Millions Snap up New Germany-wide Public Transit Ticket - Slashdot

Posted by msmash

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  Most of the self-proclaimed climate solutions are meaningless exercises.
  This one, however, is a game-changing action, imho.

  • According to German media reports, the past "9 Euro" experiment caused significantly increased travels by public transport, but did not show a significant decrease of travel by car [tagesschau.de]. The subsidized tickets may help low-income groups to more mobility, and this primarily increases the number travels done in total. At the same time, the additional stress imposed on the stretched public transport infrastructure may also motivate people (who are currently paying higher prices to travel by public transport) to opt for commuting by car, in order to evade the adverse side effects of the public transport overload.

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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.

• except the destination was not desirable.
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    But unlike today, they ran on time...

• 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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    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

    • 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.

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        America could have the best public transport system in the world if there was political will to create it. But there isn't.

        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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    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.

• 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.

  • The long-distance trains are more like aircraft; they have assigned seating and lots of amenities (food service, Wi-Fi, power outlets etc). They're also way way more expensive (though still excellent value). You can still get from A to B using the regular "commuter" trains, it's just slower.

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      Long distance trains in Germany do not have assigned seats, you have to pay extra for that privilege. WLAN and power outlets on the other hand can be found in many regional services as well, depending on the contracts. The difference is something like 7h from Munich to Rostock (basically south end to north end) via ICE/IC (high speed rail service) and 12.6h using regional rail services, not counting risk of missed connection trains etc.

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      As an American I am so freaking jealous. If I want to go more than the next city over I'm dealing with our god-awful airline service or a long long long car drive.

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        That really just depends on where you live. There are a lot of areas where the infrastructure is robust enough. I don't have enough experience outside of where I live, but I would venture there is more availability at hand than most Americans realize. We just have too many loosely connected pockets, making it a bit harder to plan.

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        Almost any major city has a Greyhound (or regional equivalent) bus line going through, and older cities all have a train station from back in the day. Amtrack still operates passenger cars [amtrak.com], but if you're going cross country expect it to take a day of travel.
        
        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

          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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      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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        The main difference is the distance between stops. Long distance train stops are much further apart, allowing for higher speed and for shorter travel times. Bullet trains in Germany reach up to 300 kph (about 180 mph), and keeping that speed over some length of time, while regional trains typically max out at 130 kph (85 mph), and can't keep that speed for long, as they are approaching their next stop. In general, long distance trains take about half the time for the same distance, compared to regional trai

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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.

• 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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      As for the end of the paper tickets - is it really an issue?

      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 issue was never around which price is sustainable. Regional public transport is subsidized anyway, so the question always was on how much it is supposed to cost the taxpayer and not so much what price is the most available. Without the liberal party in power, we might actually have had a chance to just make regional public transport fully tax funded, like in Luxembourg. That would have allowed saving quite a bit of infrastructure cost and at the same time provided the motivation for shifting many incent

  • The price is extremely sustainable

    When you don't externalize costs. This will drastically reduce the amount of fuel being used in the country so the Germany is enforced to kowtow to Russia or do what America does and spend trillions fighting wars in the Middle East.
    
    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 exc

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    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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      OP is just repeating the same nonsense a lot of media here are publishing without fact checking. You can get the Deutschlandticket without a smartphone, it's just a more involved process.

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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.

• 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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    Here is a fish. Maybe educate yourself beyond Bild headlines.

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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.

• 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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    It's called In*t*er City:) and yes, they are not included. The main goal here was replacing and unifying the various existing subscriptions for regular users. In most places, even the smallest monthly ticket was way above 50EUR, i.e. in the big metropolitan areas like Hamburg, Berlin or Munich, you often payed in the area of 100-150 EUR per month. Being able to travel nation wide is just a nice extra. It is possible to go from Munich to the cost within a day (something like 13, 14 hours), but it is much fa