Millions Snap up New Germany-wide Public Transit Ticket (apnews.com) 56
Public transit companies in Germany say more than 3 million people have already snapped up a new ticket being launched Monday that allows them to use all local and regional trains, buses and metros across the country for 49 euros ($53.90) a month. From a report: The new Germany Ticket is intended to encourage people to ditch their cars in favor of more environmentally friendly forms of transportation. It follows on from an experimental 9-euro 'all you can ride' ticket that proved to be success last year, but which officials said wasn't financially viable. The new ticket is considered a revolution in Germany's fractured public transit system where dozens of regional companies offered myriad different fare options that baffled many travelers.
A bold climate action, finally! (Score:3)
Most of the self-proclaimed climate solutions are meaningless exercises.
This one, however, is a game-changing action, imho.
Not quite clear whether this causes less emissions (Score:5, Interesting)
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They made the error of introducing that ticket in the holiday season after many people were starved for holidays due to lock down.
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Well said. Like a lof of climate actions, people need to look at the actual emissions avoided by any given action.
It's like electric coffee makers. There was a study a while ago showing that coffee makers were 10 times more energy efficient nowadays than 40 years ago.
However, now almost every household has 1-2 of them, and people drink more coffee (at home). Which makes CO2 emissions related to coffee makers 10 times those of 40 years ago.
Always look at the big picture...
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Maybe it's Google Translate's fault, but that article seems to offer lots of contradictory information.
It says that around 25% of journeys made on public transport were extra journeys that would not have been made otherwise, but also claims that only about 3% of car journeys shifted to public transport, and additionally that traffic increased. While it's not impossible for all three to be true at once, it's clearly not as simple as the 9 Euro ticket made traffic worse.
Indeed, TFA states (translated to Engli
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My guess is the exact opposite. Most climate solutions involve producing more green electricity or stopping the burning of fossil fuels.
If the transport pass was implemented in Denmark, it would mostly shift people from bikes to buses.
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OK, densely populated and flat countries are the exception; everywhere else this IS a climate solution.
Would you agree?
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How are you going to get public transport working outside densely populated areas? Denmark is, by European standards, not particularly densely populated, and public transport is only competitive in the cities.
In general, cost is not the primary concern when picking how to commute, except for those with very low income. Travel time is the most important factor. In cities, congestion and lack of parking can make cars uncompetitive on travel time. Public transport can sometimes compete with bike speed, but pub
Back in the day German train rides were free (Score:1, Funny)
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But unlike today, they ran on time...
Very interesting indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
If something like this was offered to me where I live, I would sign up, even here in the US. I have been to Germany many times, and their transportation options are much much better. I can totally see the benefits to a country by switching govt. spending on road infrastructure to something like this. You get much more bang for your buck.
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If something like this was offered to me where I live, I would sign up, even here in the US. I have been to Germany many times, and their transportation options are much much better. I can totally see the benefits to a country by switching govt. spending on road infrastructure to something like this. You get much more bang for your buck.
I've used the German mass transit system many times, and I love it. I would also use such a system if it were available in my city.
The problem in the US is that current mass transit options in most cities (other than New York City and San Francisco) are not close to being practical. One has to be lucky to travel from and to a location within easy walking distance of a bus line (since very few cities have train lines -- here in Silicon Valley, the VTA train lines are a big joke and waste of money), and eve
Re:Very interesting indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Because US cities are already developed, installing practical train lines would be prohibitively expensive.
London is older and more developed than any city in the United States and they opened a new tube line just last year.
America could have the best public transport system in the world if there was political will to create it. But there isn't.
Re:Very interesting indeed (Score:5, Informative)
Detroit holds a lot of power. The car makers are basically the lobby group against public transit and have over the years been the ones that buy up transit lines to shut the down. GM was particularly well noted for buying up streetcar lines to shut them down in order to force people into cars.
The car manufacturers were also the ones to invent jay walking as a crime
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Yeah, the German car industry has no sway.
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The problem with introducing mass transit like rail to the US now in a big way is that our entire post war population boom took place during a period where we were not only not building new mass transit infrastructure but actually actively dismantling it. Now to reintroduce mass transit to the US we'd have to find a way to build it into every single community's down town and that is just not possible due to a lot of things ranging from cost to property rights.
Citing London's subway expansion is all well and
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Your post is bizarre, you quote things I never said then you just ignore everything I said about the impossibility of building things like rail up from scratch in the US and pretend that it's completely feasible with no supporting ideas on how it would even be possible.
You can't just magically drop rail into a city of 100,000 for instance. It has to go to a town or city's downtown to be useful to people meanwhile the roads aren't wide enough to tear up to lay track without removing them entirely which isn't
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...you just ignore everything I said about the impossibility of building things like rail up from scratch in the US and pretend that it's completely feasible with no supporting ideas on how it would even be possible.
All the supporting ideas for how it would be feasible in the US are available if you travel to almost any other country, because the reasons you cite for public transport not being possible are just reasons advanced for not doing it.
I understand though. Americans don't really travel, so you don't really ever see what's possible with good public transport, so you assume you don't want it or need it.
Yes, it costs a lot of money, but you live in the richest cou
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You can put them under ground, hint: subway, oh wait the brits call them underground, or not?
You also can put them on stilts, so a road is only blocked a short while around the area of current ongoing constructions.
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> cities (other than New York City and San Francisco)
Chicago, man, Chicago.
But other than that, yeah, public transport is mostly not a thing in most of North America. There are pretty good reasons for this, having mostly to do with population distribution patterns. The Midwest (apart from a relative handful of urban areas) is particularly unsuitable for passenger rail transport, because the number of stations you'd need, to be withi
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If something similar was setup in the US, selling extremely cheap tickets, it would be soon overfilled with piss, shit and the homeless because the US despite being the richest country in the world can't seem to provide basic care.
Something like this seems to work in countries that don't have similar issues.
Not all trains, unfortunately (Score:2)
From TFA:
"The Germany Ticket will be valid for almost all forms of public transport apart from long-distance intercity trains. Cross-country travel will still be possible using regional trains, significantly reducing costs for some people who used to pay hundreds of euros a month for their regular commutes."
Wish they'd explained the carve-out... but it's probably just politics.
Re: Not all trains, unfortunately (Score:4, Informative)
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Most people prefer their own car though. You're not on anyone else's schedule and if you need a vehicle at your destination, you've already got one. Depending on fuel prices and your own vehicles fuel economy, the cost might not be much cheaper for pu
Re: Not all trains, unfortunately (Score:2)
The car has advantages, but in many cases there just isnâ(TM)t a viable alternative, either because of under investment or lobbying against those alternatives.
Things are changing and it should be less about anti car and more about allowing viable alternatives.
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I've traveled cross country by Amtrak a few times. I have unpleasant memories of going to sleep in Kansas, and waking up still in Kansas!
I just hopped onto the Amtrak site and looked at routes from NYC to LA (i.e., cross country). Total transit time is anywhere from 67 to 105 hours - three to four days, and for roughly the cost of a business-class airfare that would do the same trip in 1/10th the time. Sigh.
The bulk of that route
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You can have freight rail with the occasional passenger train. That's the US. You can have passenger rail with the occasional freight train. That's Europe. You can't have both unless you build two rail systems.
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Long distance and regional trains are not that different. Only night trains with beds force you to have a reservation. It is just more common to have a reservation in long distance trains because the reservation is just a tiny fraction of what you pay for the ticket. New regional trains also have Wi-Fi and power outlets.
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This sounds a lot like Amtrak here in the US.
You've got Amtrak... then you've got Amtrak. They're separate and independent, but also "the same" - different rails, different lines, and lots of switching tracks and waiting with having to coordinate your trips independently across systems.
Good intentions but shitty execution (Score:2)
The politicians decided on a price for the ticket without performing any research on which price would be sustainable in the long term.
In contrast to the 9 Euro tickets sold last year the 49 Euro tickets are available only as subscription. The official terms are that you have to cancel the subscription 20 days before the end of a month, but luckily there are some vendors for the ticket that have better terms.
Starting next year it will become impossible to buy the tickets on paper. You are basically forced t
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...without performing any research on which price would be sustainable...
I'd think there are no data available for such research - it's too novel. It's a test (even if they don't admit it).
I personally applaud this programme.
As for the end of the paper tickets - is it really an issue? I for one am surprised how many various tickets have survived in paper form until these days...
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They could have performed a phone survey to ask how much people are willing to pay for the ticket.
They could have asked all transportation companies how much money they expect to need.
Instead we had politician A saying "We want a 29 Euro/month ticket", politician B saying "We want a 79 Euro/moth ticket", and politician C saying "We want a 365 Euro/year ticket"...
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the problem with the willingness-to-pay method is that it only works with standard products/services, or with imaginable changes. "What surcharge would be acceptable for you for saving x minutes on this route?" is an example of what perfectly works. In this case, however, you'd probably receive too incoherent responses. Probably, the results could be easily interpreted to justify any price in your 29-79 range :-)
Look, I'm the last one to applaud the politicians' method of "shooting into the forest" as we sa
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Well, it's become inevitable that electronic phone tickets become the default, and the post-Covid all-day pass bargain ticket that I use (in the US) is not available in paper form.
But paper tickets are easier and quicker to pull out of the pocket and show to the conductor, don't require you to have an up-to-date $600 or more phone, never run out of battery, don't need to phone home to work and don't stall or fail doing that as you're trying to s
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The price is extremely sustainable (Score:5, Insightful)
Public services don't need to pay for themselves directly. If it's something everybody wants and needs it's perfectly okay for a public service to operate at a loss and make up the difference in direct subsidies from taxes. When the economic output generated by doing this exceeds the cost it's perfectly sustainable and this is an extremely common thing for public services.
You've been taught to think of everything in terms of immediate short-term profit instead of long-term benefit to yourself and your community. That's on purpose it's something the car companies and others have done so that they could stick you with the raw deal and make you pay for their lavish lifestyles
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Starting next year it will become impossible to buy the tickets on paper. You are basically forced to carry an Android or iOS device around that recreates the signed 2D bar codes every few seconds for copy protection.
Very concerning if true. One shouldn't be required to carry a phone to ride the train. Not only that, but a phone with a specific OS, that is always charged. This might be easy for a commuter but is harder for e.g tourists or old peple.
It's also classic "cargo cult science." People seem to think that QR codes are "magic" rather than just some numbers and text, obfuscated so a human can't read them. So if the QR code fails, a human can't punch the numbers in manually. If the "magic" app doesn't work, what ha
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Paper tickets are allowed only until the end of the year and tickets on chip cards are sold only by very few regional transport companies that already used chip cards for other tickets. Most vendors require you to use a mobile app.
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See chapter 2.3 in https://www.kcd-nrw.de/fileadm... [kcd-nrw.de]
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How can it be proven that your ticket is fake, and not an error with the inspector's magic box?
WTF? If your ticket does not work, that is YOUR problem. Issue fine, move on.
The passenger can appeal afterwards.
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Perhaps you should read up what a QR code is.
Simplified:
"""
This ticket is valid from 1st of May till 31st of May.
All regional trains, except IRE in Bavaria.
Issued at "Train station X" (or via internet)
Ticked-ID: some-seemingly-random-apha-numeric-stuff-which-is-not-random-at-all
Signed: some-hash-code
"""
Convert the above into a QR code. It just contains the information above and nothing "random" at all.
In other words: the one who has it can print it, and use the print out.
That could be great... (Score:1)
But allow me a few questions first: Are delays of 59 minutes still normal? Do ACs still work as well in Summer as heating in Winter, i.e. not at all? Are they still selling more tickets than people fit on a train? Does it still take twice as long to get anywhere than it does by car, unless you have more than one connection, in which case add another hour per connection?
It's like a lot in Germany. Great in theory. Utterly crappy in implementation.
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So far it worked great every time I had to rely on German trains. But hey, I'm sure it's just bad luck on my part.
Only regional trains- (Score:2)
The IC and ICE (Inner-City and Inner City Express) are probably not included. You can still navigate long distances but you will be making a lot of stops and changing trains a ton, so like 2-3x longer journey.
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Similar thing happened in Lisbon area in Portugal. (Score:1)