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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

#881

Post by account42 »

consteval wrote: post #842
account42 wrote: post #836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 W…

> Once again, you cannot trust what so-called "normal people" say.

Yes you can. That's what a democracy means.

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

#882

Post by eru »

consteval wrote: post #840
eru wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When have you last been? They have recently improved the de jure treatment of gay people. (The de facto treatment hasn't changed.) I agree that the laws about homosexuality are weird, but they are also democratic: it's broadly in line with what the population wants as far as I can tell.

That's not what democratic means. If the people did not vote on them, it's not democratic, even if it appears as though they would hypothetically vote for it.

Huh? The people voted for the government that implemented the policy. Just like with every policy in any representative democracy anywhere around the world.

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

#883

Post by thirdsun »

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/

> Think of how often dedicated walking and cycling routes need to be repaved—almost never.

The condition of many german cycling paths would beg to differ.

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

#884

Post by shankr »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #642
shankr wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although you fall sick more often in winter when using public transportation.

Is that a rigorous statistical analysis or just your impression?

It was instrumental in spreading COVID[1]. Also found to be the case with other airborne diseases[2]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8552583/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6280530/

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

#885

Post by thirdsun »

Pamar wrote: post #457
jamil7 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Expat in Germany since 2014. (Also, I do not own a car). I can confirm that Dbahn service was not so great from the start, and became noticeably worse after COVID. I live in Rostock. 2 weeks ago I landed in Hamburg at 2:30pm and tried to return home by train. Distance is 185 km, and I arrived home at 10:00pm Reasons: works on the line that forced us to go to Lubeck first, then take two more regional trains to reach R…

> All "fine" except that this is the third time in the last 12 months that the same line undergoes maintenance forcing you to move to Lubeck first and adding 1 hour to your trip.

And there are even longer interruptions scheduled for the RE1 between Rostock and Hamburg in 2025. As someone who strongly prefers bikes and trains it forces me to commute by car. It's a disaster.

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

#886

Post by sideshowb »

PaulHoule wrote: post #672
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…

Practically in a city like Ithaca NY there are stores like Wal-Mart that have oceans of free parking about a mile from the Ithaca Commons which is a pedestrian mall surrounded by parking meters and concrete corkscrews that cost about $1 an hour. Years ago local shops could stamp your parking ticket and give you a few hour for buying something but the city decided it couldn’t afford it. That $1 isn’t much, but many be…

I don't think it's fair to consider Wal-Mart's parking free from a societal perspective. Presumably they pay for it and absorb the cost into your grocery bill.

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

#887

Post by sideshowb »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #670
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

They make money because they don't have to pay for the true value of the land. It's free to them. It's still a subsidy because they are charging less than the market value of the most valuable possible use.

This is a really good comment thread and got me thinking.

However here in the UK I'm not sure your point about virtual subsidy quite computes. Most of the free to use parking in valuable areas is street parking outside homes. Seeing as housing costs are just a big sponge that absorbs any surplus productivity, I suspect if people had to rent or buy those parking spaces to use them then you would see a corresponding drop in house prices/rents.

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

#888

Post by [deleted] »

jjav wrote: post #875
consteval wrote: post #868

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can also have suburbs that are walkable/cycleable You can, but not to the same degree. Because it's just a matter of distance and density. If you have a store and you have to service, say, 1,000 people to make it profitable you might have a store every .5 miles in the city. Maybe that then translates to 5 miles in the suburb. Well... it's not very easy to walk 5 miles. It's trivial to walk .5 miles. Stores are…

> You can, but not to the same degree. Because it's just a matter of distance and density. Agreed, but you don't actually need the same amount for the suburban demographic. For example where my friend lived in Manhattan (and I spent most weekends) we could walk to tons and tons of bars, multiple clubs, music venues and such, in addition to stores for food/medicine/etc. The sheer volume of that can't be replicated in…

[deleted]

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

#889

Post by consteval »

account42 wrote: post #881
consteval wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 W…

> Once again, you cannot trust what so-called "normal people" say. Yes you can. That's what a democracy means.

And there are real, genuine problems with direct democracies. Because people will always greatly favor the status-quo because it's less risky.

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

#890

Post by kjkjadksj »

jmyeet wrote: post #212

This last week we would've probably all seen the photos of the gridlock on I-75 as Tampa Bay residents fled Hurricane Milton. If you followed the story you know it eventually became almost impossible to evacuate. We should also know how much more efficient buses are on roads at moving people than individual cars are. You can fit ~60 people on a bus that takes up the space of ~2 cars. What should happen in these emerg…

Kind of a tidbit with those photos but I was expecting to see congestion and was monitoring google maps traffic layers for the central florida area two days and a day before milton (I forgot to check on the actual day it hit) and the highways were surprisingly bright green with a little tiny backup where the florida turnpike interchanges with the interstate. I guess if you wait till the last minute no matter what method you use to evacuate its going to get ugly.
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