and again, who do everything they can to make rail less attractive and road more attractive, then we could probably have a great system. But automobile lobby is so strong, they buy all the politicians in that role, probably even before they land in that role, so I guess normal people will have to keep suffering, so that those politicians can have a life of lu…

Quite many "normal people" also enjoy the freedom of the automobile. It has contributed significantly to the culture of autonomy, unity on large scales (beyond one's local town), and cosmopolitanism. Online, it is acceptable to be cynical about cars, but in the real world, among common people, this mindset is not that prevalent.

Even in European countries lauded for great public transport, people own and enjoy cars. Of course, there are benefits to public transport that the car cannot offer, such as efficiency at scale. But it's not so black-and-white. There are also benefits to car ownership that public transport cannot offer, such as independence.

One might say that Uber, car sharing companies, and shopping online are bridging the independence gap. To an extent, this is true. But not always. Particularly, not when the non-car-ownership option is much more expensive, and not when people’s needs demand a higher level of independence.

My point: much of this has more nuance than is opined online. Do not presume when speaking for “normal people”.

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

#794

Post by CydeWeys »

jjav wrote: post #700
CydeWeys wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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 OTOH, if there is always that much space available (and presumably there didn't used to be before the price hikes) then it is evidence that a lot of people have chosen to go elsewhere because parking became too expensive. Can the…

There's not that much free space available. It's a maximum of 10%. Almost everyone who was ever going to be able to go here is able to do so, they're just paying more for the privilege and they aren't wasting as much time driving around creating traffic trying to find parking.

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

#795

Post by lotsofpulp »

15155 wrote: post #775
dreadlordbone wrote: post #770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don't want that lifestyle. I live in the burbs with a big house and yard. We travel plenty and go to places that are dense/walkable but I love coming back home to my carbrained neighborhood with an HOA.

That's really too bad: your lifestyle does not support maximal economic output of the land you are using and tax dollars you're paying. HOA? Hah!- those shouldn't be allowed, neither should home ownership generally. You really need to live and raise your family in an apartment.. taxes should be raised enough that we can phase out private home ownership. Your children will attend a public school and understand and imp…

More like

“That's really too bad: your lifestyle is only possible by indebting future generations for your luxury today.”

That’s great for those who have ridden the economic momentum from high fertility rates before the 1970s, but not so fun for those being born now.

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

#796

Post by jmb99 »

rtpg wrote: post #609
lucumo wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> time on a train can be better spent than time in a car because one doesn’t need to pay as much attention, which could be a small improvement to many people’s lives. This is not really true on busy trains. I've commuted both on trains and in cars, and when comparing transportation methods near the saturation point, cars win when it comes to personal comfort. A traffic jam is no fun, but you can still sit, aren't jos…

I.... I really don't feel like driving in a traffic jam is better than being in a train in anything except the most extreme cases of train crowding. I haven't experienced massive commuter driving but even the cases I've just been stuck in stop and go traffic for 30 minutes it felt worse than any train ride I've taken except for the few times I was in "I feel like I'm going to get crushed" levels of crowded. And like.…

I want to preface this by saying that my favourite mode of transportation has been NS rail in the Netherlands, but that I do 99% of my travel (where I live, in Canada) by car since I live outside of the city.

>the cases I've just been stuck in stop and go traffic for 30 minutes it felt worse than any train ride I've taken except for the few times I was in "I feel like I'm going to get crushed" levels of crowded.

I would much rather sit in a seat that has been meticulously adjusted to fit my body perfectly, with climate controlled to the exact temperature I want, with music/audiobook/etc playing at the exact volume I want, with 0 encroachment on my personal space, than to sit on a crowded commuter train, where crowded == more or less every seat is taken, with some people likely standing. I don’t care if I have to be in stop and go traffic for a bit, I know how to drive smoothly (usually smoother than trains) and I have pretty good patience, so I just sit there and relax listening to music for a bit longer than normal.

Maybe if you drive a particularly barebones/uncomfortable car[0] I could see a train being preferable. Aside from that, I will take the car over the train for commuting pretty much every time. The exception is if the train is notably consistently faster, or if I’m somewhere like the Netherlands where cars are more of a general inconvenience.

[0] Or any modern non-luxury car, since every manufacturer has decided “sporty” sells so you need 20” wheels with rubber band tires and sports suspension on your commuter car. I would highly recommend driving something like a 1990s Buick Roadmaster or Chevrolet Caprice, or Lincoln Continental, or equivalent vehicle - we had figured out how to make commutes incredibly comfortable for little money 30 years ago, but it seems like pretty much everyone forgot.

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

#797

Post by jmb99 »

Zamiel_Snawley wrote: post #736
graemep wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not know about Germany, but most countries have taxes on car ownership and fuel, so you need to offset those against the expenditure on roads. Road construction and maintenance also benefits other road users - transport vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians and emergency vehicles etc.

The degradation of road surfaces is caused almost entirely by automobiles. Think of how often dedicated walking and cycling routes need to be repaved—almost never. Car owners only pay about half of the cost of road maintenance in the US[1]. [1] https://frontiergroup.org/resources/who-pays-roads/

> The degradation of road surfaces is caused almost entirely by automobiles.

This should read: The degradation of road surfaces is caused almost entirely by heavy trucks.

Road wear is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight. A fully loaded cement truck or transport truck is doing way more damage than a fully loaded box truck, which is doing much more damage than a Hummer EV, which is doing much more damage than a Tesla Model S or F150, which is doing more damage than a Nissan Micra or Mazda Miata. Here’s[0] a page with a neat chart showing relative comparisons. Note that it tops out at 18k lb trucks, which are ~1200x as damaging as something like a Prius; it doesn’t include fully loaded trucks, which can exceed 80k lbs in North America. The amount of damage to roads they do compared to average or lightweight cars is mind boggling.

[0] https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weigh...

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

#798

Post by The_Colonel »

pfdietz wrote: post #610
The_Colonel wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks like a strawman. Nobody advocates for replacing roads with rail, it's about complementing. > Rail provide cheap point-to-point transport, but only make sense between heavily populated centers Yes, so the idea is to build rail for those use cases (which is somewhat the case in Europe, but not in US).

In the US, we see many places where rail has been abandoned. In the place I live (upstate NY, Finger Lakes) there are multiple walking trails that were previously locations of rail lines, which shut down more than half a century ago. The rails themselves are long gone. In some places you can see where earth was moved and concrete structures were installed to allow drainage. Maintaining these lines made no sense with…

Yes, US had a more built-up rail system in the past. But it's naive to think it died because of fair economic competition.

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

#799

Post by geysersam »

thehappypm wrote: post #786
geysersam wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I gave data showing that the hundreds of billions of tax dollars spent on roads supports trillions of miles traveled, while billions of dollars spent on Amtrak (largest rail system in the US) leads to an order of magnitude less miles traveled

Yes but like I said the comparison is totally flawed since you counted all costs for Amtrak but only a subset of costs for car traffic.

If you are convinced roads+cars is an order of magnitude more efficient than rail, maybe you can explain what you think is the cause of that difference. Does rail require more land? Does it require more maintenance hours? Does it require more expensive materials? Does it require higher insurance fees? What's the reason?

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

#800

Post by valval »

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…

I love being made to forcibly pay for poor people’s transport.
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