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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

#841

Post by consteval »

Nullabillity wrote: post #678
6510 wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has secretly become unrealistic to have cars in a city, we still do it but more out of tradition. You wouldn't build parks (tho that would be nice) 1 parked car, the road next to it and the second side walk take about as much space as an apartment and we stack those one on top of the other. Something like this is quite hilarious if you think about it. https://www.alamy.com/parking-in-the-courtyard-of-high-rise-...…

You don't have to build it like that. Where I live now, the parking lot is effectively the basement under the apartment buildings and playground. You'd barely interact with it unless you're driving.

Well when you put it like that it sounds very economical!

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

#842

Post by consteval »

account42 wrote: post #836
consteval wrote: post #834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Normal people" are often short-sighted. They only know what they know. They're heavily advertised to, and they lack imagination. In the US people are dropping like flies from obesity and disease. But even their day-to-day quality of life is awful, because naturally they don't feel good. A portion of this is directly because of a pro-car culture. When you can't walk anywhere ever that has an effect. People in the US…

"Normal people" have been on overcrowded trains with spotty service. They know what putting someone else in charge of how, when and where they can travel inevitably turns out.

"Normal people" also know multiple people who have died in car accidents. They also struggle to walk up a flight of stairs and hate their lives.

Once again, you cannot trust what so-called "normal people" say. Particularly when there's political pressure at play. I'll say it again, but plenty of people would happily shoot themselves if they got to pull the trigger.

Hyper-individualism of the US, and the rest of the West to a lesser extent, is a cancer. We work hard every single day to ignore it's plagues. The extreme cognitive dissonance our citizens are forced to produce means they're not reliable narrators.

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

#843

Post by consteval »

carlosjobim wrote: post #830
bluGill wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of something is not related to what it is worth to life. In any case the real measure is what someone is willing to pay. I'm driving a 25 year old car because I choose to buy a more expensive house, and put my kids in various activities - as a result I don't have enough money left over to pay for a new car. I do have enough money to pay for a used car when the current one breaks and is unfixable, but I have…

A 25 year old car is still several orders of magnitude more complex than a house. Any man can build a house for himself and his family if he sets his mind to it. Almost no man can build an even semi-modern car. They depend on huge supply chains and thousands of specialized workers. The house is artificially made more expensive than the car, as a vehicle for inflationary money making.

The house is "made more expensive" because land and materials are scarce.

You can, right now, build your own house. And it won't be cheap if it's anywhere that matters.

Also we have standards and regulations. Turns out burning down entire cities because of some cost cutting sucks, so we did away with that.

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

#844

Post by consteval »

jjav wrote: post #704
CuriousCosmic wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. This is something Texas is having to come to terms with right now. Cars and roads only scale so much before you physically can't move more people fast enough even with more roads and more lanes. Rail scales way better. So Texas is pushing a high speed rail line that will allow people to commute 30-90min into a city from locations that currently are 1.5-3 hours away. And at that allow those people to commute to ci…

> Cars and roads only scale so much before you physically can't move more people fast enough even with more roads and more lanes. Rail scales way better. Before scaling people moving up so much, I'd question why encourage so much movement. Instead, let's encourage local areas which are walkable/cycleable that contain 95% of what people need. By eliminating the need for 95% of high-speed people moving (whether by car,…

> Instead, let's encourage local areas which are walkable/cycleable that contain 95% of what people need

The only way to achieve this is density. Urban areas.

When people want to live in big sprawling suburbs with nice homes, you just can't get this. It's not possible.

The problem is that you can make MUCH more money building huge homes than affordable housing. And people, being ultra-individualistic, believe they need the huge home as opposed to denser housing. So here we are.

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

#845

Post by weinzierl »

hagbard_c wrote: post #316
weinzierl wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're also quite forthcoming in paying back 25% to 50% of the ticket price when delayed more than 1 or 2 hours There is nothing forthcoming about that, they are required to to that by regulations. No bonus points for DB here whatsoever. which is a frequent occurrence on the longer trips That is something we can agree upon. reserve seats and sometimes actually choose which seats I want SNCF-Connects lets you specify…

> There is nothing forthcoming about that, they are required to to that by regulations. No bonus points for DB here whatsoever. The way they implemented this process makes it easy and quick to get compensation while other carriers - who are supposed to follow the same rules - make it quite a bit harder to get compensated. > SNCF-Connects lets you specify the exact seat configuration. You can choose single, double (wi…

"The way they implemented this process makes it easy and quick to get compensation while other carriers - who are supposed to follow the same rules - make it quite a bit harder to get compensated."

For the last compensation I tried to get it took Deutsche Bahn 15 days to send an automated acknowledgement that they had received my request. I took another 20 days until they processed it.

I would not call that quick, but was it easy? Here is the procedure for the form translated from their site:

Procedure in the digital application in the customer account:

To do this, first select the main ticket for your journey in your customer account and start the online application.

If you had no other disruptions (e.g. delay), enter "Delay of less than 60 minutes". In the next step, a new message box will appear with the following sentence: "I had additional expenses due to the delay | I was unable to use my reservation". Click on the appropriate box and follow the next steps.

Alternatively, you can also request a refund of the reservation fee in writing (informally). Please send your request to the following address:

DB Dialog GmbH Passenger Rights Service Center 60647 Frankfurt am Main Germany

Needless to say that the form had me fill in a lot of useless stuff they either don't need to know or should know already. And of course you can send paper...

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

#846

Post by consteval »

15155 wrote: post #771
thehappypm wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> rail station taking you from anywhere you want to go to anywhere else you wanna go unless you’re in an urban hub. The specific people pushing this form of development also want you to live in ultra-high-density housing in an urban center - that's the whole idea and eventuality of this type of development. You WILL raise your family in an apartment, they WILL ride a bicycle everywhere they aren't using mass transit.…

The idea isn't to "force" people to do anything, it's to stop PRIORITIZING those people.

Suburbs are on heavy welfare from city centers, who pretty much provide all the money. Roads are prioritized to such an insane degree that everyone suffers. The people you may identify with - low-density huge homeowners - don't realize it, but they're being heavily subsidized by everyone. Particularly those in denser areas.

People would like to live in denser areas and have it, you know, not suck ass. They would like to be able to go anywhere without 1 hour of traffic. They would like to be able to bike without risking their lives. That means SOME money given to urban sprawl and roads needs to be diverted to public transit. Boo hoo.

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

#847

Post by consteval »

kortilla wrote: post #624
Qwertious wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a valid debate back when travelling to the capitol took months by horse. Nowadays everyone uses services from other states on a daily basis, and possibly work in another state (with WFH) on a daily basis. It's pretty darn clear that the USA simply could not exist as a bunch of separate states anymore. And frankly, states are already giving up their representation in the current system. If you're not a swing st…

> And frankly, states are already giving up their representation in the current system. If you're not a swing state, you're irrelevant. You’re talking about presidential elections, which are a tiny slice of the picture. Wyoming has 2 senators and so does California. That’s huge for Wyoming. > It was a valid debate back when travelling to the capitol took months by horse. Nowadays everyone uses services from other sta…

> None of this is relevant because crossing states to work has been a thing since the founding of the country

Obviously not to the same degree.

The thing is if your business is multi-state, which is almost all of them, you need to comply to the lowest common denominator.

So no, states don't really have much of any autonomy. Companies these days are globalized and multi-national, let alone multi-state. That ship sailed.

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

#848

Post by consteval »

rsynnott wrote: post #229
ggernov wrote: post #203

The reason nobody uses public transit in America is it's always packed with transients or dangerous people. I took public transit all the time living in Melbourne since it was clean and silent nearly 98% of the time. Same in the Netherlands.

I was in San Francisco recently, and, okay, maybe San Francisco is special or something, but the public transport seemed basically fine? Insofar as it existed; coverage wasn’t great, but it didn’t seem particularly threatening where it existed.

If you ask some particular demographics about San Fran they'll tell you you'll get stabbed with a fentanyl coated super knife the second you step on the subway. And then they'll parade your body up and down the streets and dump you in the communal body bonfire.

Naturally, those people have never been to San Fran. They live in an ugly home in North Texas, where they commute 2 hours a day to their shitty office job and they know at least 5 people who have died in a car accident.

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

#849

Post by [deleted] »

consteval wrote: post #834
caseyy wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

"Normal people" are often short-sighted. They only know what they know. They're heavily advertised to, and they lack imagination. In the US people are dropping like flies from obesity and disease. But even their day-to-day quality of life is awful, because naturally they don't feel good. A portion of this is directly because of a pro-car culture. When you can't walk anywhere ever that has an effect. People in the US…

[deleted]

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

#850

Post by insane_dreamer »

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…

Makes sense. Is SBB also privatized, or is it state-owned?
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