9-Euro-Ticket(bahn.com)

875 pointsby _Microft4 tahun yang lalu585 comments

https://www.bahn.com/en/offers/regional/9-euro-ticket-en

597 comments

MandieD4 tahun yang lalu

Very important caveat for all of you who are thinking, “woo hoo, no need to buy that EuRail pass! Or to buy an expensive ICE ticket!”

These tickets are good for all “Nah- und Regionalverkehr,” explicitly excluding ICE, IC, EC (international) and long-distance busses (like the one between Munich and Zürich)

If the train number begins with RE or RB, you’re good, but of course, those are the slow ones that stop in every village along the way.

This is for the benefit of people who live here and are struggling with 2 EUR/liter fuel, not the kind of people who blithely paid 60 EUR to take the ICE. There does not appear to be any residency requirement, but remember, you’re not the target market for this (unless you live here and are struggling with fuel prices…)

jstummbillig4 tahun yang lalu

> If the train number begins with RE or RB, you’re good, but of course, those are the slow ones that stop in every village along the way.

Well, that is not exactly true now, is it. REs do actually skip the vast majority of "villages" and are far from being the slow ones, comparatively.

Anyway, for comparisons sake here is some Hamburg -> Berlin options:

- By car (with low traffic, according to GMaps): 3h20

- Regional Trains (the ones you can use with 9-eur-ticket): 4h10, including 1-3 train changes depending on connection

- All trains: 1h50 with no change

Given that going by car will be considerably more expensive than a regional ticket (even the none-9-eur version) I would say that +1h might be a reasonable trade-off for a lot of people.

IMTDb4 tahun yang lalu

This is assuming that your trip starts and stops exactly next to the train station and that there is a non-delayed train available precisely at the right time. In practice that's not the case and those time add up quickly.

Car trip will look like:

  1. Travel from start to location (3:20)
  2. Find parking (0:5)
  3. Walk from parking to location (0:10)

Total time of 3:35

Your train trip will look like:

  1. Go from start to train station (0:20)
  2. Wait for train (0:10)
  3. Train to Berlin (1:50)
  4. Train station to location (0:20)
  5. Wait at location because there was no better train (1:00)

Total time of 3:40.

It stil might be worth it to use the train, as you can work/read in the train which you can't do in a car.

But for the train to be working it needs planets to be aligned: start location must be within reasonable distance to train station; end location must be within reasonable distance to train station; train travel speed is significantly faster than cars; train schedule is aligned with desired arrival time. If any of these conditions are not met, the train option does not work

oneplane4 tahun yang lalu

I don't think anyone living in a country with reasonable public transport and uses it actually thinks that that is how it works.

I get the feeling that there might be a whole lot of "it sucks in my country so you probably have a bad experience too" replies here (not yours as it's quite a clear illustration of details people might miss), and I would almost immediately assume it'll be mostly people from the US who are car-bound for their transport needs.

The idea that you can life a nice and productive life and go places as you please without dring a car is very foreign to some people. Even the idea of switching it up and having some work commute by bike or bus seems like a 'poor people thing' to some people. It's weird.

cmarschner4 tahun yang lalu

That‘s the US perspective… which is kind of an outlier, on a global scale.

Pamar4 tahun yang lalu

I, too, have some questions about your 1:00 waiting due to "no better train being available"

I am familiar only with Italian and German trains (i.e. use these regularly, but occasionally I also used trains in/to Austria, Luxembourg, Hungary).

You seem to think that in order to go to Berlin by train someone living, say, in Rostock, first goes to the station then looks when the next available train departs.

In reality you can just use apps on your phone to get not only a timetable of departures but also find out how long it will take for you to get to the station using public transportation.

Example: this Sunday I go visit friends near Hamburg. I have booked a 7:08am train already (with iPhone) and on Sunday morning, depending when I am ready, I can walk to the station (25 mins) or look what bus to take and at what time from the nearest bus stop (5 mins from home).

codefreeordie4 tahun yang lalu

The parent's point is that if you actually wanted to get there at any time other than exactly when the 7:08a train arrives, say because you have an appointment at a set time, then you're going to end up having a wait somewhere along your journey because the train wasn't on your ideal schedule.

For example, if that train arrives at 10:08a, say, and the next train is the 9:09a which arrives at 12:09a, and you had an 11:00a appointment, you're going to wait 45 minutes at your destination because you couldn't arrive closer to the target time.

logifail4 tahun yang lalu

> The parent's point is that if you actually wanted to get there at any time other than exactly when the 7:08a train arrives, say because you have an appointment at a set time, then you're going to end up having a wait somewhere along your journey because the train wasn't on your ideal schedule.

If you're travelling a significant distance by car for an appointment at a fixed time, don't you have to allow extra time for traffic?

(Depending on just how much traffic there might be) if the roads are "normal" you might well end up arriving at the destination 30 mins or even 45 mins early?

tgsovlerkhgsel4 tahun yang lalu

> If you're travelling a significant distance by car for an appointment at a fixed time, don't you have to allow extra time for traffic?

Yes, but once we start going down that road you're taking the 5:08 train. I don't think the variance with German trains is lower than with roads.

earthnail4 tahun yang lalu

In fact the variance for that very example - Hamburg Berlin - is much higher by car. Finding a parking spot in Berlin can be very tough, and you end up cruising around the neighbourhood for 10-20 minutes. Add another 10 minute walk from the parking spot to your destination.

Traffic can vary, too, and you want to allow significant padding for traffic jams. If I drive from Hamburg to Berlin I’d start 3:30h before my appointment at the destination. With the train, 3h is probably realistic, although there is variance as the train only goes once per hour.

It’s more extreme on the distance Berlin Munich, where taking the train is vastly faster. At night you can max out your car and drive an average speed of 200km/h down the Autobahn (although it’s extremely tiring to do that for hours), and then you can make the distance in 4h by car. During the day, 6:30-7:30h is more realistic. The train takes 3:45; add to that an hour for public transport on both sides.

It’s different when you don’t go to the big cities. You can take the train from Munich to a ski resort in Austria, but it will take twice as long as the car, and you need a cab for the last few kilometres. But nothing beats the train when travelling between large cities in Germany (not even flying, unless you have a private jet).

codefreeordie4 tahun yang lalu

Yeah, if I was going far, I'd allow extra time, for sure.

I don't actually live in Germany, so I don't really know how frequent these trains run.

I have really only one example, where I missed a train from Frankfurt to Bingen, and had to pay a fortune for a cab ride because the next train was 3h later and I'd miss my planned day.

But if that's a common frequency, the train can work out to be inconvenient, because you will have only a very few times you can plan on without building in lots of waiting.

If you're going a far distance with an hourly service, it's probably convenient enough for most things, provided you never miss a train.

Pamar4 tahun yang lalu

While if you use a car you are at the mercy of "baustelle" (roadworks) and constantly risk to have slowdowns (e.g entering a major city at critical times).

Until we have Star Trek teleports no single method of travel is "absolutely best". But dismissing trains altogether because they do not run at your own convenience looks a bit of a strawman to me.

I do not own s car anymore, but when it is really the best option I rent one. But I also check first if a bus or train gives me reasonable guarantees to reach my destination in time (if they do, they are also way cheaper, especially since COVID, at least here).

sokoloff4 tahun yang lalu

I don’t see the accounting for the quantized arrival times imposed by a set schedule over the chosen times availed by a private car to be “dismissing trains [or airplanes] altogether“ but rather to be applying an appropriate factor to the door-to-door transit time.

Exact same situation as train proponents [correctly] pointing out the additional time needed for airline security theater or transit from city center to airport adding to the door-to-door time for airlines, making airliners slower than trains for some city center to city center trips.

Pamar4 tahun yang lalu

Framed like this it is surely a much better argument. But just applying a flat 1-hour "penalty" to train transit is a bit of a strawman: railway companies do their best to give you sane options, so that if you are, for example, a commuter, you can get at your destination before 8am.

I believe that the main difference in our viewpoinylts is this: people who drive a car tend to reason and plan as if the car is the most appropriate solution, and would not even think of checking fir alternatives unless special circumstances apply.

People who learned to rely on public transport do the opposite. As I wrote already: I do not own a car, but I can drive, so if trains or buses do not offer viable options I just rent one. (The problem is that post Covid rental cars prices hiked, at least here, so the convenience in being more flexible gets often trumped by higher costs).

sokoloff4 tahun yang lalu

Several years ago, I was traveling to Warsaw, Krakow, and Prague with another colleague from the US and one from Spain. It was interesting to observe both my US and Spanish colleague start looking for flights from Warsaw to Krakow and look at me sideways to suggest that we’d take the train.

We did, and it was vastly faster, cheaper, and more pleasant that flying, but it really showed the power of default thinking on people.

hesk4 tahun yang lalu

There is an ICE (high speed train) between Berlin and Hamburg every hour.

withinboredom4 tahun yang lalu

Yep. If you have an hour to kill, there’s always good street food, or just exploring a bit. It’s not a waste.

decafb4 tahun yang lalu

It's fun once or twice a week. If it happens almost daily (maybe even multiple times a day) it get's much less enjoyable and way harder to meaningful fill with work.

65104 tahun yang lalu

And if you have an every minute counts life style or career you can get work done while traveling.

withinboredom4 tahun yang lalu

This is the biggest thing to me. When I’m on a train, I can text, call, and even get some work done. When I’m driving, it’s actually quite dangerous to attempt those things; and not only for me, but the other people driving around me.

est314 tahun yang lalu

In theory you can, but reception is notoriously bad in german trains. They know about it though and are constantly looking for improvements, e.g. the change a few years ago to allow for free wifi, or developments of glass technology. Links in german.

https://www.golem.de/news/deutsche-bahn-wlan-im-ice-wird-kos...

https://www.golem.de/news/statt-repeater-bahn-holt-5g-durch-...

Pamar4 tahun yang lalu

Yeah, I can testify that cell coverage is pretty bad, at least in the northern parts. ICE usually offer free wifi and the signal is a bit better, but still not really comparable with what I get in the North of Italy, for example.

65104 tahun yang lalu

Dutch trains almost all have wifi, it isn't fast tho and then, on busy trains, you get to share it with 100 people which is rather hilarious. Most people have cellular plans now and coverage is better than one would want it to be.

edit: it is funny how youtube thinks the person on this IP address is waaaay into trains.

midasuni4 tahun yang lalu

Same in the U.K. a colleague drove me up the motorway a couple of days ago and I was in the passenger seat sshed into a server for the trip and didn’t have any issue with dropped connectivity.

Can’t do that on the train, there’s a ton of “not spots”, even excluding the tunnels.

It’s crazy the phone companies don’t have better coverage on the train line.

smlacy4 tahun yang lalu

I'm not sure what "Wait at location because there was no better train" means?

Are you massuming a 3h40m trip for a specific time-based appointment? I think the use case of this kind of train is more similar to a flight with one or more nights at destination, so that the specific arrival time is not that important.

IMTDb4 tahun yang lalu

> I think the use case of this kind of train is more similar to a flight with one or more nights at destination, so that the specific arrival time is not that important.

OP was explicitly comparing car and trains, not flight and trains.

If that's the case, then we are more in the context of a "city trip", and Hamburg -> Berlin might not be the most representative case. Something along the line of Hamburg -> Rome is more accurate as people usually like more change of scenery. Flight from Hamburg to Rome is 2:20 and train is 19 hours. Even accounting for airport wait time, the difference is ridiculous.

The issue for passenger transport with rails is that it's not good for small distances as cars have the advantage because of the added convince/flexibility, and for long distances, flight is better due to speed.

For freight, however, train is amazing as these extra hours don't matter too much and the reduction in emissions is massive. The issue is that there aren't that many dedicated cargo flights. Most cargo revenue come from transporting freight in the holds of passenger jets. So moving cargo from flights to trains does not lead to a direct reduction in CO2 emission since those planes are going to fly anyway.

SoftTalker4 tahun yang lalu

> Most cargo revenue come from transporting freight in the holds of passenger jets.

Is this really true? DHL, FedEx, and UPS (and Amazon?) all operate their own freight aircraft. There are also contract freight operators. Most major airports have an entire area that is exclusively for freight operations.

Yes some freight does go in the holds of passenger jets, but is it "most" or even close?

tyrfing4 tahun yang lalu

Roughly half of air freight is carried on passenger planes.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-10/air-freight-prices.ht...

inferiorhuman4 tahun yang lalu

Yes, and during the pandemic when passenger traffic cratered passenger airlines started putting additional cargo in the passenger cabin. China started cracking down on that recently though (unsure why). Freight is generally far more profitable than passengers.

hef198984 tahun yang lalu

And usually freight doesn't complain. Much unlike the self-loading variaty, aka passengers.

llampx4 tahun yang lalu

This comparison (Hamburg to Rome) is silly. The thread is about the 9€ ticket, which is only valid on regional trains in Germany and the point is to save money for consumers and save the environment by replacing car journeys with train journeys. Bringing in a red herring like a cross-country trip helps no one.

gnatolf4 tahun yang lalu

OTOH, you make it seem like it's super easy to find (free?) parking anywhere near your destination, I'd guess the unknowns about that even out with the blanket assumption of '1 hour to get wherever you wanted to really be'.

ivan_gammel4 tahun yang lalu

Let’s say you have an appointment at location 15 minutes away from train station at 9:00 and your train arrives at 7:45. You will have to wait for 1 hour and probably spend this time unproductively and maybe even at extra cost (e.g. you choose to get a cup of coffee and a sandwich in a restaurant nearby).

LosWochosWeek4 tahun yang lalu

Yeah, if you plan your appointment at a place 300km away willy nilly without checking the train schedule and if you plan your car drive in a way that you dont plan for any congestions leaving Hamburg, on the Autobahn, entering Berlin (good luck!), then yeah: The car is more expensive, more tiring, and slower. But get this: Instead of having an hour you can spend at your destination to your liking, you get to use that extra hour driving your car! Congratulations!

Sorry but that has to be the most contrived and ridicilous statement I've ever read. And this is coming from someone -- me -- who owns two cars, lives in Berlin and practically never uses public transportation.

nottorp4 tahun yang lalu

I believe the OP who started this is not familiar with public transport travel.

ivan_gammel4 tahun yang lalu

In many cases you are absolutely right, the appointment times can be adjusted according to train schedule, destinations are nice places where you can find something to do in between etc. Public transportation in Germany in most cases is better than cars (I do not even have driving license for that reason - never needed it). Still, the calculation logic is right: when you travel somewhere to be there at certain time, you need to include some buffers in your planning, both for trains and for cars. Every 4th train in Germany arrives with delays and not every appointment can be planned for your convenience.

rurban4 tahun yang lalu

If I have an appointment, I'll rather take the train, be rested and have enough time in the train to prepare for the meeting. all the trains have wifi and power.

In Germany the trains are also faster than cars on the Autobahn, even if I theoretically could drive 180km/h. All my travels from Dresden to Berlin, Leipzig or Frankfurt are faster by train than by car. ICE only.

Now with this offer, the slow RE trains only, it's slower than by car, but still more attractive. Just if I have a meeting far outside a big town, and bad connections (say the bus only goes every 30min) and I have to walk 10min, I'll take the car. For my next travel to the Leipzig Kanupark I'll take the car, but all other business and leisure trips are by train. For the last 3 years already.

LargoLasskhyfv4 tahun yang lalu

Metronom from Hamburg to Bremen does 160kph in their DOSTOS on the so called "Rollbahn". Which count as RE/RB, so are usable with this €9 thing.

Short 3.5 minutes Docu:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOL0MZQiELI

Long Cab ride:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg608B6CgC4

Track: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanne-Eickel%E2%80%93Hamburg_r...

cjrp4 tahun yang lalu

If I was driving I'd aim to arrive pretty early too (random traffic happens).

usr11064 tahun yang lalu

> even at extra cost (e.g. you choose to get a cup of coffee and a sandwich in a restaurant nearby).

That's the pessimist's view. The optimist wanders around and randomly finds a place they would never have found otherwise. I mostly do the first. Sometimes I find something truly interesting. Sometimes not, but I don't think the unproductivity you mention has harmed me. (Yes, occasionally I absolutely have to hack something, so I search the first place where I can use my laptop. But I try to avoid that in all but the most familiar cities.)

midasuni4 tahun yang lalu

Why not take the train that leaves half an hour later?

ivan_gammel4 tahun yang lalu

1. Such train may not exist. 2. Train at more convenient time could be fully booked. 3. Train at more convenient time could be significantly more expensive.

Reason0774 tahun yang lalu

> "It stil might be worth it to use the train, as you can work/read in the train which you can't do in a car."

Also, at €9 for a ticket that lasts a month, you're going to save an awful lot of money compared to taking the car.

dathinab4 tahun yang lalu

Yes I mean a 4-bundle of "single one direction" tickets in Berlin (limited to inside of Berlin, not even including the Airport) costs 9.40...

A Uber/Taxi also easily costs more then 9€ even for short distances.

yifanl4 tahun yang lalu

Yes, but, for the tourists who dont know, they dont actually check you used a ticket every trip ;)

Source: just came back from a week long trip to Berlin and I still have 2/4 tickets unused.

dathinab4 tahun yang lalu

Yes but if they catch you it cost like 60€ or so and legally counts as uh trespassing I think not that the BVG will bother to sue or anything.

So for locals it's still a grate deal.

And the tickets show how long they have been active, so activating them when you see they check might not pass at all (depending on the person checking, the often let it pass anyway).

Reason0774 tahun yang lalu

They're not so lenient if you're black, apparently.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/22/in-no-city-hav...

dathinab4 tahun yang lalu

I can't juge this.

But I have seen multiple cases of Ticket controlling sub-contractors acting out of line against Berlin citizens you could describe of "looking German" ("looking German" from the POV of a potential racist person, not mine POV).

I also have seen people acting out of line against the ticket controlling sub-contractors, including in the way the contractors claimed the black person did. But also worse. Like to a point where I was surprised the contractor kept calm and half expected needing to step in. Because many people would have lost it if "insulted" to that degree.

The increased tension between contractors and citizens in recent was the reason they changed their policy recently (for some time? still ongoing? idk.) to no longer have the subcontractors wear civil clothes even through it means they will miss more people without tickets. I also have seen more security people (which job does not include controlling tickets, luckily this is kept separate).

llampx4 tahun yang lalu

Germany is a relatively high-trust based society, so in Berlin you don't have turnstiles like other cities. However if you are caught riding without a ticket, the fine is 60€ for the first 2 offences and goes up after that.

nautilius4 tahun yang lalu

This is assuming that your car trip starts and stops conveniently with available parking right at the point of departure and parking at the point of arrival, and that there is non-delayed traffic flow precisely at the right time. In practice that's not the case and those time add up quickly. This is also assuming that with a car you never have surplus times, such as filling up gas, taking breaks from driving yourself, and let's not forget about maintenance, while we're at it.

Don't get me wrong, I often prefer the car, but that post is comically one-sided.

Beltiras4 tahun yang lalu

Finding parking is hilariously underestimated for any metro area I've been to.

rawbot4 tahun yang lalu

Trying to find parking on the sidewalk can be impossible at times, but in most cities and towns in Germany, there's always a private parking lot nearby (max. 10 minute walk to most stuff).

Worst case, like in the outskirts or smaller towns, you can just park in the parking lot of a big supermarket for 2 hours for free.

andi9994 tahun yang lalu

Surrender and find the cheapest parkhaus before you go.

s0rce4 tahun yang lalu

Also, I find parking exceedingly annoying, vastly worse than waiting around.

s0rce4 tahun yang lalu

Also, I find parking exceedingly annoying, vastly worse than waiting around.

jupp0r4 tahun yang lalu

You are making the assumption that it's one person traveling. If I imagine me traveling with my family, then the tradeoffs would look quite different:

1. There's only one driver in the car, so all other passengers could still work/read during the drive.

2. The cost is split. With three kids and two parents, the cost would be 45 EUR vs 50 EUR traveling with a somewhat fuel efficient car with an internal combustion engine. This is only fuel price and deprecation of the car is not accounted for and would be more.

3. The stress of switching trains multiple times with small kids, putting clothes on in the cold, making sure they don't bump into people, etc can totally negate any "you don't have to navigate traffic" benefits.

4. You usually don't travel from main railway station in city A to main railway station in city B. Getting to your actual destination can also be a slow and complicated affair with public transportation, especially in conjunction with 5.

5. Luggage can be problematic. If you are traveling with children, moving multiple heavy suitcases from one train to another while simultaneously taking care of kids can be a nightmare.

inferiorhuman4 tahun yang lalu

As someone who generally prefers public transit to driving (especially in a foreign country - a lot will depend on where you're traveling. I usually travel solo but think in general it would scale pretty well. Of course if your kids are poorly behaved then it'll be more of a challenge.

I think having some familiarity with the infrastructure can go a long way into making the trip easier. Knowing where platforms are, which stations are easier to transfer at, etc.

2 – Don't forget road tolls, parking, and surprise maintenance.

3 – The most consistent "pain point" I've seen with transferring is simply walking from platform to platform. I can only think of a handful of stations that I'd actually consider difficult (e.g. BART's Millbrae and Madrid's Atocha station).

4 – Again, parking. In most big cities you're not going to roll right up to your destination and park.

5 – My experience has been it's as difficult as you make it. Hell I saw someone bring a refrigerator on Muni. Some places like Japan have low cost courier services that entirely negate the need to bring luggage with you. Just drop it off with the courier at the airport and have it sent to the hotel or nearest 7-11. In other places you'll find luggage racks or areas on the trains. Alternatively, pack less stuff. If you're traveling by car and need to use a rooftop box don't forget the hefty fuel consumption penalty.

inglor_cz4 tahun yang lalu

I travel by train a lot here in the Czech Republic and I have racked over 1 million kilometres by rail in my lifetime.

My most consistent pain point when changing trains is the uncertainty about the delay and whether the connecting train will be waiting or not, how far is it going to be (it may be on a very distant platform and platform use isn't consistent even on the same railway station, much less in different regions) and whether I will have to run even with a heavy baggage and/or pain in my knee (which I sometimes have).

Delayed direct train just means you'll be a bit later in your destination. Delayed train with a missed connection may mean 3 more hours in the railway station or even a necessity to stay overnight in a place you barely know.

inferiorhuman4 tahun yang lalu

Sure. Shit happens.

With rail, as usual, it depends. Connecting between bigger cities is easier, some countries make things particularly difficult. Most of my train experiences are on metro or commuter rail, most of the longer trips I've done were direct. German (DB) stations were generally easy to navigate and staff were universally dour, but travel itself was relatively painless. Berlin (Mitte) to Amsterdam airport at night? No problem. UK? You learn to just lean back and think of England. The Tube is great and relatively easy to route around closures, GWR is an expensive fucking shit show.

I've spent more time flying than doing long-distance rail trips and yeah delays happen which is why I pick connecting cities carefully. I'd much rather be stranded in New York than Atlanta or Houston.

But cars bring all sorts of uncertainties too. Let's say it starts snowing and you don't have chains (oops) or the roads are closed. Yep you're gonna get stuck for a while.

This past Wednesday I went out to what I always thought of as a semi-remote beach (about 25 miles away from home) to catch the sunset. After that was said and done my car wouldn't start. If I walked a mile back to the beach in the dark I might've been able to find a spotty signal and text for help. I decided to sleep in the car, and when the sun came up I walked ~6 miles to the nearest state park and then another mile or so to the ranger station. About half way there I got a signal for long enough to get cat pictures someone texted me the night prior, but for some reason my carrier decided to block outbound messages "Unable to send message - Message Blocking is active." The park wasn't open so I wandered around until I found someone who offered to give me a ride into the nearest town with a tow truck. A few hours later I was in the tow truck, on a two lane road, on my way home and traffic in the other direction was at a standstill. Someone had run their car off the road and judging by the number of cars waiting they'd been waiting for a while. I took that in stride but that would've been hell with kids. If I didn't know that area was low crime I would've had to schlep all my stuff into town.

littlecranky674 tahun yang lalu

Kids travel for free in Germany if under 14 years and travelling with either (grand)parent - even in long distance trains.

That said I agree with you, travelling with kids is more convenient if done by car.

coffeeblack4 tahun yang lalu

That’s what happens when ideological truth and real world truth collide.

ant6n4 tahun yang lalu

> 5. Wait at location because there was no better train (1:00)

Berlin-Hamburg has intercity trains approx every half hour, so on average this wait will be approx 15 minutes. Which could be filled with some useful activity, like some shopping… equivalent to going to the gas station for drivers.

consp4 tahun yang lalu

You should add at least one 15 min car stop. After an hour or two you are not focused anymore.

MandieD4 tahun yang lalu

Driving on Autobahn sections without speed restrictions, especially when I do let loose and go past 160 km/h, requires so much concentration that I usually turn the stereo off.

There’s an old joke that BMW engineers couldn’t understand why they should add a cup holder.

rawbot4 tahun yang lalu

Last BMW I carshared still didn't have a cup holder, so I guess the joke is still relevant.

CRConrad4 tahun yang lalu

Maybe it was just very cleverly and elegantly hidden? Saw some Doug de Muro review, I think it was of a BMW (or could have been some VW group brand), recently and he was all "I bet 90% of owners don't even know they have this cup holder here!"

anonyfox4 tahun yang lalu

Also remember we’re talking Autobahn here! Gmaps assumes upto 130kp/h… depending on your car and driving style you could drive 200kp/h++ (at least partially when there’s no speed limit)

-> I’d challenge the 3:20h driving time, would probably more like 2:30h in ideal conditions

Xylakant4 tahun yang lalu

Having travelled Hamburg-Berlin for more than two years: A 130 km/h average is very optimistic on that route unless you travel in the middle of the night. Large distances are speed limited to less and large chunks are 2 lanes with lots of traffic. Not to speak of construction sites and traffic jams.

I usually took the train and would constantly beat my colleagues taking the car significantly (1-2 hours)

x3ro4 tahun yang lalu

I’ve driven this route many times, and it’s quite unrealistic to expect you would ever get much higher than 140km/h on average, except during the night from 00:00 to 06:00 or so. Since it’s mostly 2 lanes, you’ll almost always have people slowing you down to about 120-130.

jupp0r4 tahun yang lalu

The ability to do that will be highly traffic dependent. In practice, driving that fast when possible doesn't shave more than a few minutes time off the overall travel duration from my own experience.

hef198984 tahun yang lalu

Jep, one minor traffic jam and all the cars you passed at 200 kmh catch up to you. As you do with all those that passed you at 250 kmh. I have that experience multiple times a week. Generally driving at around 130 kmh seems to be a sweet spot, and is by the way the recommended speed on the German Autobahn. It is also much more relaxed. Not that driving fast isn't fun, it is, but going fast in straight lane is among the easiest things to do.

LargoLasskhyfv4 tahun yang lalu

Additionally: not coupled to a fixed train connection, but no seat reservation either. Could also use the Metronome from Hamburg to Bremen/Hannover/Uelzen, and go to Dortmund/Duisburg/Düsseldorf/Cologne/Bonn/Aachen via Münster/Osnabrück in the morning, using whichever REs are available. And doing whatever there. Though I'd be wary of the way back during the evenings, then you could be stranded for a few hours in the middle of nowhere. I remember a trip like this, initially from Dortmund to Berlin, starting around 23:00, having to switch in Hannover. Would have been stranded in Stendal around 02:30 to something like 4:30 or 5:00. Uncool. Just made it to Hamburg instead :-)

Anyway, it remains to be seen how that develops. I'm expecting overload. Especially in times of Covid, I'd be (still) wary to use it.

/me sings: I wan't to ride my bicycle, baaaicycle, baaaaicycle!

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

Actually, the Hamburg-Berlin IRE should be covered by this ticket as well, which requires no changes at all.

germanier4 tahun yang lalu

That train isn't running since 2020 and last December they have announced that won't be coming back for the foreseeable future.

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

Really? Oh no :( I never got a chance to take it, from what I heard it was a fun experience.

usr11064 tahun yang lalu

IRE trains are extremely rare. They have never been a regular product, but results of local political bargaining after the popular IR trains were discontinued ages ago.

april_224 tahun yang lalu

There is a RE from Hamburg to Berlin?

end0r4 tahun yang lalu

No, RE stands for 'Regional Express'. There is RE between Hamburg and Bargteheide for example, but Berlin is too far away. REs are rather for commuters from nearby towns.

dathinab4 tahun yang lalu

No you have to switch trains at least once.

Also the travel takes ~4h15m (RE->RE) instead of ~1h50m (ICE).

If your traveling at a time where the RE is not over crowded and you can spend the time well it's okay. If not, especially if the train is overcrowded in parts of the travel and it's really hot it's shit.

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

There used to be an IRE, which stands for inter-regio-express. But apparently it was discontinued during covid.

virtualritz4 tahun yang lalu

There is also FlixTrain for e.g. Hamburg—Berlin (or vice versa) which is demand-priced.

And includes a reserved seat.

I went for 4.99€ last month – twice (taking early morning trains).

llampx4 tahun yang lalu

I thought you have to book a seat separately on Flixtrain, at least when I looked a couple of days ago to compare to the DB train.

virtualritz4 tahun yang lalu

On FlixTrain you can book a seat separately if you want a specific seat. Otherwise you get an assigned seat included with the ticket for no extra charge.

I.e. unlike DB there are no overcrowded FlixTrains where people have to sit on floors or stand. FlixTrains have a maximum occupancy dictated by number of seats.

jansan4 tahun yang lalu

Of course, as with all train connections, you have to add the time to get to/from the station and some buffer.

lucioperca4 tahun yang lalu

As usual in big cities you need to add the time for walking to your car and for finding a parking space in the end.

newaccount744 tahun yang lalu

And add 30 minutes that you are stuck in downtown traffic because your meeting starts at an inconvenient time.

I can't speak for all of Europe, but here in Austria trains, trams, and subways are way more predictable than taking the car. Sure, sometimes there are delays, but 99% of the time you get to your destination on schedule. When you drive you always have the risk of random delays due to traffic.

inglor_cz4 tahun yang lalu

Hello, southern neighbor. Czech railways were never great when it came to punctuality, but this year takes the cake, with several big works on the main railway arteries taking place concurrently.

A delay of an hour is pretty ordinary and, in the last timetable, they stretched the journey times almost back to the 1980s levels, in order to have at least some semblance of regularity.

We need some high speed rail like hell, there just isn't enough tracks to carry our admittedly massive rail traffic. Any irregularity will throw everything out of the loop.

Unfortunately, NIMBYs and BANANAs are doing their best to prevent any development of anything anywhere ever. This is a movement that really fulfills the "the dose makes the poison" adage. In reasonable amounts, it can prevent highways from being built brutally across residential areas like in China. In current amounts, it can prevent you from building a detached house on your own property in a normal residential area full of other houses, because f-k you that's why, your lot has always been an overgrown ex-garden and will stay so until I die.

smcl4 tahun yang lalu

I would love it if we got high-speed rail but I cannot see it happening any time soon. One thing I can say is that rail travel here is insanely cheap and compared to UK and my experience has been that it's generally more punctual with more frequent services. I must admit though, I haven't travelled by rail a great deal this year (only a couple of local journeys like Brno->Hustopeče, and Brno->Adamov) so I haven't encountered the delays you've described, that sounds painful.

edit: actually I just looked up Czech high-speed rail and found a wikipedia page. Apparently there are a set of HSR routes already approved and planned out, with a more direct Prague-Brno line via Jihlava supposedly due to start in 2025. Any idea if this is realistic, or if it should be taken with a generous pinch of salt?

usr11064 tahun yang lalu

Deutsche Bahn is very far from 99% punctuality. Statistics were published only recently and they pointed down once again. But to be fair going by car is hardly better, you can get stuck more or less unexpectedly in most somewhat busy places.

newaccount744 tahun yang lalu

I can't really talk about DB, I rarely take the ICE.

But I also want to point out that I didn't say that public transit is 99% on time, I said I get to my destination on time 99% of the time. Often when a train/tram/subway is late I can just take a different one and still get to my destination on time.

If there is a delay on a long journey, I usually know hours in advance, and I can let people know I'm going to be late. But it's a very rare occurrence in my experience.

ivan_gammel4 tahun yang lalu

This week I had two business trips on ICE trains. It was exactly like in statistics (only 75% trains come on time), one of them delayed by 20 minutes just before departure due to "unauthorized people on the tracks". This was the 3rd incident with DB during my travels this year (before that I had my connection train from Frankfurt cancelled while I was on the 2 hour long flight there).

One of the delays that I experienced with DB couple years ago was related to a complete change of the train route that happened after departure (!). Some unlucky passengers had to leave at the next station and check how they can get to their destinations at Reisezentrum. Travel time was increased by 1 hour for me.

newaccount744 tahun yang lalu

As I said, as an Austrian my experience with DB is limited. All I can say is that public transport here in Austria in my experience is more reliable than taking the car.

It feels like every direction I want to go with my car, there's always construction, with detours, closed exits, or just a section of highway with a 60km/h limit and traffic jams, because they are adding another lane, or building a new bridge, or resurfacing the road, or adding noise protection, or something.

usr11064 tahun yang lalu

My only experience with ÖBB was a night train to Vienna. It arrived over 2 hours late. Because I continued to Czech I could not even use the refreshment voucher. To be fair the delay occured already in Germany, the train did not even leave the origin in Cologne in time. Afterwards I had to do the paper work work to get 50% or how much it was of my money back. Those who get stuck backed-up on the Autobahn don't get any money back.

Lot of the problems have been created by decades of prioritization of roads over rail. No suprise not everthing goes smoothly if you try to increase capacity on a long neglected system afterwards.

Some predict complete chaos caused by the 9 EUR ticket. Such a cheap price should result in dramatic of demand. But supply can't grow a whole lot on short notice.

Well, I am not in Germany. I'll read it from the news.

Scarblac4 tahun yang lalu

Our Dutch Scouts of age 15-17 also plan their own camps and do so on a shoestring budget, and it turns out that yes you can get from the Netherlands to the Czech Republic with all your camping gear using only like fifteen different German regional trains :-)

Toutouxc4 tahun yang lalu

Related: We're a Czech couple, currently planning our vacation in the Netherlands, and we too are on a very tight budget. I wanted so bad to get there by train and spend the week there riding Dutch trains all over the place, but man, the train journey there and back is just as long as a car trip (~10-12 hours) and costs at least twice as much. Looks like we'll be taking our 50 MPG car instead and since it will be there with us, also using it to get around the country. Sorry about the pollution.

belter4 tahun yang lalu

Now you know why so many still use the car in the Netherlands.

"Dutch public transport is the most expensive in Europe": https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-expat-news/dutch-pu...

gattilorenz4 tahun yang lalu

> Dutch public transport is the most expensive in Europe"

Yes. On the other hand, the comparison in frequency, punctuality and cleanliness between the cheap Italian regional trains and the average Dutch ones clearly favors, and by a large margin, The Netherlands. This might have an impact on the costs :)

BlargMcLarg4 tahun yang lalu

Don't think anyone disputes that. What they will say is how Tokyo still one-ups any major city in The Netherlands at a fraction of the price.

GP is still very much right that The Netherlands, while being better, isn't good enough yet for most people to get rid of cars.

>cleanliness

Eh.. they certainly aren't clean here.

simlan4 tahun yang lalu

The secret sauce is density and a dire need to get this right or congest that city beyond believe. But yes they do a good job.

rjsw4 tahun yang lalu

> Dutch public transport is the most expensive in Europe

Only because the UK is no longer in the EU.

belter4 tahun yang lalu

"Transport in the Netherlands is 35% more expensive than the European average, putting it top of the ranking, above Denmark and the UK, broadcaster RTL said. The figures were released in mid December and relate to 2017.

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/01/dutch-transport-servic...

AndyMcConachie4 tahun yang lalu

Have you considered long distance buses from something like Flixbus? I live in Rotterdam and see them coming into the central station from all over Europe.

notagoodidea4 tahun yang lalu

Any travel by Flixbus longer than 6 - 8h is really painful imho, they are not really long-distance bus. They are nice for cheap big city hopping. Of course a lot of people do use them for longer trips but honestly, I don't know anyone that arrive from a long distance bus rested tbh also.

tasuki4 tahun yang lalu

I'm Czech. When I lived in Amsterdam, my sister came to visit by Flixbus. She's used to all kinds of travel, but boy was she destroyed by that journey...

kzrdude4 tahun yang lalu

Some people can sleep on such buses. I for sure can't. So I always prefer to go by bus over daytime (wasting a day) instead of the night (ruining both the night and the next day).

pheelicks4 tahun yang lalu

Take the night train via Regensburg (book via cd.cz) and arrive rested. Goes every Thursday

tasuki4 tahun yang lalu

Night trains are great! Do you have to transfer in Regensburg? There used to be a direct Prague-Amsterdam night train going through Berlin. I met some weird people on it, great times :)

ant6n4 tahun yang lalu

There’s a startup (European sleeper) that wants to revive that route. Perhaps this fall.

gomox4 tahun yang lalu

My experience with a car in the Netherlands was MISERABLE with respect to parking, and generally dealing with having a car (parking is not only expensive but also very limited, and time-constrained, so your lovely parking spot it took you 45 minutes to find and is a 10 min walk from where you are staying is only good until 7:30 AM).

t0mas884 tahun yang lalu

This really depends on your frame of reference and where in the Netherlands you're going. Having worked in both London and Amsterdam I think there are many more public parking garage options in Amsterdam and non of those are time limited. Just expensive, but even that is relative since London and most bigger US cities are much more expensive to park in.

If you want low cost, park in a P+R garage outside the city and you get a free train/tram/metro ticket into the city.

NicoJuicy4 tahun yang lalu

Prague - Amsterdam by bus

13:30 hours - 120 €

Look up Flixbus. It's slow, but cheap.

Reason0774 tahun yang lalu

You could also buy this €9 ticket, go to a Czech border town, and take DB trains all the way to the Netherlands.

For example, you could do Decin (Czech) to Glanerbrug (Netherlands) in 12.5 hours with only 7 changes, all on RB/RE and S-Bahn trains.

Of course, that's still going to be a long journey, but you can break it up anywhere you want and stay at cheap hotels in random German towns along the way that you otherwise would never have considered visiting!

nixass4 tahun yang lalu

To spend 13.5hrs in Flixbus, dear god..

virtualritz4 tahun yang lalu

I regularly take long distance flights.

FlixBus seats, when reclined, are on par with economy seats in any airline I used. But FlixBus seats have considerable more legroom.

Also the bus takes breaks on journeys that last for that many hours.

Even some of the direct FlixBuses Berlin–Hamburg (3.5hs) take a 5min break at a petrol station somewhere in the middle of the journey.

tawm4 tahun yang lalu

Definitely take a shower right before departure. Your ass will thank you.

siva74 tahun yang lalu

13.5 hours in a flixbus could be considered torture

Toutouxc4 tahun yang lalu

Somehow that didn't occur to me. It's much cheaper than a train, but it's also a bit slower than a car and it costs roughly as much as the fuel (no wear and tear though). So a bit cheaper overall.

Buuut... I was on a school trip to the UK once where I spent 13 hours on a bus and I remember hating every second of it. Well, we'll consider it :)

RektBoy4 tahun yang lalu

(4)

april_224 tahun yang lalu

Especially for traveling across Germany, this ticket isn't quite useful, however I feel like it is marketed as "free traveling across Germany for a month" which isn't really the case. Am wondering how everything will play out next couple of months.

rob744 tahun yang lalu

Well, you can travel across Germany if you don't mind changing trains several times. And the "free traveling across Germany" means that one ticket is valid for all regional trains and all public transport in all Germany (as opposed to e.g. a ticket bought in Munich only being valid in the Munich region), which is quite a good offer anyway...

pflenker4 tahun yang lalu

It's not uncommon to travel through Germany using only the regional trains. There are several tickets tailored to this, like the "Quer durch's Land Ticket", which is valid for a full day.

I, for one, used to travel a lot through Germany using only the Wochenendticket, which is the predecessor of the "Quer durch's Land" - Ticket and was only valid on Saturday or Sunday.

llampx4 tahun yang lalu

Its really too bad that they got rid of the Schönes Wochenende ticket.

dathinab4 tahun yang lalu

But if you travel across Germany you still likely want to use public transportation at the place where you come from/go to. Especially in inner cities using car can be a problem, parking can be very limited and/or very expensive. The ticket is cheaper then a 4x-rabat-bundle of "one way single trip" tickets in Berlin and Berlin is by far not the most expensive city wrt. local public transportation.

So even then it's a good deal.

The "traveling across Germany" advertisement is less about "you want to get to place B as far as possible" but more about "you want to travel and see a lot of places eventually ending up at place B" something the DB believes students like to do (if you look at other ads or thinks like the "Quer durchs Land" ticket.

Anyway the ticket is mainly for people which use (or maybe now have to use) public transportation for daily usage (e.g. to/from work).

I.e. the people mostly profiting from it are the people which don't have a lot of money. Which is grate as they are also the people hardest hit by the increased costs of more or less everything.

Someone4 tahun yang lalu

If you’re not only doing it for getting from A to B but also for the journey and have time, this can be a great deal.

Even if you really want to get to B, it’s more adventurous and cheaper than taking a direct train.

I can easily see teenagers or pensioners use this to backpack through Germany for a month. Even if you don’t know whether you’ll like it, it’s cheap enough to give it a try.

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

DB always had weekend or summer tickets that were heavily discounted and only allowed regional trains. Especially young adults and teenagers use those every year, they’re perfect if you’ve got more time than money.

master-lincoln4 tahun yang lalu

> "free traveling across Germany for a month"

It's 3 months

tuukkah4 tahun yang lalu

From the linked page:

> The 9-Euro-Ticket is available in the period from 1 June 2022 to 31 August 2022.

> It is valid for one calendar month, from 00:00 on the 1st until 24:00 on the 30th/31st.

jeroen4 tahun yang lalu

No, it's 1 month (in a 3 month period):

> For 9 euros, you can travel throughout Germany on local/regional trains for a whole month in June, July or August.

a28002764 tahun yang lalu

You can buy one each month, though. Even of you just use it for metropolitan transit, it's super cheap. My monthly pass (reduced because it only valid after 9 am so commuters have to pay more) costs 75 EUR. A single ticket ist 2.80. This is a good deal in almost any scenario where you take and applicable train.

FabHK4 tahun yang lalu

> so commuters have to pay more

or start later...

a28002764 tahun yang lalu

Sure I can do that as a self employed Programmer, but typically employees don't get to pick their work hours. Most commuters have to be in the office by 9 a.m.

My point was only that the 75 EUR is already a price reduced monthly ticket.

kingofpandora4 tahun yang lalu

Pro-tip: buy three tickets!

johannes12343214 tahun yang lalu

Somewhat off topic, but still:

> long-distance busses (like the one between Munich and Zürich)

Zurich is too deep in Switzerland to be covered anyways. (Salzburg, Kufstein, Basel Bad Bf, etc. however are in Austria/Switzerland but part of German rail rates and included in 9€ tickets)

And that DB bus doesn't exist anymore since the new electrified railway line to Lindau was opened two years ago, as Munucih-Zurich got way faster by train. (I guess Flixbus still offers it but Flix isn't part of 9€ either)

ptspts4 tahun yang lalu

From Zürich to Munich by direct train is now 221 minutes instead of 245 minutes. It'z faster, but I wouldn't call it way faster.

By bus it's 225 minutes, but the bus is often up to 30 minutes late.

21434 tahun yang lalu

(I haven't yet had the good fortune of visiting Europe).

I can see why you said the train takes 221 minutes.

However, "225 minutes" for bus? I know y'all are known for punctuality, but are buses in Switzerland/Germany that precise?!

Also, is it customary to tell such durations in minutes, as opposed to something like "4 hour 45 minutes" or "4 and 3-quarter hours"?

Where I'm at, nothing runs on time unfortunately. Over here I sometimes feel arrival times of trains should just say "morning" instead of showing an actual time like 8:20 am.

rootsandstones4 tahun yang lalu

In 2021 91.9 percent of the trains in Switzerland were on time (tolerance is 3 minutes)

Source:

https://news.sbb.ch/artikel/109510/puenktlichkeit-2021-zweit...

21434 tahun yang lalu

What about buses? Are they also super-punctual?

jyounker4 tahun yang lalu

Yes. All jokes about Swiss punctuality are true.

I say this as someone who lived in Zurich for two years.

grp4 tahun yang lalu

In cities, there are many bus lanes to bypass traffic. And they circulate several times per hour, 6 or more.

Even if sometimes they are not punctual, the density saves you and you rarely think about it.

johannes12343214 tahun yang lalu

Not only are there lanes to bypass traffic, almost more important is that the traffic lights are controlled to prioritize the busses. Thus if a bus comes the traffic lights turn and hold green so that the cars in front of the bus can clear the crossing for the bus.

And there are dense schedules, so that if one bus is delayed to some problem the next one is close by, thus gap is little.

[deleted]4 tahun yang lalu

johannes12343214 tahun yang lalu

That was the integration into the Swiss train schedule.

They improved the line (electrification which allows better trains, moving tran station in Lindau from the island with old town to the shore etc.) in the first year they went from 4h30 to 4h. Where the trains were standing for about half an hour at St. Magrethen at the Austrian-Swiss border. In 2021 they improved signalling and adjusted schedules and got rid of that half an hour wait, so it's now at 3h35.

germanier4 tahun yang lalu

> If the train number begins with RE or RB, you’re good

A few days ago Deutsche Bahn has started to label some trains with an RE number (e.g. running Norddeich-Bremen or Stuttgart-Singen) with "9-Euro-ticket not valid".

rob744 tahun yang lalu

[citation needed]... I'm not putting it above DB to do that, but that really sounds like more trouble than it's worth: endless hassle with passengers who think that the ticket is valid in all regional trains (which has been repeated endlessly in the media for the last month, and also on the page we are commenting on), need to adapt the route planner to exclude these trains (an option "only regional trains" is already available) etc. etc.

germanier4 tahun yang lalu

Just search for any Norddeich-Bremen connection in the affected three months on the DB route planner with "only local transport" ticked and you will see the label on every second train. Well, after clicking "Show more information" and carefully reading the grey on white text.

Edit: I tried in English and the warning didn't show up... Hopefully this link works as an example: https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/traininfo.exe/en/45678/209...

rob744 tahun yang lalu

Ok, that's apparently a special case, that's an Intercity train (as can be seen from the "Operator: DB Fernverkehr AG" on the page above) that can usually also be used with regional tickets, but DB apparently decided that doesn't apply to the 9 € ticket. The trains are painted in DB's "long distance" livery, but I'm not sure how many passengers would interpret that as a clue that the 9 € ticket may not be valid...

Paywalled article in German: https://www.nwzonline.de/plus-wirtschaft/9-euro-ticket-gilt-...

germanier4 tahun yang lalu

This is actually a pretty common model nowadays, as it saves the commissioning authorities quite some money compared to running actual local trains. See https://www.bahn.de/service/individuelle-reise/bahn_und_fahr... for an overview.

People are used to use a regional ticket with those trains, and they show an "RE" number. This will likely lead to loads of discussions on the train if they will follow through with that.

fabioborellini4 tahun yang lalu

It seems that both IC train number and RE line number appear for these kinds of trains, so for savvy passengers it is possible to recognise such connections. Allowing local travel in selected IC trains is pretty interesting, though.

_Microft4 tahun yang lalu

There are Norddeich-Bremen connections with a remark that the 9-Euro-Ticket is not valid but these connections include a section/leg with an Intercity train (IC). The ticket is not valid for Intercity trains in general.

There are other connections between these two places without having to go on an Intercity and these do not show the message.

germanier4 tahun yang lalu

These trains do have an RE number though, they show up when searching "local trains only" on the route planner (in that case the IC number will even only be visible after expanding details), and all other regional train tickets are accepted on those trains. This will confuse lots of people.

Aeolun4 tahun yang lalu

That seems to defeat the point. Any idea why they’d do that?

germanier4 tahun yang lalu

These are all[0] long-distance trains that due to an agreement with the local transit commissioning authority accept regional train tickets and therefore got assigned an RE train number (some even added some stops due to such an agreement).

[0]: I know of one exception, though it looks like an honest mistake.

Tomte4 tahun yang lalu

The RE from Stuttgart to Singen (I used to ride that train regularly and did so recently again) has been co-labeled "IC" for some time now, even though the rolling stock is distinctly RE.

It has been confusing even before the 9 Euro ticket.

thesimon4 tahun yang lalu

> even though the rolling stock is distinctly RE

It is painted in white and the floor is carpeted, making it a IC train.

Tomte4 tahun yang lalu

Oh, maybe it was broken and I got a substitute when I took it a few months ago. Thanks, that's new to me!

generationP4 tahun yang lalu

It's also for the benefit of hikers, sightseers and whoever else needs places that aren't served by the IC/EC/ICE network. I have a BahnCard 50 (a subscription that halves the price of each trip) and yet it would have saved me over 100€ last summer. Note that some of the local bus associations aren't particularly cheap; it's not just the trains.

My main worry is whether they'll have the resources to put up with the increased demand. Guess I'll see soon...

hutzlibu4 tahun yang lalu

"My main worry is whether they'll have the resources to put up with the increased demand. Guess I'll see soon..."

My train ticket inspector vents to everyone how they do not. (they get the heat)

I think it will work out, but will be very crowded at times. Or rather, even more crowded. They are already bad at scaling up or down, at a sunny sunday for example. Also this is, because they have allmost nothing to scale up. This is a long term investment.

metacritic124 tahun yang lalu

Thank you for the disclaimer of the speed. Useful for travelers to note the time difference!

Yet there is no need to guilt people into it being "German only". The ticket is priced on the slow trains so it already selects for people who care more about money than time. Anyone who chooses a 9 Euro, 4-hour train over a dozens of Euro 1.5 hour train is already not the "upper class".

MandieD4 tahun yang lalu

Hmmm, didn’t realize it was coming off as “German only” - I wanted people to realize that this was designed for the benefit of less-wealthy residents of Germany, not the convenience of tourists, but that there’s nothing stopping anyone from using it.

Since it’s not obvious, I’m not German, merely a permanent resident (US citizen).

steven_pack4 tahun yang lalu

Did this 20 years ago, it was called Schoeneswochenende Fahrkarte "Good weekend" ticket. You could get all over the country, but real slow. I met loads of people and got invited to people's homes, because they didn't typically see an Aussie backpacker on a local train. Great times, go do it.

not2b4 tahun yang lalu

Yes, did that also. I live in California, but at the time my company had a group in Aachen that I worked with and I visited about four times a year. I often played tourist on the weekend and took trains all over the Rhineland. I used the cheap weekend ticket several times. But I usually didn't go that far, given my time constraints.

Bromeo4 tahun yang lalu

Coming from Aachen and now living in California, I hope you had a good time! I think Aachen already has a quite "cute city" vibe to it, and there's many nice places to reach within a few hours, like Cologne, Düsseldorf, Bonn, and even parts of the Netherlands and Belgium!

nick_meister4 tahun yang lalu

Yes! I went from Stuttgart to Berlin using the Schoeneswochenende Fahrkarte like 20 year ago, it took some time but since we were a group of friends, it was fun actually :) Ahh.. good memories

dathinab4 tahun yang lalu

> struggling with 2 EUR/liter fuel,

Yes, exactly.

The main benefits are in context of in and around city travel. Like e.g. a regular in-city ticket (area A,B not C) in Berlin cost 86€/month (but there are many ways to get it cheaper). Now for this 3 month it's 9€ per month and covers all areas and you can even use it to get to day trip locations close to Berlin (like the "Spreewalt").

So it's really a grate deal for locals.

But if you want to travel longer distances IC/ICE are still the choice to go (if you can afford it), like Berlin->Kiel with IC/ICE is ~3.5h switching trains 1 time but with only using RB/RE it's >6h with switching 5 times.

DeathArrow4 tahun yang lalu

>This is for the benefit of people who live here and are struggling with 2 EUR/liter

If 2 EUR/liter is too much for Germany, than it's enormous for my Eastern European country.

I know we should support the war and sanctions and all those nice things, but some poor people depend on transportation for their living. If it costs too much, they might not be able to work. Already surges in food prices and utilities prices made life very hard for the most unfortunate of my countrymen.

snovv_crash4 tahun yang lalu

Germany is a rich country with poor people.

DeathArrow4 tahun yang lalu

I'd argue that poor people in poor countries are even poorer, although being poor is not a nice contest to have.

freeflight4 tahun yang lalu

Easy fix, just don't count the poor people [0]

[0] https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/der-geschoente-armutsbe...

ruune4 tahun yang lalu

Article is about the government, consisting of CDU and SPD at the time (2017), removing important parts of their report on poverty. Affected were passages about the growing low-wage sector, wage inequality and inequality of wealth overall, as well as reports on how poverty affects political influence and the growth of the economy. It appears as if the government had a disregard about the social and democratic implecations of poverty. The previous government of CDU and FDP did something similar in 2012 and was criticized for it by the SPD

llampx4 tahun yang lalu

Just look at the median wealth of the population. Many people don't own a home, and that kills the wealth statistics. A few BMW heirs, Aldi brothers and Lidl owner push up the average vastly.

usr11064 tahun yang lalu

>>This is for the benefit of people who live here and are struggling with 2 EUR/liter

> If 2 EUR/liter is too much for Germany, than it's enormous for my Eastern European country.

Germans are always complaining although they are amongst the richest in Europe. In Finland it's 2,50 EUR/liter (somewhat less in the very south) and at least IT salaries are mostly lower.

What I did not see mentioned here that gas(US)/petrol(UK) will also be temporarily subsidized (by tax reduction) by the same law package as this 9 EUR ticket.

(German living in Finland.)

maigret4 tahun yang lalu

Car is probably not the right solution for all those people then. Even I wish I could reduce my dependency on cars.

butterlesstoast4 tahun yang lalu

For all the Americans. Converting from euros to USD and liters to gallons, gas is roughly $12 a gallon at this moment.

pavlov4 tahun yang lalu

Your math is off by 50%.

A gallon is 3.785 litres, and the euro is roughly $1.05.

So 2 euros per litre = one gallon costs $8.

arghwhat4 tahun yang lalu

*US liquid gallon

A US liquid gallon is defined as 3.785411784 liters, the US dry gallon is 4.40488377086 liters, while the imperial gallon is 4.54609 liters. And that's just the currently used definitions...

If I ask Google for "1 gallon in liters", it assumes Imperial gallons which would account for a good chunk of the error.

oh_sigh4 tahun yang lalu

To be fair, even google gets this wrong sometimes - "1 gallon in gallons" = 1.2:

https://www.google.com/search?q=1+gallon+in+gallons

fabioborellini4 tahun yang lalu

This seems to be localised, for me it highlights 3,78 litres

butterlesstoast4 tahun yang lalu

Thank you for the correction. I should have done my math a bit better. I do appreciate this community for calling out incorrect data. One of the very few communities left that call errors out in a thought out way.

mastax4 tahun yang lalu

For reference gas in the USA costs between $5.60 (mostly in California) and $3.60 per gallon. (According to GasBuddy.com)

kmonsen4 tahun yang lalu

It’s above $6/gallon here in the bar area even for the cheapest gas so the prices are not that different.

User234 tahun yang lalu

This is partly because California law requires special gas that not all refineries produce.

Escapado4 tahun yang lalu

When I was still in school about a decade ago an exchange student from the US was flabbergasted at our gas prices when she found out that the signs at the gas station would display the prices in €/l and not €/gallon. Quick googling shows that €/$ was 1.45 around that time and gas prices were around 1.42€/l which would be a little over 2.06$/l or 7.79$/gallon. At the time the gas prices in the US was 2.79$/gallon.

april_224 tahun yang lalu

Yes it is extremely expensive. However I don't think most people who have a car will use it. The trains will be extremely crowded and to get to any notable destination you will probably have to change a couple of times. I think people will just prefer using their car instead of having to stand in crowded trains for hours.

gspr4 tahun yang lalu

> The trains will be extremely crowded and to get to any notable destination you will probably have to change a couple of times.

That's not true at all. There's lots of direct service to notable destinations. It's rather if you want to go to un-notable destinations (which is of course something that people do a lot in their daily lives) that you can expect to have to transfer.

mbg7214 tahun yang lalu

Out of curiosity, for people who live in small towns/villages in Germany, how much driving is expected on a typical day? Most Americans commute about half an hour, twice a day, right?

soco4 tahun yang lalu

Not German, I live in a Swiss village and drive zero km a day. But I spend almost an hour/leg in public transport traveling door-to-door to the office when I go there (well, before covid much more often). I can also work in the train most of the time - 45 minutes of said hour - so that it counts as work time too. So, no reason to drive at all. I only take the car at weekends for doing shopping or doing some visits, even then not always.

mbg7214 tahun yang lalu

The reason I ask is that there's a stereotype that German-speaking Europeans especially all go everywhere with hyper-efficient trains that come every three minutes and are only a little bit less on-time than the ones in Japan, and that can't actually be true out in the countryside.

soco4 tahun yang lalu

And yet, it is true. Not everywhere trains obviously, but you'll have bus links to every dump - at least 5-6 a day and the closer you get to civilization the more often (up to every half an hour or whenever you have the train to the nearby station). They do come within a few minutes of schedule, no legend here - sometimes they even come a bit earlier and sometimes also wait hehe. Edit: my village has trains to the main city every half an hour and I can walk 10 minutes to the station or take a bus if the weather is nasty.

mbg7214 tahun yang lalu

I'm from a medium-sized city on the US midwest, so my experience is that bus drivers sometimes decide "Fuck it, I'm not coming today," on a route where the schedule says they should be there every 30 minutes. I think most Americans outside of large cities have a similar experience. I was really struck going on vacation to San Francisco how together the bus schedule was, compared to how "meh" laid-back the city institutions I interacted with were about everything else.

jyounker4 tahun yang lalu

> I was really struck going on vacation to San Francisco how together the bus schedule was,

Wow. Things must have improved incredibly in the last ten years.

mbg7214 tahun yang lalu

Granted, I was trying to go up Grant in Chinatown, but you clearly haven't tried a crosstown bus in Cincinnati. Scooby Doo would have an easier time making a cake.

rsynnott4 tahun yang lalu

I mean, I think that most people understand that rural villages rarely have metro service; I don't think anyone was claiming that.

archi424 tahun yang lalu

Anecdata: A lot of people I know take about 20m (suburb to a major city) or about 30m (rural countryside), one way. My dad drives ~1h because in the country side he doesn't find a job in his area of expertise (now that we kids have left, they think about selling the house and moving to a better location).

Better data: https://de.statista.com/infografik/13644/laenge-von-arbeitsw... Can't find how to change the language, even though it's an international page. The graph shows minutes per single way. The pie diagram seems to be a popular vote on "maximum acceptable time".

tyingq4 tahun yang lalu

The report seems to be sourced from here, which has more detail: https://www.stepstone.de/ueber-stepstone/press/mobilitaetsre...

nani8ot4 tahun yang lalu

I live in a village 15km from the next big city (33th in terms of population). If I take the bus it'll take 40min because they take the longest route and stop at every little village with multiple stops each. The next town is 5km from my village and about the same from the city and the train takes 7-13min, depending on whether it's an RB or RE (they have more stops). Both train and bus arrive on a 30 min schedule from roughly 05:00 to 01:00.

Edit: As a student I pay 90€ for a "semester ticket" once every 6 months.

hibbelig4 tahun yang lalu

I live in a small city and work in a nearby larger city.° The distance is 45km and it takes me about 45mins to drive the car, door to door.

Public transport is pretty good on this connection, but overall it takes me 75-90 mins, because I need to change twice and there are wait times.

° Well, I'm working from home now...

I used to live in a different, larger, city, and worked on the opposite side of the same city. Distance 13km. Driving commute 30 mins (middle of the night) to 45 mins (rush hour) each way. Public transport 90 mins...

User234 tahun yang lalu

I've lived in a village in Germany and I never drove. The village center and Straßenbahn stop were a five minute walk from my apartment. And that tiny little village had more independent butchers and bakers than most large American cities. It also had everything else you might need day to day. So the only real reason to take the train besides entertainment was commuting. Depending on where you worked that would be about 10-30 minutes one way by transit.

Tomte4 tahun yang lalu

If you're living in the surrounding area of a larger city where you're working, I'd say half an hour to an hour is normal/average. With traffic jams sometimes double that.

misja1114 tahun yang lalu

> There does not appear to be any residency requirement, but remember, you’re not the target market for this (unless you live here and are struggling with fuel prices…)

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Do you mean that non Germans should refrain from buying these tickets?

MandieD4 tahun yang lalu

I’m trying to say that although anyone is free to buy them, they’re not designed for city-to-city tourist convenience or even as a good substitute for the IC/ICE product for long-distance, car-comparable-speed travel.

They’re for making short, local trips more affordable in a country that has a lot of people struggling with fuel and inflation, and for encouraging drivers to consider transit instead more often, and long-distance trips to the sea shore and mountains are a nice side benefit that is a pleasant thing to discuss when we all feel like there’s a shortage of pleasant things to discuss.

That they’ll make local transit uncomplicated for visitors (no trying to work out where to buy a given city’s tickets, or exactly which fare you need for a particular subway ride!) is also a nice incidental, and I, a taxpayer here, will be happy to see tourists using them, but that’s not why the Bundestag is spending 2.5 billion EUR on this.

magicroot754 tahun yang lalu

The reasons why a national legislature enact a law that brings forth a program like this are complex and multifaceted. It's completely possible that slow-tourism generated by these tickets will greatly benefit small towns who otherwise might not garner the interest of foreign capital.

omnimus4 tahun yang lalu

Excactly these are very common in surrounding countries. These trains have to run anyways because of legislation and laws allowing people movement with public transport.

There arent that many travelers in summer so By making it cheaper you promote tourism and people appretiate it.

The “you shouldnt nuy it its not for you” people just have no idea and probably dont even use trains or live in the area.

unjustified4 tahun yang lalu

> This is for the benefit of people who live here and are struggling with 2 EUR/liter fuel

It's also for people normally using public transport.

There's a city in northern Germany where a ticket for one day public transportation costs nearly 9€.

TedDoesntTalk4 tahun yang lalu

> struggling with 2 EUR/liter fuel

I converted this for Americans like me:

2 EUR/liter is about $8.02/gallon

A 17-gallon tank costs $136.74 to fill.

(Using exchange rate of 1.06 and 3.785 liters per gallon)

macleginn4 tahun yang lalu

One does not need a car to enjoy this. I live in a suburb of a big city and have to cross two zones to get to work. However, the yearly pass does not make sense for me because I cycle to the office half of the time and work from home on some days, so I'm quite happy that for three months my monthly commute will cost the same as a single round-trip ticket.

tinus_hn4 tahun yang lalu

Germany has since forever had the Schönes Wochenende ticket which is a similar deal that can be used during the weekend. No need to be a resident or whatever. This is just a similar ticket that can be used during the summer holidays.

It’s very nice because as long as you don’t mind it taking a lot of time you can take the train on holidays for very little money.

roystonvassey4 tahun yang lalu

Given how notoriously unreliable even the IC and ICEs have gotten over the last few years ( i rarely travel but the three times I tried, the train was either substantially delayed or worse, canceled) , this is really a good deal.

mrzool4 tahun yang lalu

I live here, I’m not struggling with fuel prices since I don’t own a car, but I’m sure happy to be able to get a Monatskarte for 9€ instead of the usual 89€ (I live in Berlin).

User234 tahun yang lalu

This is still a screaming deal. It's been a while, but this is like getting multiple Monatskarten for for single Tageskarte prices.

itronitron4 tahun yang lalu

I am thankful that fuel prices are high because it makes the cost of my regular car maintenance seem remarkably inexpensive.

Escapado4 tahun yang lalu

I would argue making it free and keeping it free would have been a cool move. - Less/no expensive accounting - Less/no personnel for checking tickets - Less/no personnel for prosecuting people who don't have tickets - Less/no ticket vending machines (and all the maintenance that comes with it) - Less traffic on the roads since you can't beat "free" and hence less emissions (at least in hamburg trains operate on green energy) and less wear on the roads (might be offset by the wear on trains and busses) - Fully non-discriminant with respect to income

I have no idea if that would work for inter-city transport but for inner-city transport the HVV for example (the public transportation network responsible for hamburg and surrounding areas) sells 30 million tickets a year and I wonder how much it truly costs them to do that with all the relevant factors mentioned above.

Archelaos4 tahun yang lalu

> I would argue making it free and keeping it free would have been a cool move.

Here in Germany, there were many voices in favour of making the ticket completely free. What I heard about the reason for not doing so is that the government wanted to easily measure the actual demand in different regions for such a "free" ticket. So the price is low enough that anybody who wants to ride practically "for free" is buying it, but so high that most people who do not really use it won't buy it.

I expect that if the ticket is a success, it will be replaced by real free rides in the future. And the results of the test period could help determine how the costs should finally be shared between the different regions and local governments.

cbmuser4 tahun yang lalu

We had cities with free public transport in Germany.

One example was the city of Templin in Brandenburg.

The project was eventually abandoned because lots of people were just riding the busses out of boredom and busses were permanently full with costs exploding for the city.

See: https://www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/artikel/nahverkeh...

black_puppydog4 tahun yang lalu

Nothing you said was factually wrong, but the last sentence makes it sound like "bored bums" were the reason it was abandoned. Here's the relevant part from the article you linked:

> And not every trip seems to have been truly necessary for the passengers. "On rainy days the kids would take the bus out of boredom" says Templin's mayor Detlef Tabbert (Die Linke ["The Left" political party]) to manager-magazin.de. Groups of men with a crate of beer were also not uncommon. "If something is for free, it will be used - whether it makes sense or not", says [marketing responsible of the local transit provider][marketing responsible of the local transit provider] Pohlan

In the end they went back to paid tickets, but charged 44EUR for an annual ticket that can even be transferred between people as needed. That still leaves them subsidizing public transit, but that's a political decision based on what the alternatives would be: pollution, road infrastructure (another form of subsidy), better quality of life, ...

A decision that, as you might be able to tell, I personally happen to strongly agree with.

Edit: forgot to paste the translated paragraph :P

cbmuser4 tahun yang lalu

> Nothing you said was factually wrong, but the last sentence makes it sound like "bored bums" were the reason it was abandoned.

No, that was just your fantasy reading words I never said.

I said people were riding out of boredom, not homeless people sleeping on the bus.

It doesn’t matter anyway who was riding. The point is simply that people were riding the bus without actually needing to.

stkdump4 tahun yang lalu

The term 'Schutzgebühr' comes to mind. No idea what the english term is. Basically a price people have to pay, for the sole purpose to prevent people wasting it if they don't really need it.

herewulf4 tahun yang lalu

"anti-abuse fee" sounds fitting. Not a direct translation obviously.

trompetenaccoun4 tahun yang lalu

First thing I thought of even though I never heard of this example: It's a terrible idea if you think about it with an economic mind. There are very few scenarios where making things "free" can actually provide a long term benefit for the public. The reason Communist economies don't work isn't because there's not enough wealth in society to guarantee a modest income for everyone. It's because once you take the incentives away people behave differently than they would normally. In the case of a guaranteed workplace with no profit sharing for example you get rampant corruption at the top and workers who don't see the point in doing their job properly because they neither get rewarded for working hard nor can they get fired. So they just show up and do the bare minimum.

potatoz24 tahun yang lalu

There are many free goods people don’t seem to (usually) overconsume.

Primary school is free, libraries are free, parks are free, etc. To know whether public transportation is more like free libraries or more like free parking, you have to run the experiment.

cbmuser4 tahun yang lalu

So, how exactly would you overconsume school, libraries or parks?

potatoz24 tahun yang lalu

Presumably the same way you’d overconsume public transportation according to OP: staying too long, crowding out other users that want/need to use public goods more than you.

Archelaos4 tahun yang lalu

> there's not enough wealth in society to guarantee a modest income for everyone

One should notice that there a no Communist economies anymore in Europe for more than 30 years. Democratic wellfare states provide in my opinion the best balance between individual incentives and social responsibility.

I would argue that a lot of state-managed sectors in various European countries work a lot better than in the US (health care, higher education, correction, ...). One has to look into the details to see what works better in which sector.

Extent and details are, of course, something that needs to be permanently evaluated. But in general there is enough wealth produced each year to provide everyone with an at least modest standard of living. However, the differences between the countries are still very large: GDP per capita in the EU is aprox. EUR 32.000, ranging from Luxemburg's EUR 114,000 to Bulgaria's EUR 10,000.

pph4 tahun yang lalu

(This may be an aside, but I want to add this)

While it is true that there is quite a difference in GDP per capita between different EU countries, please consider that Luxembourg has a very particular standing and as an outlier is not representative of the "wealthier" EU members. Most of those are in the range of 40k-50k, with only three above this: 114,370 Luxembourg 83,990 Ireland 57,140 Denmark

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union

folmar4 tahun yang lalu

Also Ireland is another outlier, making a lot of "income" due to being the EU corporate tax heaven. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_tax_in_the_Republi...

the_only_human4 tahun yang lalu

China.

dorgo4 tahun yang lalu

What is the difference to normal paid tickets? Once the ticket is paid I can ride busses out of boredom the whole day.

cbmuser4 tahun yang lalu

The difference is that you have to pay for it and money is usually a limiting factor.

If you can afford buying a ticket to ride the bus for no reason every day, no one is going to stop you.

However, most people won’t spend money on things they don’t actually need.

hetspookjee4 tahun yang lalu

Indeed you can but appearantly just that slight inconvenience is enough to offset the truly bored ones.

wreath4 tahun yang lalu

No you cant because the ticket is scoped with time and/or destination/direction

bombcar4 tahun yang lalu

Many places offer a "one day" transit pass that lets you ride anywhere you want, for that day.

Random example, MTS: https://www.sdmts.com/fares/fare-chart - the 1-day pass is priced just above a round-trip ticket cost.

illiac7864 tahun yang lalu

Yes you can with an annual ticket. That's why it's called "annual".

johnday4 tahun yang lalu

It seems like an almost-free, unlimited-use ticket would suffer the same way.

Aperocky4 tahun yang lalu

Speaking only for myself, my laziness is really the only reason that I've not been doing whatever things I could be doing. And that has been consistent throughout changes in my economic situation.

johannes12343214 tahun yang lalu

Well, they can distinguish homeless people without ticket from others. And therefore throw some homeless out (until people realize that is happening and donate tickets ....)

cbmuser4 tahun yang lalu

That’s actually what’s expected to happen in Germany with the 9-Euro-Ticket.

johannes12343214 tahun yang lalu

I think the reason is that actually it wasn't meant to be germany-wide. The initial idea was 9€ per public transport network, but they quickly figured out that this will lead to many problems, as some areas have huge networks, others have many small networks and this would be one really complicated. But by then the 9€ message was out of the box and making it Germany-wide on a single ticket was the only way forward.

Consequence of late night negotiations on top level of the federal government, without involving respective experts from states, who are running public transport. ("Wait, we're subsidizing fuel, so we should subsidize public transport as well! Any quick idea?")

cbmuser4 tahun yang lalu

Fuel isn’t subsidized in Germany.

They are planning to reduce energy taxes on fuel for June though August, after they imposed CO2 taxes starting in 2021.

The German government tried to force people to use more renewable energies and electric cars by introducing the CO2 tax.

Since both are not adequate replacements, costs for heating, electricity and transportation exploded.

When the German government realized that was a problematic development and could push people into poverty, they hastily came up with the 9 Euro ticket and the fuel rebate (which is just reducing the energy taxes to a minimum) in the hope that the problems would resolve themselves alone sometime in the future.

However, the problems will be back in September when the rebate period is over.

vrfvr4 tahun yang lalu

> The German government tried to force people to use more renewable energies and electric cars by introducing the CO2 tax.

Since both are not adequate replacements, costs for heating, electricity and transportation exploded.

This is total nonsense. The subsidy for fuel prices were introduced due to rapidly rising costs for fuel shortly before the war started.

Those costs didn't rise because of the CO2 tax.

The fuel subsidy also doesn't reduce energy taxes, but explicitly fossil fuel taxes for cars only.

pwdisswordfish04 tahun yang lalu

>I expect that if the ticket is a success, it will be replaced by real free rides in the future.

What’s your confidence level here? Because if you can make me believe that the ticket is effectively a vote for ticketless/free ÖPNV I will buy them for everyone I know.

wongarsu4 tahun yang lalu

If the ticket is a success (both in number of tickets sold and in people taking transit instead of the car) I'd expect the program to be continued. The exact implementation will be subject to much debate, but once you have a cheap monthly nationwide ticket established it's much easier to talk about the costs and benefits of actually charging for it.

stavros4 tahun yang lalu

What's the difference between this and completely free rides? AFAIK, making it "almost free" is usually preferable, as it prevents some abuse ("it's free so I'll take it even when I don't really need it", which depletes the resource), while still making it effectively free.

LosWochosWeek4 tahun yang lalu

We've also seen the opposite being true. In Germany, oddly enough. It was called "Praxisgebühr" and it was a 10€ fee that you had to pay once per quarter year (if you went to a doctor in that quarter). Turns out, once people paid the 10€ they got into a all-you-can-eat frenzy and visited more doctors than they normally would have done, because "well, I paid for it, so might as well take advantage of it".

stavros4 tahun yang lalu

That's not so much the opposite, but I agree. If it were 5€ per visit, you'd probably see a lot less of this.

oneplane4 tahun yang lalu

We have a system where you're going to pay about 350 per year for those little things if you use them. Going into a frenzy using all of that is just going to waste your own time as it takes quite some effort to use up that 350 already.

Then again, regardless of the rules and processes we make, there will always be people misusing/abusing it.

londons_explore4 tahun yang lalu

Remember that even if the journeys are 'free' in the sense of money, they still take time. And for most people sitting on a bumpy bus isn't as comfortable as sitting at home or sitting in a park (also free ways to spend time).

You should always think of the cost of public transport as ticket price + hourly wage * time spent - value of anything you might get done on the bus.

wongarsu4 tahun yang lalu

This is true for busses, but train rides can be quite enjoyable on their own to some people, depending on the train and the view. You still have the opportunity cost of everything else you could be doing, but some people might prefer to read the newspaper on the train, enjoying some shopping a couple towns over and reading on the way back.

pwdisswordfish04 tahun yang lalu

The point is, it's rodonculous.

Archelaos4 tahun yang lalu

There is support for this idea across MPs of multiple parties, from Conservatives, Liberals, Greens and Labour/Left. It appears to be a comparatively cheap measure to reduce CO2 footprint (I am not an expert here, though, so this might be incorrect, but one hears this argument a lot) and at the same time an easy measure to improve mobility for the poor. (Thousands of people went to jail in Germany every year because they repeatedly travelled without a ticket and could not or prefered not to pay the panalty fee.) So the zeitgeist is very much in favour of it, and ecological topics (in the wider sense) are becoming more and more important for people's decission what party to vote for. So what initially were niche topics of the Greens are becoming increasingly popular and more so, when they coincide with goals of other parties, such as social policy ideas from Labour/Left and the trade unions or the administrative simplifications ideas of the Liberals. Note also that Germany is already heavily subsidising its local puplic transport, with the effect that everyone pays taxes for tickets that only a minority uses.[1]

[1] At a moment's notice, I could only find old estimates from 2008 that amount to 25 billion Euros per year (more than 300 Euros per inhabitant per year) for local and regional transport (not including long distance transport) as of which only 9 billion Euros (35%) were paid directly from tickets or similar. This means 16 billion (65%) were already payed by the public (aprox. 200 Euro per inhabitant per year) -- see: https://www.zukunft-mobilitaet.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/0... (in German).

iggldiggl4 tahun yang lalu

Maybe that number includes grants for capital expenses (building new routes and stations, step-free remodelling, public transport priority, etc.) as well? According to https://www.vdv.de/vdv-statistik-2019.pdfx#page=35, for day-to-day operations farebox recovery ratios are rather around 75 %.

Edit: Looking at your link, it seems the difference might be accounted for to some extent because the 75 %-figure - might possibly not include heavy rail

- like I said definitively doesn't include grants for major capital projects and only looks at day-to-day operating expenses

- is looking at things from the perspective of the local transport operators, respectively counties/cities that mostly are directly responsible for financing any shortfalls, so the compensation payments for the state-/federal-level mandated fare reductions for pupils and handicapped people are included as part of the regular farebox income

aqwsde4 tahun yang lalu

Show me a _single_ MP from CDU or CSU in favor of free regional transport.

Archelaos4 tahun yang lalu

Even Bavaria's CSU/Free Voters government voted for the ticket in the Bundesrat today.

Aperocky4 tahun yang lalu

> easily measure the actual demand in different regions

A ticket for $0 would have done it.

Still have to book for it, and probably should have rate limits like other pseudo free services (Google don't charge you for search, etc).

Semaphor4 tahun yang lalu

Do you have any kind of source for this? I heard of complaints regarding this ticket already, I do not see this coming back, let alone for free.

Archelaos4 tahun yang lalu

For example, last month in an interview of Deutschlandfunk the German Minister of Transport, Volker Wissing (Liberals), said (my translation):

"We now have a one-time promotion that represents a field trial. At the end, we can analyse the data and know exactly what we need to improve in order to get people to switch to public transport."[1]

[1] Original: "Wir haben jetzt eine einmalige Aktion, die einen Feldversuch darstellt. Wir können dann am Ende auch die Daten analysieren und wissen genau, was müssen wir verbessern, um Menschen auf den ÖPNV umsteigen zu lassen." -- https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/verkehrsminister-zum-neun-eur... (in German)

aqwsde4 tahun yang lalu

(1)

hhlevnjak24 tahun yang lalu

Perhaps it would work in DE, but it can create wrong incentives.

Here in Croatia, we had "free" public transport in some places for i.e. students travelling to school. But the price was still paid for by the cities/government to service operators. Which led to inflated prices for the service because there's always a way for the operator and some officials to collude together for extra profit. And the increases weren't transparent until at some point the tickets were no longer "free", and suddenly their cost was way over what it was before it became "free".

soco4 tahun yang lalu

Corruption always finds a way, with or without free transport. What I mean, that cannot be a reason to not provide some service, because also the paid transport is getting (or can be) corrupted I suppose, just like everything else.

FabHK4 tahun yang lalu

> Corruption always finds a way, with or without free transport.

Indeed. I've taken the train in Romania with a Romanian friend. The ticket for both of us would have been X$, say, but she talked to the conductor and paid him 1/3 X$ in cash to "look the other way" and ignore us. Conductor pocketed that, we traveled cheaper, and the company lost the revenue.

the84724 tahun yang lalu

A token price (9€/m is cheaper than even subsidized region-specific tickets for students or the elderly) likely has some benefits such as making it easy to count interest based on sales. It might also make the inrush a bit more manageable.

aloe_falsa4 tahun yang lalu

At least in Berlin, they tried to introduce a free ticket. It failed due to organizational reasons: https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/open-mind/scheitert-jetzt-au...

dav_Oz4 tahun yang lalu

I guess one could argue that it is technically "free" for personal use, as tap water is (1 cubic meter (1000 litres) in the Netherlands is about net cost .87€ [0]) if one is not trying to abuse it for a agricultural hobby, a private swimming hall etc. than it actually gets expensive very quick; in the case of a unregistered pipe break (incentivizing inspections) extraordinarily so.

The "price" is for ensuring fair use (on such a big scale)/registering the influx; yes, 1€ could also do the trick but in the case of DB AG we are talking about an highly over-bureaucratized ... so one order of magnitude higher and you arrive at the current pricing.

[0]https://www.waternet.nl/en/veelgestelde-vragen/tap-water/wha...

FabHK4 tahun yang lalu

> - Less/no expensive accounting

Not quite. Many people (eg commuters) have monthly train passes, almost all students have a "Semesterticket" (university enrolment is about 350 EUR every half year, but that includes all public transport in the region).

Now, the 9-Euro-Ticket is cheaper than those options, so out of fairness the holders of all those tickets are getting a refund of 3 months worth of their pass minus 3x9=27 EUR, which is a huge administrative burden for the public transport providers and universities. That substantial burden would not have been reduced by having the ticket for free.

Escapado4 tahun yang lalu

You are right, however if it would have been made free and kept free indefinitely this would have been a one-time cost.

iggldiggl4 tahun yang lalu

Farebox recovery ratios in Germany before Covid were around 75 %, so abolishing all fares would mean quadrupling the budget for operating subsidies [1]. While I am not opposed to some moderate fare reductions, you could pay for quite a large bit of service improvements with that amount of money instead, and I believe that would be rather more effective in increasing passenger numbers (and especially in getting car drivers to switch).

[1] Some of the big cities are actually even closer to break-even as far as day-to-day operating costs are concerned, so in those cases the budget would have to be increased by an even larger factor in percentage terms.

thebean114 tahun yang lalu

> Farebox recovery ratios in Germany before Covid were around 75 %, so abolishing all fares would mean quadrupling the budget for operating subsidies

You aren't taking into account the money saved from eliminating all the infrastructure needed for collecting and enforcing the fares like OP mentioned..

Unless farebox recovery ratio already subtracts the money spent to collect fares? That's not my understanding though.

iggldiggl4 tahun yang lalu

You're right, eliminating the infrastructure for fares would save some amount of money, but I'd be surprised if it was really that much of a substantial fraction compared with the actual operation of the vehicles.

thebean114 tahun yang lalu

I think it's significant, there must be tons of full time employees who are checking tickets, selling tickets, doing maintenance on machines, administering subsidized fare programs etc. I don't think it's 25% or anything, but I wouldn't be surprised it it was in the double digits.

Aside from that, though, it's not as if the money not collected in fares is lost. That's money that people get to keep. It's a direct economic benefit to people using transit, and a smaller indirect benefit to everyone else.

VGltZUNvbnN14 tahun yang lalu

I am going to need a citation for the substantial burden everything I read is that they are annoyed but its easy to do.

FabHK4 tahun yang lalu

Could well be that the complaining is exaggerated, but there is definitely complaining.

> "Theoretically, all students would need to be reimbursed or credited 79.98 EUR each," says [speaker of Bochum University] Dessaul. An enormous administrative effort, because almost 43,000 young people study there.

> The AStA (student council) [of Duisburg-Essen University] would have to initiate 40,000 bank transfers [for the refunds]. "This would be an incredible effort, especially given the limited number of people we have in treasury, finance, and on the board, that would be extremely difficult to manage and would probably also take considerable time"

https://www.businessinsider.de/politik/deutschland/trotz-ber...

jacobr14 tahun yang lalu

> I have no idea if that would work for inter-city transport

With inner-city transport, while free would undoubtedly have some marginal impact (and more over time as residential and commute patterns shift) there probably wouldn't be large shifts in use.

I suspect for inter-city, you would actually see significantly increased usage, which could outweigh all the benefits cited.

soco4 tahun yang lalu

Increased usage outweighing the benefits...?? I'm confused by the wording, do you mean that in a good or a bad way?

MauranKilom4 tahun yang lalu

Probably commenting on local transit networks being generally at capacity during rush hour, which this would not improve.

For example, in Munich, there is a ~10% cheaper version of the monthly ticket that is only valid after 9 AM. This kind of incentive shaping falls flat.

(That is not to say I object to the new ticket, to be clear.)

addandsubtract4 tahun yang lalu

I doubt anyone will be checking tickets in the next three months.

yccs274 tahun yang lalu

Some context is given here: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-introduces-9-ticket-to-offset-...

The ticket is part of a support package signed off by the German parliament. The will pay approximately €2.5 billion for the ticket offer, as a response to rising energy prices and the resulting high costs of individual mobility.

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

In the meantime I just paid 200% more for heating oil than it cost me one year ago. And I cannot use this public transport offer. But I am contributing to it with my taxes.

seoaeu4 tahun yang lalu

In other words, your transportation patterns don’t let you reduce your oil use, so you’re doing your part by paying slightly higher taxes to benefit those who can? That doesn’t seem like a bad thing

ajsnigrutin4 tahun yang lalu

In other words, there's a program in place to help people with high prices, that he has to pay into, but doesn't get anything from it, while still being affected by high prices, that he might not be able to afford.

locallost4 tahun yang lalu

I live in Germany and I also have to pay for the construction of toll free highways and other very expensive car infrastructure. The tax on gas was reduced for the same months in the sommer which is on its own totally ridiculous, but it will also cost over a billion a month. I don't drive so I have nothing to gain from any of that -- but you don't get help from others if you don't help others, so you don't pick and choose what you pay with your taxes.

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

But you do consume stuff transported to your neighborhood by trucks and cars. Maybe you use public transport? That consumes gasoline/diesel and requires infrastructure. Or do you live on home grown food? How's the post at your door every morning? Ambulances? Police? Fire service? Electricians? Packets from Amazon or other MediaMarkt?

I don't believe you do not benefit.

Ask the people of Ahrweiler what is it like living without that infrastructure.

locallost4 tahun yang lalu

That's exactly the point, I don't mind that the people have access to that infrastructure if that's all they have, even if I don't personally need it. My inlaws would be dead without their car. You don't get to pay taxes for things you personally need and complain that other people got theirs, which is what you are doing.

The infrastructure needed is not the same for goods, and public services compared to tens of millions of people driving, and thus doesn't cost nearly the same. So the point of my post still stands -- I pay for a lot of things I don't need as it is, including the ridiculous gas tax reduction so everybody can pretend it's business as usual that will end up being more expensive than the 9 Euro train ticket.

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

> I don't mind that the people have access to that infrastructure if that's all they have, even if I don't personally need it.

You miss the point completely. You need it. You don’t drive but you consume services directly depending on this infrastructure.

locallost4 tahun yang lalu

I do not need it in the amount that it exists, which I have already stated. I did not write a long post, so there was no need to miss it. It is quite clear that the infrastructure needed is very different with and without tens of millions of private car owners. Furthermore, the users of the infrastructure that I depend on already pay their share because they pay the toll for infrastructure use (e.g. LKW Maut, DB pays for the usage of the railway). So in a nutshell, my taxes are used for your Autobahn, so yours can be used for my train ticket. If you don't like that arrangement, fine by me, let everybody pay just for what they use, but be consistent about it. It will be better for me that way since cars infrastructure is expensive to a ridiculous degree. You can't have everything, sorry.

bigDinosaur4 tahun yang lalu

You only benefit from the road infrastructure used to transport goods to your location, more or less. Yet your taxes clearly go into a general revenue stream that could be used for any road in the entire country.

Anyway you don't get to pick and choose with taxes - although car owners are the absolute worst at wanting things like bicycle licensing.

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

Yes. So you live in the middle of the country. Some goods come from East, some West, some South, other from the North. It’s good that the infrastructure exists everywhere, no?

bigDinosaur4 tahun yang lalu

My point is you don't get to pick and choose. Lots of roads will never benefit for me, yet some % of my tax will be allocated to them. Learn to live with it, I suppose - anyone critical of extreme car-infrastructure overbuild had to learn to live with it 75 years ago.

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

You mean I‘m partially funding their cheap transportation? Where is the money for these cheap tickets coming from?

But your comment kinda makes sense. It’s not really worth trying much in Germany. The more one tries, the more one becomes the source of funding for others while not really getting any personal gratification or gain.

widerporst4 tahun yang lalu

How do you travel and commute? By car? If so, millions of Germans who don't own a care are funding your means of transport.

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

I will keep that in mind next time I am staring at the rear of a diesel bus while stuck in traffic.

widerporst4 tahun yang lalu

I know you're being facetious, but yes. Public transport is cheaper per person per kilometer than cars. Gasoline and motor vehicle taxes are very low in comparison to the cost of road maintenance and environmental and societal effects of individual transport, so you're indeed profiting off of tax money.

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

To which I’m also contributing by driving myself. Those roads aren’t built for my pleasure of driving to the office. They also serve crucial role in supply chains.

In fact, those buses are on exactly on those same roads. The existence of those roads facilities convenient public transportation.

akie4 tahun yang lalu

These 2.5 billion euros is almost nothing for a country the size of Germany. I mean, it’s 0.1% of the total budget (€1762.4 billion last year). It’s nothing. Are you really getting all huffy & puffy about paying for a scheme that provides transportation to poorer people and helps the environment? And are you the same about all other tiny expenses, or is it just this one in particular.

sokoloff4 tahun yang lalu

€2.5B here, €2.5B there; pretty soon you’re talking about billions of Euros.

I think this is a good program, but anything that costs 1/1000th of a large country’s budget is a large expense to my mind, not “nothing”.

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

No, I just said that I paid twice as much as last year for the heating oil and my tax obligations are increasing and this doesn’t benefit everyone. It turned into this discussion.

foepys4 tahun yang lalu

Your 30 cent gas discount is funded by all the people not owning cars. Which costs 500 million Euros more than the 9€ ticket by the way. Be grateful for that and stop huffing and puffing all over the comment section with snide comments on how the world is unfair to you.

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

Like that is helping me with heating oil. And mind you, not only me. Everyone renting places, owning places, offices heated with oil will get hit by that. I do not see how a discount on transport for three months is going to help those people.

I also have a mother in Germany who I pay the rent for. She's a pensioner with a minimal amount of money. I am very much looking to Nebenkostenabrechnung next year for heating.

MauranKilom4 tahun yang lalu

> The more one tries, the more one becomes the source of funding for others while not really getting any personal gratification or gain.

It's unfortunate that you can't derive any gratification or gain from your more-than-half of the extra money you make when trying more. But it probably won't help to blame it on less wealthy people commuting to work.

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

I’m not blaming anybody. I am simply saying that it’s an advantage which isn’t universal.

seoaeu4 tahun yang lalu

I could say the same about being wealthy enough not to have to rely on public transportation

wreath4 tahun yang lalu

You’re exactly right. The German system is setup so that you make use of it only if you are on average or below average income. Anything more is a diminishing return. This is for pension, maternal/paternal leave, health insurance etc. The reasoning being that “so we have more equal society”. Yes equal but there simply is no incentive to progress without being penalized. The lucky ones are those with “old money” or those who prefer to rely on the system instead of themselves.

atq21194 tahun yang lalu

The top marginal income tax rate in Germany is not much higher than in, say, the US.

The real injustice is that capital gains (i.e., unearned income) are taxed less. But of course that's also very common internationally.

seoaeu4 tahun yang lalu

You're proposing cutting government support for the poor so that they'll try harder to escape poverty? Since I'm pretty sure there's already plenty of incentives to not living in poverty

wreath4 tahun yang lalu

Where exactly did I say that?

seoaeu4 tahun yang lalu

"there simply is no incentive to progress without being penalized". Perhaps I misunderstood?

wreath4 tahun yang lalu

Yeah I think you did. Here is an example, maternity leave is 65% of salary but capped at 1800 euros. If you make 6000 a month and want to make use of maternity leave, you have to lower your living standards significantly so you can stat with your child. This would make a lot of sense and fair for someone making ~2800 though. But as a high earner, and a high tax payer, i cannot use this system “feature”.

seoaeu4 tahun yang lalu

Presumably you could take the 1800/month and make up the difference with savings? Even with the maternity leave conditions, it is clearly better to be the person making 6000 than 2800.

But I still don’t understand your broader point. Mathematically a progressive tax system is going to have high income people pay more taxes than they receive back in government services, to fund the services provided to low/zero income earners

wreath4 tahun yang lalu

An average income earner has the incentives to go on maternity leave without lowering their living standards, thats not the case for higher earners without burning through their savings. Its simply unfair to contribute a lot without getting a fair share (65% without cap would have been more fair)

[deleted]4 tahun yang lalu

reallydontask4 tahun yang lalu

>And I cannot use this public transport offer. But I am contributing to it with my taxes.

Not all government subsidies, benefits, etc are supposed to help everybody equally, this should not be a hard concept to grasp and yet comments like yours are so common that it makes me think that people don't really understand how taxes and government spending works.

ephbit4 tahun yang lalu

At some point in time the whole of society needs to be presented with the true cost of individual lifestyles.

And there needs to be a discourse about which lifestyles and life choices should at all and to what degree they should be subsidised by the government and why this is legitimate.

There are a whole lot of subsidies that are neither fair nor sustainable and over time we need to transition away from them.

This is painful and becoming a little more evident these times but it needs to happen.

Letting the price for energy rise is necessary until it'll have become carbon neutral and you're feeling it.

kappuchino4 tahun yang lalu

For anyone wondering why 9€? Not 10€ or 15€ or ... - its consistent with 101 consumer psychology.

First: Its not free, its subsidized by the state. Free would suggest for some "not worth it". Not you, most likely, but this is why some free offers are not taken (seriously). If you want to see what free does, look for the Luxemburg experient: https://www.mobiliteit.lu/en/tickets/free-transport/

Second: Higher price point would make a difference for less subsidy payments for the state, but the psychology is "not even 10 bucks". I know that some will argue that 10 Euros will be hard for low income/poor/out of the system people - but again, this is seen as an experiment and a simple message. The data from the usage will help to understand how one can/might change public transportation on a grand scale.

Third: Its during the summer holidays. People with children in school have to book vacation during that time and so the traffic volume in every year before was less than usual on average. In reverse, a lot of people are on the autobahn and the high speed trains on the first and last days of each school holiday, which are different in each federal state.

krrrh4 tahun yang lalu

One interesting thing about the Berlin metro system (which is covered by this pass) is that it is one of the few metro transit systems that is nearly or fully supported through ticket fees. I can't find a reference for this at the moment, but it was something people talked about when I lived there.

derhuerst4 tahun yang lalu

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berliner_Verkehrsbetriebe#Fina... the 2020 results are probably not very represenative, but you can find them on page 19: https://unternehmen.bvg.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/BVG-Ge...

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

> First: Its not free, its subsidized by the state.

„The state“ doesn’t have its „own money“. It is subsided by the taxpayer.

Aperocky4 tahun yang lalu

> It is subsided by the taxpayer.

That used to be completely true, but seeing the US government consistently spending 150% of its revenue every year make me doubt that. Money printer and price go brr

At least Germans are getting train tickets and not shiny new drone missiles.

freeflight4 tahun yang lalu

> At least Germans are getting train tickets and not shiny new drone missiles.

Germany is actually getting both, train tickets and armed drones [0]

[0] https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220408-germany-buys-140-...

0x0084 tahun yang lalu

Germany increased their military spending by 100 billion this year which is tripling it compared to last year. Still a lot less than US but German economy is also a lot smaller.

kappuchino4 tahun yang lalu

Not a helpful comment. (And you should know.) The state is funded by taxes and other income. Germans elected representatives to decide/vote on issues like the 9euro ticket. You can try ad nauseam to redirect by adding complexity, but this was supposed to highlight that the difference is been paid for so that there is compensation the loss for regional public transport companies/structures. At the end, we are all atoms miraculously clustred together, somehow self aware and writing comments to each other. (Now go ahead, add some complexity and redirection again /s)

bromuro4 tahun yang lalu

And where does the taxpayer money come from? :) The state (or in this case the european central bank) owns and distribuites the money, then the tax payers give it back.

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

ECB does not issue funds to individual countries. It does so only to stabilise the economy which is moving funds from one place to another. Eventually, by creating debt.

But on point. ECB manufactures banknotes. As in, it prints them and hands over to individual countries. ECB is owned by central banks of all 27 countries.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/educational/explainers/tell-me...

Taxpayers money comes from the work they execute. For example, when I do a contract for someone, I get paid for the service I did. If I don’t do the work, I don’t get paid and “the state” doesn’t give me anything. Furthermore, if I do a lot of work in a year and the next year I have a misfortune of falling ill and can’t sustain working, I’m screwed because “the state” wants its share in case of future profits, and just takes it from my account leaving me with a hole. “The state” doesn’t care.

I remember such a conversation I had once with a representative of “the state”: “you don’t have our money?”, to which my immediate thought was “yeah, because we were sitting nights together trying delivering those projects”.

[deleted]4 tahun yang lalu

SOLAR_FIELDS4 tahun yang lalu

Sweden does something similar, they offer unlimited regional rail passes for 1-2 month period during the summer - theirs are quite a bit more expensive than this though. I think closer to 100-150 euro for 2 months if I remember correctly.

felurx4 tahun yang lalu

I think most federal states in Germany have regional tickets for students for the summer vacations. It's probably going to vary a good bit, but here in BW it's 25~30€ for the ~1.5 months.

franciscop4 tahun yang lalu

When it gets crowded in Tokyo trains you are literally pushed against each other, back to front people against people, specially bad in summer where the aircon cannot keep up. That's only at 9am normally though, and so I do not consider jobs that make me be in the office at that time (9:30~10 is an order of magnitude better). WFH has been a blessing to Tokyo.

So it was funny when I visited my sister in a rural town in England, and there was a festival so we took the bus to get there. It was obvious the bus was more crowded than usual, and people were grumpy, but from my point of view it was almost empty; people were within an arm's distance from each other, which for the locals probably used to less than half the people that was very crowded.

I wonder if the same will happen on the trains in Germany. Japan is used to this though, and they have powerful ventilation and aircon systems to alleviate the situation in summer.

wongarsu4 tahun yang lalu

There are long distance trains like the RE (or ICE, which is not covered by this ticket) which are designed around everyone being seated, and there are commuter trains like the S-Bahn which are designed to have enough seating space for normal hours and lots of standing space for rush hour. The former are very uncomfortable when overfilled, the latter are designed around it in terms of ventilation, number of doors etc.

I've been in a couple of people-shoving-level crowded commuter trains when traveling to popular consumer trade fairs, and it was ok. Most people took it as part of the experience.

The biggest issue will be people trying to cross the country, packing 40 year old REs beyond their limit in the hottest time of year.

Tenoke4 tahun yang lalu

The more busy Sbahn lines (e.g. Ring Bahn) absolutely did get crowded enough that you couldnt even always get in pre-covid at peak times, and I suspect it will be even worse in the next 3 months.

april_224 tahun yang lalu

People in Germany are typically not very contact friendly and since COVID it got way worse. People here rather stand than sit next to a stranger, sometimes even across. The trains will be beyond crowded this summer (especially the ones going to the sea), so it will be interesting to watch how people will react. I think though the ticket will mainly be used by younger people which are typically more open to this.

paganel4 tahun yang lalu

If the recent street scenes in Frankfurt are anything to go by I'd say people will be just fine, as long as there will be something to celebrate/look forward to :) (either a fantastic football win, like in Frankfurt, or waiting to get to the seaside, like in your example).

[deleted]4 tahun yang lalu

fho4 tahun yang lalu

> they have powerful ventilation and aircon systems

... well ... the ICEs AC is known to fail regularly at elevated temperatures :-)

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

Well, they were designed to survive everything except an every-100-years summer (36°C sustained outdoor temperatures) back in the 80s, which now happens to be every summer.

Even the trains ordered in 2000 were designed for an every-100-years summer (40°C sustained outdoor temperatures) which now some regions are hitting every year as well.

The issue isn’t the ACs, the real issue is climate change ;)

namibj4 tahun yang lalu

But per Carnot, maintaining a fixed temperature differential against a fixed thermal resistance is cheaper (requires less work) at a higher temperature (1/(1-(Tcold/Thot)) is the carnot-limited "coefficient of performance" for a heat pump). So theoretically they should be able to maintain the design differential even at higher outdoor temperatures, causing indoor temperatures to raise from ~21°C to 26°C comparing the "still works at 35°C" and "40°C happens regular in $current_year".

danuker4 tahun yang lalu

But of course people using the coolers are keeping the temperature constant (not the differential, and therefore pushing the pumps harder).

namibj4 tahun yang lalu

Well, then maybe those need some self-protection to not overexert themselves when the temperature gradient is too steep.

goodpoint4 tahun yang lalu

Don't you know that there are seats on long-distance trains?

Unless people start sitting on each other's lap the aircon capacity is not going to be exceeded.

germanier4 tahun yang lalu

In German long-distance trains, seat reservations are not mandatory and capacity is planed while taking into account that some passengers might not get a seat. Most regional trains (which is where this ticket is valid) don't even offer seat reservations.

franciscop4 tahun yang lalu

This article seems to be discussing local mass-passenger trains going from town to town in Germany, so I assumed it was trains with seats + passengers standing. Is that not the case for the purpose of this article?

Symbiote4 tahun yang lalu

On these trains you expect a seat outside rush hour.

It will be a less comfortable seat than a long distance train.

RGamma4 tahun yang lalu

For comparison: The equivalent, non-subsidised "Quer durchs Land"-Ticket costs 42€ for one person per day (70€ for 5 people per day) -- https://www.bahn.de/angebot/regio/qdl

Freak_NL4 tahun yang lalu

There are also the cheaper Landestickets which offer the same, but limited to one (or two) Bundesland and usually starting from €25. Those offer good value for tourists exploring a region too (in the absence of this €9 ticket).

freeflight4 tahun yang lalu

Wow, that has gotten expensive. I still remember when the similar "Wochenendticket" cost like 20€ and would even allow to bring along some extra people, tho that was like 20 years ago.

lispm4 tahun yang lalu

That ticket is not equivalent. That ticket is only for Deutsche Bahn and similar.

OTOH, the 9-Euro-Ticket is for all (!) local transport (incl. bus, ferry, ...) and regional trains. That means here in Hamburg I can use all bus, underground train and ferry connections. It's also all month, 24hours/day.

april_224 tahun yang lalu

The German government did that to compensate for rising gasoline prices. While I think that is in general appreciated by the public, I am not quite sure how many people aged 45 above will use this ticket. They trains will be super crowded this summer and people will just prefer to use their car instead.

MandieD4 tahun yang lalu

It will be an absolute relief to the elderly/near-elderly poor, for starters.

Like the woman I saw in the grocery store a few weeks ago on the verge of tears because the cheapest cooking oil available was 6 EUR/750ml bottle organic canola oil, and that’s still often the case.

Inflation in Germany is every bit as bad as it is in the US, so this is also a bit of a welfare payment to all the people who take public transit anyway because they can’t afford to drive.

I’m 100% for this, by the way; it’s an excellent use of my tax Euros. It will probably make the U-Bahn less pleasant for me, but that’s ok.

0x0084 tahun yang lalu

Also Inflation is measured really strangely in Germany. The official number is +7.4%. However, as someone who has no car and owns no home my main expenditures are:

- rent (+13 % if I don’t move, at least +30% if I move).

- groceries (+20% up until + 50%)

- eating out / going out.(+20%)

For this year only! Most prices have already risen in 2021 “due to Covid”…

I guess for elderly people in cities it will be similar, probably less going out even and more groceries.

So I really wonder how they come up with this number.

rawbot4 tahun yang lalu

Just use the McDonalds Cheeseburger index. It was 1,29€ on 2019, now it is 1,89€ (+46.5%).

Almost all my normal food groceries have gone up by the same percentage amount (raw chicken, ground beef, eggs, milk etc.), and these should be unaffected (at least for now) by the war in Ukraine.

nnt384 tahun yang lalu

The process to calculate inflation is transparent, you don't have to wonder.

0x0084 tahun yang lalu

Oh thank you, your comment really adds value.

FabHK4 tahun yang lalu

> The German government did that to compensate for rising gasoline prices

In particular, the government reduced the taxes on gasoline due to the high gasoline prices, a purely populist insanity in these times of climate crisis. Then they remembered that they were elected on a pro-environment platform, and concluded that they also had to support those using public transport, and this was the result.

ChuckNorris894 tahun yang lalu

>They trains will be super crowded this summer

In Austria that's already a problem. Due to overcrowding, they're kicking people with valid tickets but no seat reservations off the trains telling them to get the next one.

bombcar4 tahun yang lalu

"Nobody uses the trains because they're all super crowded" reminds me of the quote ascribed to Yogi Berra, "Nobody goes there! It's too crowded!"

Hendrikto4 tahun yang lalu

Also it is completely useless for people living on the countryside. The nearest train station is a 20 minute drive away from where I live, so this does nothing for me.

Still better than nothing, I guess.

foepys4 tahun yang lalu

Over 75% of Germans live in cities or towns which overwhelmingly have reliable bus transit at least at daytime.

Those remaining <25% are not really important here and can still use their cars.

Hendrikto4 tahun yang lalu

> Those remaining <25% are not really important

Very arrogant to claim 21 million people are not important.

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

> Over 75% of Germans live in cities

Unrelated to this topic but that explains why Germans are so eager to remove forest in order to build windmills. People in the city obviously don’t notice it anyway.

foepys4 tahun yang lalu

Give me an example where trees were cut and no new were planted. Coal mines are eating whole forests in North Rhine-Westfalia at this very moment and activists are getting beaten up by cops. Look up Garzweiler and Hambach [1].

You argument is the usual fear-mongering by (often right-wing) conservative politicians, wanting us to keep buying oil and gas from dictatorships. As you can see in France where they routinely have to shut down nuclear power plants to not overheat their adjacent rivers in the summer, nuclear is also no build and forget solution.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_surface_mine

0x0084 tahun yang lalu

Planting trees may help with CO2 in like 10 years when they are big enough, but it will never recreate the cultural diversity of a real forest.

Unfortunately Germany has less than 10% true forest left, most ist just foreign trees maximizing for wood revenue. They can’t withstand a storm or a hot summer (really good with the extreme climate events which are coming up).

Any forest is not a forest.

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

Eifel. Around national park. I see it with my own eyes, I live here.

Regarding Hambacher Forst. Does it not make you wonder why the situation quiet down while the country is going though an energy supply crunch?

kappuchino4 tahun yang lalu

Well, unless you have some data about loss of forest for wind turbines, your observations on your surroundings attached to 75% living in the cities is just anecdotal evidence casually presented as a fact. Not helpful in a discussion about a related topic, even less when this is about the 9euro ticket. For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence

As for Hambacher Forst, you failed to mention that most issues have been either finalized in courts or were dealt with in protests/politics. I'm not taking sides since this was never a black or white situation, it is always a multi faceted problem. (Empathic example: For the people living in the villages that were destroyed, the loss of their homeland is for most of us simply unimaginable. Then again for some time, germany needed the energy from these deposits under the villages.)

snickerer4 tahun yang lalu

I see three points in your post:

1. You want to tell something 'unrelated to this topic'. That's a bad idea because it clutters our discussions. I assume you have some inner pressure and strong emotions about the windmill topic and want to release it.

2. You're picking on city people. They don't notice the decrease of forests because they don't see it when they look out of the window?

3. You are telling us that the decline of the forests in Germany are caused by… windmills? Really? That's so wrong that I don't know where to start to explain.

I don't know where the hatred against windmills or against 'city people' comes from. But its origin is certainly not windmills.

We need the windmills to fight the decline of the forests, you know. And to fight mass extinction. We need the windmills to avert the demise of many species. Including our own.

rad_gruchalski4 tahun yang lalu

1. Yes, I know the rules here.

2. Yes.

3. No, I‘m saying that forest is being removed for windmills. You are assuming that I‘m having some dumb argument. This is what I see where I live. Windmills in a national park with more trees removed for service roads. But please, continue educating.

yladiz4 tahun yang lalu

Prove it. Please, educate us all with facts about putting windmills and cutting trees in a national park.

ahartmetz4 tahun yang lalu

I have never heard of or seen a forest being removed for windmills. Seems to be one of these pseudo-environmentalist arguments against wind power.

jona-f4 tahun yang lalu

Afaik regional buses are included in this ticket. I do not know any villages that don't even have those at least once a day.

Hendrikto4 tahun yang lalu

Again: What good does a once-a-day bus do villagers? It‘s useless for commuting, it‘s useless for doing errands.

radiospiel4 tahun yang lalu

Well, this is part of a package deal where they also reduce gasoline pricing.

sva_4 tahun yang lalu

Im really curious to what extend this will affect how full/busy regional transit will be.

I also wonder what happens to the people who control tickets fulltime. Their job seems pretty pointless when almost everyone has the ticket.

SomeBoolshit4 tahun yang lalu

Likely extremely busy - at least on the inside - because there's essentially no wiggle room in the form of extra vehicles or personnel.

_ph_4 tahun yang lalu

If the trains get full enough, you don't even have to pay the 9 euros as no one can control your tickets :p

bowsamic4 tahun yang lalu

It is already at tipping point of fullness without this

sva_4 tahun yang lalu

Depends on location

bowsamic4 tahun yang lalu

Here in Northern Germany it's pretty terrible

trumpablehump4 tahun yang lalu

Are you referring to one specific connection? Two? Five? A significant fraction?

bowsamic4 tahun yang lalu

3.5 times 4

Havoc4 tahun yang lalu

Wild - that gets me barely a days worth of tube travel in london (6.5 EUR a day)

kilotaras4 tahun yang lalu

Yeah, UKs train tickets are ridiculous if you compare it to rest of Europe.

And that's not even case of UK just being generally more expensive, e.g. cheapest StAlbans - London (~25 km) yearly pass costs around £4k. About a 1000 pounds more than Switzerland GA travelcard which covers basically any form of public transport in Switzerland.

Shacklz4 tahun yang lalu

As a Swiss GA holder - UK public transport is all privately owned, right?

The joys of free market efficiency in "public" transportation - maximum efficiency for the owners/shareholders, minimum efficiency for the people.

The Swiss SBB is also again and again under assault to be fully privatized, luckily so far this hasn't happened yet, and I hope it never will...

pmyteh4 tahun yang lalu

That's complicated:

* Buses (outside London): yes. Private and (mostly) deregulated.

* Buses (inside London): kinda. Private, but heavily regulated (fares, routes, everything)

* Trains (outside London): both. The infrastructure is now public, after the company it was sold to became insolvent and got essentially renationalised by stealth. The companies running the trains are mostly heavily regulated private (some fares, routes, and other things are fixed by their franchise contracts, some fares are flexible). A few companies are 'open access' (private without franchise) and only their routes/timetables are fixed, they can do their own thing with fares and rolling stock. A few places (such as long-distance trains on the East Coast mainline) are run by a subsidiary of the state directly.

* Trains (inside London, including the Tube): Infrastructure also public (some run by Network Rail, the national organisation, some by Transport for London). Some services (e.g. the Tube) run directly by TfL, some franchised as nationally.

* [Edit: Eurostar runs (lightly regulated) services to France and Belgium via the Channel Tunnel and sets its own fares]

The main difference from other countries (except for the insane web of contracts and inter-organisational dependencies) is that the policy of the UK Government is to put the cost of public transport as much as possible on its users rather than subsidising from general taxation. We've had above-inflation rises in the regulated fares nearly every year since privatisation in 1994, for example.

Symbiote4 tahun yang lalu

The public transport politicians use (London Underground, London buses) is publically owned.

jonatron4 tahun yang lalu

Ebbsfleet International - London possibly beats that in cost per mile. £5272 or £6056 with London travelcard for about 20 miles / 32km.

dx0344 tahun yang lalu

It's not different in Germany outside of theses three months. A day ticket in most cities cost 5-10€. That's why this ticket will be so appealing, 2-4 trips are enough to make it worth for the whole month.

dagw4 tahun yang lalu

To be fair that is what it costs in Germany as well under normal circumstances. A day ticket for central Hamburg is about 8 EUR a day.

And even that is cheap compared compared to Oslo and Stockholm where it costs 12-13 EUR a day. On the whole the London Underground is quite reasonably priced compared to many major European cities.

rawbot4 tahun yang lalu

Don't worry. The normal day ticket in Hamburg costs 8.2€. And the one-way ticket costs 3.5€ (with bus being slightly cheaper). So you are doing just fine. Public transport is crazy expensive here.

Reason0774 tahun yang lalu

Daily fare cap is now £7.70 (€9.10) in London, and that's just for Zones 1-2. £14.10 if you want to go out to Zone 6.

dgellow4 tahun yang lalu

Hamburg Sbahn/Ubahn are the same price, ~6.50€ for the daily ticket. The 9€ ticket is a no-brainer!

pph4 tahun yang lalu

The whole day ticket actually costs 8.20€, the after 9am ticket 6.90€ (for the zones AB / city area)

If you're commuting and have monthly ticket it will cost 93.70€ (AB), though you might get around with a cheaper ticket if you're living in the center (zone 000).

waffleiron4 tahun yang lalu

A 24 hour ticket in Berlin for local public transport is 8,80EUR, two singles would also make 6 EUR

_0ffh4 tahun yang lalu

I'm sure the private bus operators, who usually are the only cheap option to travel in Germany, are just thrilled by this additional market distortion.

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

There’s only one left, all the others went bankrupt, and that one (FlixBus) only offers long-distance journeys, while this ticket only applies to regional trains.

_0ffh4 tahun yang lalu

Firstly, long distance is misleading, I do not need to travel the whole length of a route. I can hop into a bus and hop out again at any of the next few bigger cities along the route. In my experience, that's what most people seem to do.

Secondly, the 9€-Ticket is valid in all of Germany, so you could travel the length and width of the country if you wanted to. You'd just have to change trains a lot.

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

Both of those are true, but that market distortion isn’t nearly as large as you made it sound, and considering the upsides for society even the absolute worst case of driving one company into bankruptcy would definitely be worth it.

_0ffh4 tahun yang lalu

That would mean for a short term advantage I'd loose my ability to travel cheaply in the future. I don't think that it's worth the price.

Apart from the fact that I'm opposed for principled reasons. If we want to make people's life easier, we should cut down on taxes, not engage in more deficit spending. Especially as the economy is headed for hard times anyway, for exactly that kind of reasons.

freemint4 tahun yang lalu

You might be confusing regional bus with long distance bus travel or ride for hire bus companies which will also be impacted.

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

Which private regional bus companies or ride for hire bus companies are supposed to exist in Germany? I’m 26, but I’ve never heard or seen of any such company besides the long-distance travel with FlixBus (and formerly PostBus, InterCityBus, etc)

The bus companies which operate official lines for Verkehrsverbünde will get paid the same as always, they’re not affected by the 9-Euro-Ticket.

rostigerpudel4 tahun yang lalu

Did you really never go somewhere on a rented bus when you were in school? You can rent a bus with driver eg. for the company picnic or other touristic activities.

However, I fail to see how that business, which usually involves a time constraint and direct point-to-point travels, would be impacted by this kind of ticket.

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

Not really, we always used the city busses. I know that business exists, but I don’t know any private bus business that’d be affected by this ticket (except, as mentioned, FlixBus)

goodpoint4 tahun yang lalu

> additional market distortion

Are they also thrilled by "additional market distortions" like subsidized oil import and processing and road infrastructure?

Or should we remove all tax-funded infrastructure investment and go back to the middle ages?

_0ffh4 tahun yang lalu

With more than 50% of gas prices going into taxes, are you seriously suggesting oil is a subsidised commodity in Germany?

[deleted]4 tahun yang lalu

riidom4 tahun yang lalu

They are. If you can squeeze an english translation out of this somehow, the article considers some potential problems:

https://www.spiegel.de/auto/neun-euro-ticket-verkehrsbetrieb...

Toboe4 tahun yang lalu

For Automatic translations involving German it usualy is a good idea to check https://www.deepl.com/

FabHK4 tahun yang lalu

Private long distance bus operators are complaining, indeed. They were looking forward to this summer to finally make some revenue after two years of reduced demand due to the pandemic, and then this measure torpedoes their business.

See for example this [in German]

https://www.busnetz.de/9-euro-ticket-bdo-warnt-vor-negativen...

versk4 tahun yang lalu

on one hand, free travel for millions of citizens, on the other, higher profitability for a handful private bus operators.

Its surprising to me that someone would even consider bringing this up as a valid counter argument. Interesting to see how deeply Neoliberalism has seeped into western culture.

_0ffh4 tahun yang lalu

What does a temporary reprieve help if it threatens to destroy the outlook in long term? That strikes me as a uniquely short sighted pov. I am not surprised though, given your usage of the word "neoliberal" in that way. I am certainly not a "neoliberal", because that's just a soft form of socialism. I am a laissez faire capitalist.

mvexel4 tahun yang lalu

Very cool. Reminds me of the "Wochenende-ticket" DB sold in the 90s. It was something like 30DM and was good for travel on all regional DB trains for up to 5 people.

I used it with a group of friends to travel to Berlin from The Netherlands in 1993. I was a bit of a rail geek (still am, I guess) and had purchased a "Kursbuch" on a previous trip to Germany. This was a 2000 or so page, 3 pound book that contained all the timetables for all German trains. We pored over the timetables for hours to find an optimal route from the closest German border station to Berlin. I remember it being relatively few trains, something like Bad Bentheim - Osnabrueck - Bielefeld - Kassel - Dessau (!) - Berlin. It was a fun trip, lots of people were traveling long distance on local trains and Berlin attracted very...interesting people at that time.

After arriving in Berlin we sold our ticket, which was still good for another day, for 15DM.

flobosg4 tahun yang lalu

DB was still selling those tickets (as Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket) until 2019.

mvexel4 tahun yang lalu

I think that was what it was actually called back then too! Interesting that it's lived on all that time.

lispm4 tahun yang lalu

Keep in mind that this is the website from Deutsche Bahn, which operates a lot of trains, regional trains and local trains. But not every public transport is from Deutsche Bahn. The 9-Euro-Ticket is valid for all public local transport, too - not just for the Deutsche Bahn.

The ticket is for local transport operators, too. One can also buy the ticket there. A subscription ticket will be automatically converted. One can for example buy it at the local Verkehrsverbund (transit district), which here serves in Hamburg several million people with all kinds of regional trains, city trains, underground trains, busses, ferries, ...

Thus one can use all (!!!) local and regional public transport for 9 Euro for a month, 24 hours a day, for all of Germany, for all public transport operators. The is done for three months, each month costs 9 Euro.

paganel4 tahun yang lalu

Hopefully this measure will persist even when (and if) inflation goes back to "normal" levels back again, imo heavily subsidised public transport is the way to go if we want to reduce car use.

Asking people for a lot more money in order to decrease the regular use of their cars (either through higher gas prices or forcing them to purchase relatively expensive newer EVs) is really not fair if you don't offer something in return.

pflenker4 tahun yang lalu

Traveling through Germany with regional trains was one of my favorite pastimes back in the 90s, but the prices have increased dramatically: The "Wochenendticket, which was valid either on Saturday or Sunday, started in 1995 costing around 11 EUR (inflation-adjusted), and ended costing 40 EUR in 2016 (also inflation-adjusted).

I am happy that they are experimenting with bringing it back.

unjustified4 tahun yang lalu

These are going to be wild chaos days.

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/chaosta...

k8sToGo4 tahun yang lalu

This is why we can't have nice things.

Cockbrand4 tahun yang lalu

Mainly, IMHO, sensationalist "journalism" like this is much more of a reason why we can't have nice things, compared to the actual event predicted (which likely isn't going to happen, at least not to the extent described).

mahesh_rm4 tahun yang lalu

I can't seem to find information on whether it is possible to purchase the ticket as a non German citizen.

curiousfab4 tahun yang lalu

I couldn't imagine why not. You just to to a ticket machine and buy it, no need for a passport or anything. Enjoy - Sylt is waiting for you, and you'll be there along with a million like-minded people!

riidom4 tahun yang lalu

Invade bavaria instead. As "thank you" for their threat of blocking the ticket :)

Bayart4 tahun yang lalu

> I couldn't imagine why not.

The single market. Refusing to sell to other EU citizens is very illegal.

GuB-424 tahun yang lalu

Not illegal as far as I know.

These are almost certainly subsidized tickets, financed with taxpayer money, it is common to restrict the sales to those who pay taxes in the covered area. And I don't see how it could be illegal, it is like forcing Germany to provide health care for the French and vice versa.

Bayart4 tahun yang lalu

> it is like forcing Germany to provide health care for the French and vice versa

That's literally how it works [1]. EU citizens are treated the same as local citizens in every country.

[1]: https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/europe-travel-insurance/ehi...

oynqr4 tahun yang lalu

Maybe in some dream world. Hospital visits are usually covered, but going to a GP often involves paying in cash and only getting reimbursed later at home.

distances4 tahun yang lalu

In which country? My experience has been that the European health insurance card works very well and you get the same service as locals do.

[deleted]4 tahun yang lalu

p_l4 tahun yang lalu

AFAIK the legal way to limit subsidized tickets is that the specific "membership" required to get the subsidized fare is available to all EU citizens - for example in Warsaw we can get lower fare based holographic stamp available from the city on the basis of paying taxes in the city - i.e. it doesn't matter what passport you hold, it matters that your tax residency is in Warsaw.

And healthcare operates by your local health system reimbursing the system in country you were visiting - you need to have European Health Insurance Card on you, from your healthcare provider, which helps route the payments appropriately.

GuB-424 tahun yang lalu

It is still a good question, because there are often special conditions to these kinds of offer.

For example, in Paris, some "all zones" tickets are only available to residents (pass Navigo). The Japanese "Japan Rail Pass" is only available to tourists, and the "Interrail" pass is complicated: you have to reside in Europe but you can only use it in your own country for a single round trip.

RGamma4 tahun yang lalu

Pack the Schultenbräu! Sylt, it's on!

_Microft4 tahun yang lalu

The tickets aren't personalized (some regular monthly passes for public transport are/were though), so you should be fine. Since they aren't personalized and there is no way to check who the owner actually is, I would even expect them to be transferable.

Edit: looks like I was wrong -> see replies. You can also search for "9-Euro-Ticket übertragbar" (übertragbar = transferable) yourself to get a number of different German sources for that.

dmurray4 tahun yang lalu

Normally DB day tickets, even bought at the ticket machine, are not transferable. You have to write your name on the back - in theory, before the first time you encounter a ticket controller - and be prepared to produce ID matching the name.

_ph_4 tahun yang lalu

Honestly, this is the first time I ever hear of this, and I almost go back to steam engine trains :p

germanier4 tahun yang lalu

This ticket is personalized.

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

Buying the 9 euro ticket is possible anonymously with cash at any train station, so yeah, you should be able to.

tauchunfall4 tahun yang lalu

>People who use local/regional transport will be able to buy it anywhere in Germany via channels such as bahn.de and DB Navigator. It will also be available from DB Reisezentrum (travel centre) staff and ticket machines at stations.

Ticket machines can be used without need to identify.

rostigerpudel4 tahun yang lalu

Yes, anyone can purchase it.

However, contrary to what is said multiple times in this thread, it is NOT transferable. You have to put your name on it and have some form of ID with you.

https://www.rnd.de/politik/9-euro-ticket-ab-wann-erhaeltlich...

Google Translate: https://www-rnd-de.translate.goog/politik/9-euro-ticket-ab-w...

biafra4 tahun yang lalu

I am 100% sure anyone can buy it. And I am almost equally sure, anyone using it will not get fined.

[deleted]4 tahun yang lalu

morelisp4 tahun yang lalu

Yes it is.

b3lvedere4 tahun yang lalu

Awesome! I might do some holiday travel :)

chrisseaton4 tahun yang lalu

> I can't seem to find information on whether it is possible to purchase the ticket as a non German citizen.

Biggest hurdle will be getting a Germany ticket machine to accept a regular credit card!

But otherwise, isn't discriminating based on nationality for good and services illegal?

Freak_NL4 tahun yang lalu

Credit cards aren't regular in Europe. They accept Maestro debit cards though, which almost everyone has, and cash.

chrisseaton4 tahun yang lalu

> Credit cards aren't regular in Europe.

Pretty sure it's just Germany being pig-headed about it for some reason. Everywhere else in Europe is perfectly happy to accept a credit card. I do 99.999% of all my spending on a credit card, like most millennial people or younger, and the only people in the developed world who this is a problem for is the Germans.

freeflight4 tahun yang lalu

> Pretty sure it's just Germany being pig-headed about it for some reason.

That pig-headed reason being that Germany went trough two different repressive regime during the last century.

Regimes that made plenty of use of large scale surveillance and data collections [0] to find a lot of their victims.

That's why cash still reigns supreme in Germany; It's anonymous and third parties can't just remotely disable it by disabling your bank account.

It's also the reason why Germans value their privacy, at least used to.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Liste

dabc015f4 tahun yang lalu

> Pretty sure

Why not at least google some statistics before you lose yourself in some pig-headed chauvinistic rant about what in the most charitable interpretation amounts to nothing at all.

FabHK4 tahun yang lalu

To be fair, I find it absolutely absurd that credit card companies siphon off 3% or so of all retail purchases, and then distribute a part of it back to their "most valuable customers" in the form of miles and cash backs and similar time-consuming nonsense. It is redistribution from the poor, those using cash and those not being able to pay off credit cards in full, to the rich.

The EU has imposed caps on these interchange fees [1], which is one reason Europeans are not inundated by junk mail offering credit cards, and may be a reason that credit cards are not ubiquitous. Having said that, I find that I can pay electronically in most places, including Deutsche Bahn ticket machines (or just buy them in the app).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee#European_Union

switch0074 tahun yang lalu

Come on that’s not fair. Don’t the Dutch hate credit cards too?

Freak_NL4 tahun yang lalu

Not hate, just not a system used very much here. Most people with a credit card have one for online purchases (I do), but those are a minority. Even that is no longer really needed with big stores like Steam and Amazon (.de and .nl) accepting the local IDEAL standard for banking transfers.

Paying with a credit card in shops? That's just not done excepting American tourists, same as in a number of European countries. It's contactless debit cards mostly. Building a credit rating by using a credit card is not part of the system.

p_l4 tahun yang lalu

EMV2-compatible debit/credit cards work pretty widely. The real issue is that some countries have locally-popular cards that don't work in that scheme (Dutch old Maestro variant, some german cards, etc.) or have very annoying compatibility issues (my old "Visa Electron", once very popular in Poland and which tripped UK card systems like crazy) and availability of card payments differs across EU - capping card fees and speeding up transactions thanks to EMV helped there a lot, but I remember hearing stories of Italian shops in touristy areas getting card readers... because of Polish visitors, who were accustomed to wide availability of cards (last local bastion of cash only was farmer's market nearby - now every more established stand has one)

elondaits4 tahun yang lalu

I had no problem paying with a credit card on Bahn.de ticket machines (White and red). The yellow BVG ones gave me problems in the past accepting an Argentine card, but it’s likely it’d take it now that it has a chip.

[deleted]4 tahun yang lalu

0x0084 tahun yang lalu

They accept Apple Pay, that might help.

himlion4 tahun yang lalu

Yes, it would be a violation of EU law to restrict it.

mrunkel4 tahun yang lalu

No it wouldn't. You could say it's only for citizens of EU member states.

That's a restriction that wouldn't violate any EU law.

Mordisquitos4 tahun yang lalu

Another hypothetical alternative which wouldn't violate EU law (not that they have any reason of using it) would be to make the ticket only valid to people who legally reside in Germany, regardless of their nationality.

himlion4 tahun yang lalu

Correct, that wouldn't violate it. For German citizens only would.

amin4 tahun yang lalu

In Luxembourg, all public transport is free for everyone. I was just there, and as a tourist, it saved me a lot of hassle not needing to figure out where and how to buy which ticket. Jump hop on any train, bus or tram :).

And yes, I understand why this wouldn't work well in other countries.

swarnie4 tahun yang lalu

While interesting, it doesn't seem like a fair comparison.

Luxembourg has more tax evading corporations registered than actual people. I'm sure i can make a public transport system work well for free given those conditions.

sonar_un4 tahun yang lalu

I was there last winter and the free transport was just incredible. Especially for a tourist. On top of all of the busses and trams being super new and clean, it was a dream.

Reason0774 tahun yang lalu

I wish they would restore stopover functionality on the international booking site (https://www.international-bahn.de/). I remember back when you could book a London to Berlin fare (for example) with Eurostar included, with stopovers up to 48 hours along the way. Amazing value for tourists - often you could visit multiple Belgian/German cities for not much more than what the Eurostar fare would cost alone.

The standard bahn.de site still allows stopovers, but since the pandemic you can no longer book Eurostar segments through it. Sad face.

throwaway4good4 tahun yang lalu

Denmark is doing a similar thing ...

b3lvedere4 tahun yang lalu

Soo, i could travel throughout Germany and Denmark for quite cheap?

fiber4 tahun yang lalu

Kind of, but you'll have to take the scenic route (long distance trains IC/EC/ICE are not included).

MandieD4 tahun yang lalu

If you’re not in a hurry - it is not valid for the high-speed (ICE) and mid-speed (IC) trains in Germany.

sva_4 tahun yang lalu

In Germany, only in regional (slow) traffic (the RE only goes between 100 and max 200 kmh)

vaylian4 tahun yang lalu

Interesting. Do you have a link with more info?

throwaway4good4 tahun yang lalu

https://www.dsb.dk/kampagner/rejsepass/

legulere4 tahun yang lalu

So like 40€ for 8 consecutive days. That greatly reduces usefulness if you just want to travel to one spot and back.

bowsamic4 tahun yang lalu

I'm extremely not excited about how insanely rammed the public transportation is going to be for the next three months

Already here in Hamburg the busses are not at all empty!

dx0344 tahun yang lalu

If there's such an uptick in demand it would show that price was what kept people from using public transport. In that case I'm sure there will be a lot of pressure to make travel more affordable.

So far, many claimed that a lack of availability was the reason public transport wasn't used more. I guess the next three months are a good way to validate that.

iggldiggl4 tahun yang lalu

A few years ago they already did some smaller-scale experiments in a few cities regarding fares and service offerings and the conclusion was clearly that better service was more effective in attracting additional passengers.

Also according to https://www.science.lu/de/faktencheck-gratis-oepnv/was-bring..., while some smaller cities who have experimented with free public transport have seen substantial increases in passenger numbers (but still often only a limited number of conversions from car drivers), the biggest city that tried this so far (Tallinn) only saw an increase in passenger numbers of 8 %. In the recent case of Luxembourg, unfortunately the effects of Covid make it rather difficult to draw any valid conclusions.

While I am not opposed to some moderate fare reductions, it should be kept in mind that in Germany, the average farebox recovery ration for local and regional public transport before Covid was around 75 %. Making public transport completely free would therefore mean quadrupling operating subsidies – and if through some miracle politics was really committed to spend that much more and for the long term, I'd much rather see the majority of that amount being spend on better services.

bowsamic4 tahun yang lalu

I don't think that would show that. It would show that some people don't want to make the investment for a monthly ticket if they aren't sure that they will use it. Now everyone will use the public transport at all times, without thinking about it. Even if the price for a monthly ticket was half its current price it still wouldn't be a no brainer to get one

sascha_sl4 tahun yang lalu

And I can't wait for the usual politicians from FDP and Union to draw the conclusion that free or cheaper public transport will forever be unfeasible, not that we need to invest more into the rail network.

bowsamic4 tahun yang lalu

Here in Hamburg it's really the busses that get overwhelmed. The S-Bahn and U-Bahn are rarely overly full compared to the busses.

rawbot4 tahun yang lalu

And public transport here is so expensive. For a return trip, it is cheaper, and faster, to take a car (both petrol and parking costs). The only thing that taking public transport saves you is the hassle of traffic (so you can do something else on your ride), and parking, which can be real bad in some areas of the city.

The S-Bahn and U-bahn are usually only crowded on peak hours (2 or 3 hour intervals in the morning and evening).

sascha_sl4 tahun yang lalu

I'm from the south of Hamburg. The lines served by Metronom are probably the most tightly scheduled around. They don't even have time to stop at the terminus most of the time, so they carry delays forward throughout the entire day. The reason no S-Bahn goes far south is also that Dostos can still carry more people despite the slow acceleration/breaking.

russianGuy838294 tahun yang lalu

they should rather subsidize heat pumps to replace aging gas heating systems prevalent in the 1960s homes here. Would help to reduce energy dependency on russia

lbschenkel4 tahun yang lalu

The region of Skåne in Sweden has a similar initiative, although not as cheap: a "summer ticket" valid for 3 months that costs ~70 EUR and includes any form of travel in the region. Similar offers exist in the other regions of Sweden.

Unfortunately for me who commutes to Copenhagen on a daily basis for work, this offer does not include trips to Denmark (monthly ticket costs ~250 EUR).

seu4 tahun yang lalu

For comparison, in Berlin the monthly ticket for the A-B zones (does not reach the airport) costs €86, and a 4-ticket pack €9.40. A €9 monthly ticket is an insane bargain, even if you only plan on using public transport within the city.

(source: https://www.bvg.de/de/tickets-und-tarife)

hansel_der4 tahun yang lalu

might even be cheap enough to make them fare dodgers reconsider

locallost4 tahun yang lalu

For comparison, the federal government is dead bent on building additional 4.1km of highway through Berlin that is estimated to cost over 500 million. And the critics say it will balloon to billions since the estimate is 10 years old anyway.

So basically millions of people will ride the train for three months for almost free, and the cost will be in the same ball park as 4km of one highway.

0x0084 tahun yang lalu

Also it is really ridiculous because it goes straight through a rather central part of the city, removing old construction and very close to where a lot of people live in an attractive part of the city.

Instead they could build it a couple kilometers further out to still connect the ring, the distance in drive time would probably be less than 5 minutes.

But they stick to stupid plans they made 10 years ago like they always do in this city.

locallost4 tahun yang lalu

The city doesn't want it, the federal government is pushing for it. Probably because the person in charge is a free market theologist from FDP so he wants to spend as much tax money as possible to have as little impact as possible. Wait, that doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's what's happening.

tosh4 tahun yang lalu

Imagine something like this for the whole EU.

bullen4 tahun yang lalu

Interrail?

freemint4 tahun yang lalu

Are there cross country but regional rail lines?

Mordisquitos4 tahun yang lalu

Yes, there are! For example, I have travelled between Strasbourg and Basel (Switzerland) on a regional train, as well as between Milan and Nice, and between Nice and Barcelona (changing trains at the Spanish border due to the change of rail gauge). There's also a regional line connecting Barcelona and Puigcerdà (a town in the Spanish Pyrenees) which at certain times continues its service a further ~5km and terminates in Latour-de-Carol, a tiny village on the French side which is served by French regional services.

2000UltraDeluxe4 tahun yang lalu

There are also trains between Denmark and Sweden, and I'd be surprised if there's not similar things going on in the Benelux area.

Mordisquitos4 tahun yang lalu

True. In fact, that reminded me that I have also taken regional trains between Copenhagen and Malmö.

MarkusWandel4 tahun yang lalu

This is fantastic. Despite the warnings to not count on it, these local trains generally will transport your bicycle. So you can go for a bike ride some distance from your home location (or from your home location and return by train if you don't feel like riding back). Practically for free.

0x0084 tahun yang lalu

On Regional Trains need to go into the special bicycle compartment, also on S-Bahn.

On Subways, Buses, and Trams you might not be allowed to take a bicycle at all depending on the city’s regulations.

Regardless of that, you will always need to buy a special bicycle ticket.

In fact same goes for dogs. So this 9€ ticket will be really useless for dog owners since they need to pay normal ticket prices for every fare for the dog.

mariusor4 tahun yang lalu

When you take your bicycle on public transport usually you require a special ticket for it.

partiallypro4 tahun yang lalu

I assume this doesn't apply to urban rails like the MVV in Munich, etc. Has to be DB operated.

q3k4 tahun yang lalu

It does.

hit8run4 tahun yang lalu

The idea behind it is to keep the idiots commuting just to sit down in the wage cage 9000. It’s for three months only btw and just a trick to improve acceptance of the new German Poverty caused by very bad political decisions.

aspyct4 tahun yang lalu

Nice!

And here I am in Belgium, stuck with the SNCB/NMBS, a small country where doing a few miles by train takes an hour, the trains are always late, there's no place to sit, and it's expensive.

I love Belgium, but not its trains.

I_am_tiberius4 tahun yang lalu

I know DB is owned by the state but I'm anyway interested in whether the difference to the original price is subsidized by the state. Or if it's just a special offer that allows them to cover expenses.

germanier4 tahun yang lalu

The federal state will pay 2.5 billion euro to the 16 states which in turn are responsible to compensate operators (or whoever actually receives the fare for the journey - this might be someone else) for the lost revenue.

amarant4 tahun yang lalu

This is awesome! For comparison, a single fare ticket from the Stockholm suburb I live in to city Central costs about €8.70. 9 euros for a whole month seems like a dream!

rawbot4 tahun yang lalu

It's only a temporary measure. We would be ecstatic if it was permanent. Alas, it is not.

lom4 tahun yang lalu

for 3 months*

freeflight4 tahun yang lalu

It's 9€ per month and the ticket will be available for 3 months.

javajosh4 tahun yang lalu

Heck even if you're just going to move around a single City at a time this is a great deal. Ubahn and Sbahn tix are quite pricey a la carte!

jgehrcke4 tahun yang lalu

The login system of the Bahn app amd website is experiencing issues right now -- wonder if it has to do with HN peak traffic, hm :).

sdevonoes4 tahun yang lalu

Why don't they make this for the whole year?

_Microft4 tahun yang lalu

It is meant to temporarily ease the burden of risen energy prices. (Car users are going to get a lower tax on gas soon.)

A quarter of a year might be enough already to find out how much demand for low cost public transport there actually is. I consider it an useful experiment at this point.

xenago4 tahun yang lalu

This is a really good initiative! I wish the Canadian government would encourage more efficient transport instead of cars.

The-Bus4 tahun yang lalu

This is a great idea for the US as well, if only we had a significant mass transit infrastructure that this could apply to.

[deleted]4 tahun yang lalu

Pete-Codes4 tahun yang lalu

Giggly - may have to re-think summer plans

Ekaros4 tahun yang lalu

Hmm, so social distancing is truly gone and they don't fear this action massively spreading the COVID virus?

Tenoke4 tahun yang lalu

FFP2 mask are still mandatory on public transport (at least in Berlin) but generally nobody is concerned anymore, and even less so for the Summer.

Scarblac4 tahun yang lalu

It's summer, everybody who wants to has three or even four vaccinations, most people have already had it on top of that, it's safe to say that Covid doesn't spread massively here at the moment.

Maybe another wave with a new variant or in autumn, but it'll most likely be mild as omicron is and there is so much resistance built up now.

So for all practical purposes, Covid is over at the moment.

_ph_4 tahun yang lalu

FFP2 masks are still mandatory and it isn't as if the regular trains were not crowed before.

tut-urut-utut4 tahun yang lalu

I guess the German health minister and quite a bit of regional health ministers would be thrilled if the numbers of Covid-19 cases increase. Then they can try again to push that mandatory vaccination that failed last time in parliament only due to interpersonal ego issues.

They already ordered a few hundreds of millions of vaccines.

netsharc4 tahun yang lalu

Feels like the European governments' (I generalize...) thinking is, the vaccine is available, it's good enough, and Omicron is "not that bad" anyway, so, if you don't want to get vaccinated, it's on you, but let's get on with our lives...

avianlyric4 tahun yang lalu

The EU has a 78% vaccination rate and a 52% booster rate. Mask usage in public places is generally very high. The EU never turned vaccination and masks into divisive political and cultural issue.

All of this compares very favourable to the US where vaccination is 65% and boosters are 31%. Plus vaccination, mask usage and lockdowns became deeply decisive topics, substantially reducing the effectiveness of all of them. In the end it’s place the US in bad spot for resolving the the pandemic quickly.

rawbot4 tahun yang lalu

> Mask usage in public places is generally very high.

Not anymore. In Hamburg, nobody wears a mask, even in the supermarkets in the busiest hours, even though during the big pandemic spikes almost everybody wore it properly.

dubswithus4 tahun yang lalu

Unfortunately, it's going to be really hard for my wife to get a schengen visa. The appointments are already full.

throwaway3074234 tahun yang lalu

(2)

wafriedemann4 tahun yang lalu

Socialism is COOL

jdhzzz4 tahun yang lalu

Who-hoo, let's all go to the summer long super-spreader event.

jona-f4 tahun yang lalu

Covid is currently not a big issue in Germany. Even so restrictions are lifted and most people don't care at all anymore about protection, the numbers are going down.

Bigpet4 tahun yang lalu

Numbers are still significantly higher than Winter 2020/21. So with lessening restrictions this winter is poised to set another record (for infections at least, deaths might not be as high as last year). People don't care, true. But that's about feeling, not about numbers or facts.

foepys4 tahun yang lalu

Hospitals have next to no cases in my region. 500/100.000 people tested positive over the last 7 days with probably times 3 more infected due to no mandatory testing. Only a combined 2 people (both over 80) are in the 5 hospitals with only one being intubated. That's nothing, really.

qwertox4 tahun yang lalu

I think it's great, but honestly, placing it at 15€ would have made only a little difference to the consumer, who is already getting a lot for the value, and helped the railway operators a good deal. As a compromise the age of kids who can travel together with their parents for free could have been raised from 6 to 8 years.

archi424 tahun yang lalu

This is a matter of perspective. The ticket is not aimed solely at people with median income of a tech worker (or the typical HN crowd), but help out the general populace as a whole. Including those who can not even afford a car.

Now I think when the times comes (3 month from now) for the program to run out, we might see discussions about continuing it at a price that makes it a more sustainable, permanent offer. But that's my opinion speaking (I wouldn't even mind if it was mandatory like back when I was attending university, as long as it is affordable for people with low to lowest incomes).

Tenoke4 tahun yang lalu

> more sustainable, permanent offer

Seems pretty unlikely that they'll be able to after a 3 month period of operating at a loss (for the government) and likely having more issues due to increased usage.

_ph_4 tahun yang lalu

It is a political decision, whether the government wants to pay the costs out of the federal budget. If the government is serious about CO2 reduction and also shifting commute traffic from cars to public transport, this might be an surprisingly cheap option. As the high energy costs also mean increased tax revenue, it might not even be a large load for the budget (and compared to many other things, spending like €10B/year on public transport isn't really much anyway).

archi424 tahun yang lalu

My crystal ball is broken. I think there is a good chance that what you say will happen. But collecting the data in this nation-wide experiment is already quite useful when deciding on future policy. Until now it was always "we believe" or "this doesn't fit our agenda" or "this is socialism". Plus, if it is sufficiently popular and if the obstacles can be identified and overcome, then why not? If the new administration wants to reconnect with the people then employing some positive populism is quite nice.

//edit: As I said, I didn't mind paying for the mandatory students ticket (most universities have that), even when I eventually stopped using. I'm in the "make public transportation free" camp, and think this is a good step in that direction; even if we end up with "affordable for all" instead of "free". But as I said, that's opinion, not knowledge.

WA4 tahun yang lalu

Exactly the opposite. It should've been 0€, because then you:

* don't have to sell tickets at all

* don't have to check tickets in trains and reduce costs

The overhead of selling tickets with the new price points might actually eat up all what's left of profits.

anaisbetts4 tahun yang lalu

They still have to check tickets in trains because this only applies to one class of train, and they already are paying people to check tickets and can't/shouldn't fire them all for three months only to bring them all back

Tenoke4 tahun yang lalu

A lot of trains this covers don't even have first class so they can save on those but I'm not convinced the savigns are all that big.

mrunkel4 tahun yang lalu

What trains would that be? Street cars and busses are the only ones I can think of that don't have first class. Everything from the S-Bahn and "up" has a first class car or section.

Tenoke4 tahun yang lalu

In berlin neither the Sbahn nor the Ubahn has first class. The express trains (RE7, RB14, FEX) to the airport don't either as far as I remember and I don't see one when I check[0]. Similar for many other cities I believe, so I'd wager most travelers the 9e ticket is covering will be on vehicles that don't have first class anyway.

0. https://flughafenexpress.deutschebahn.com/fex-en/Tickets-and...

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

That heavily depends on your local Verkehrsverbund, many Verkehrsverbünde do not have any first class in S, RB or RE.

captainmuon4 tahun yang lalu

Officially, it is not free in order to gauge demand.

Personally, I think there is an ideological and pedagogical element. They don't want people to get used to the idea that something like free transportation is possible.

I heard an interesting talk a couple of years ago about university tuition fees. Germany has fairly low fees compared to other countries. At some universities it is more like a token fee, a couple hundred € per year. Many students get living expenses paid from the state anyway (BAFÖG). It is silly to then pay back some of that immediately. But the thesis of the talk was that the tuition fees were introduced for educational reasons, not to cover the actual cost of teaching. Students were supposed think of themselves as customers, and of education as a good. And they could back this with quotes from neoliberal think tanks. As the FDP (free market 'liberals') is in the coalition, I'm sure one precondition was that the ticket couldn't be free.

bmicraft4 tahun yang lalu

A couple hundred per year? I'm sitting here in Vienna complaining about paying 20,70€ per semester

april_224 tahun yang lalu

Students in Berlin meanwhile have to pay 200€ for the public transport ticket alone.

fxtentacle4 tahun yang lalu

Can't do that for psychological reasons.

A free Android app attracts the worst kind of people and insults hurled at you on support channels. A $0.99 price is enough to make most support emails friendly instead.

rdl4 tahun yang lalu

0 EUR 2nd class (presumably fairly crowded) and ~market priced 1st (and potentially a car or two of 2nd at normal 2nd fares) might be an interesting experiment.

dagw4 tahun yang lalu

don't have to sell tickets at all

The infrastructure for selling tickets is already in place, the marginal cost of selling one extra ticket type is essentially zero,

don't have to check tickets in trains and reduce costs

Assuming you have to have at least one person working on the train anyway, for safety reasons if nothing else, having them also check tickets doesn't cost extra.

BoppreH4 tahun yang lalu

> Assuming you have to have at least one person working on the train anyway, for safety reasons if nothing else, having them also check tickets doesn't cost extra.

The trains are made of multiple cars without connecting doors, and the driver sits inside a locked cockpit. Tickets are currently checked by personnel that randomly patrol the trains, which are the only staff that passengers see.

It's actually rare to have your ticket checked, but the fine is ~10x the price of the ticket, so it's still worth buying one.

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

> Assuming you have to have at least one person working on the train anyway, for safety reasons if nothing else, having them also check tickets doesn't cost extra.

That’s actually wrong, regional trains (where this ticket applies) usually have only the Lokführer driving the train, but no additional staff. Checking tickets is done purely by patrols checking trains randomly.

slightwinder4 tahun yang lalu

It's also an experiment. They need to know how people react and change their behavior with this cheap ticket. And they still need to check tickets anyway. And the price also serves as a kind of barrier to animate people to at least thing a moment, whether they really need the ticket and can "waste" the monety for it.

dx0344 tahun yang lalu

Ticket checks are incredibly rare in most cities already, Germans tend to buy tickets because it's illegal not to, not because it's more economical given the fine you pay without one.

And selling tickets will be an extremely minor overhead, probably <5% including re-programming machines.

k__4 tahun yang lalu

How much does checking tickets cost?

fridek4 tahun yang lalu

Germany has about 1000 railway locomotives operating 40k runs a day. A conductor job pays on average 50k€/yr. Most trains I've seen have more than one conductor, and you need to plan for weekends, shifts, time off, etc. but the lower bound should be easy to agree on 50M€/yr or 12.5M€ for the duration of the program? Then there is the entire infra to sell tickets online, in machines and in person.

At the same time there are about 2 million rail customers a day, so the 9€ ticket will bring 18M€. I'd say they probably break even.

Math is fun, but the entire point is a bit moot. Germany is a civilised country and if you laid off the entire staff for three summer months with no pay, the union would eat you for breakfast.

dagw4 tahun yang lalu

Most trains still need conductors even if they're not checking tickets. Having them check tickets when they're already there won't cost anything extra.

Tenoke4 tahun yang lalu

>Most trains I've seen have more than one conductor

At least in Berlin which this covers most trains/buses/trams have 0 people checking and there's a few people going on random ones to occasionally check so the ratio here is probably 1 worker to 50+ vehicles.

sokoloff4 tahun yang lalu

As a rule of thumb: anytime you see a human doing a manual task, it's expensive.

mikepurvis4 tahun yang lalu

I'd also be curious for actual numbers, but certainly on the commuter GO Train in Ontario, it's basically a 3-4 person staffing arrangement, with one person at the back, one in the middle in the accessible coach, and 1-2 in the locomotive. Adding someone whose job it is to roam up and down the train checking tickets adds 25% to the personnel cost, which is why most fares aren't checked.

But quite apart from the person and their ticket-scanner, there's also the whole infrastructure associated with fare taking— fare-free advocates argue that if you get rid of the machines and websites and apps, and all the associated upkeep, it ends up being a wash. Of course this only counts if you're getting rid of all fares rather than doing a one-off summer special.

albertgoeswoof4 tahun yang lalu

You don’t actually check any tickets, you just pretend that tickets will be checked at random, regularly. Put up signs to with heavy fines & travel bans for breaking the rules, run some fake newspaper stories of heavy enforcement etc. Make it socially embarrassing not to pay etc etc

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

This ticket only applies to regional trains. Regional trains usually have a staff of 1 (sitting in the locomotive, driving the train). Tickets are checked by random patrols, which don’t actually cost that much (in each given train at a given time you’ll have a chance of encountering them every few weeks at most).

slightwinder4 tahun yang lalu

Often, not even that much, as the check is just one of many jobs the personal has to execute. The other jobs won't disappear just because they might not check now.

Shadonototra4 tahun yang lalu

> I think it's great, but honestly, placing it at 15€ would have made only a little difference

The ticket exist to relieve citizens due to rising energy costs

What a nice idea to double the price! i suggest to triple it, so they can make even more profits!

Wait, i suggest aligning it to the cost of a similar travel with a car!

Are you american by chance?

https://www.stoag.de/en/dialog/neuigkeiten/detail/9-euro-tic...

> We support the idea of the traffic light coalition to temporarily relieve not only drivers, but also the millions of public transport commuters in their mobility costs. It is a clear signal for local public transport as an efficient, climate-friendly and already inexpensive alternative to the car. The industry is working on a technical and entrepreneurial solution in the interests of passengers. The ticket is to be launched nationwide on June 1st.

tut-urut-utut4 tahun yang lalu

> Wait, i suggest aligning it to the cost of a similar travel with a car!

I would wish they actually align their normal prices with a car.

It's absurd that it's cheaper for two people to travel from Karlsruhe to Frankfurt by car, than to take an ICE train. And that applies to almost any train connection inside a Germany.

No wonder people like their cars here.

lbriner4 tahun yang lalu

Same in the UK although unfortunately, the per-person cost is roughly linear on the railway and not in a car that will only need slightly more fuel per extra person.

I guess the only way round this is that the per-person cost should be so much cheaper on the train that a car only makes sense with, say, 4 passengers.

The thing is, most people already own the car so they don't consider tax/servicing as part of the cost of travel whereas on a train, this is all added to the ticket and the servicing is pretty extreme on the railways.

freeflight4 tahun yang lalu

The secret is to order your ticket ahead of the travel and not to go for flex tickets, that way it's possible to get a massive discount and even travel first class ICE very affordably.

For example, Nürnberg - Berlin can cost up to 127€ for second class ticket, if you buy the ticket the same day you need it.

Buy the ticket, for the same connection, 2 weeks in advance, and suddenly its only 39,90€ for second class and 53,90€ for first class.

qwertox4 tahun yang lalu

As an example, the 1-month-ticket for Stuttgart for two zones is 92,20€ [0].

For those affected by inflation, the reduction from 90 to 15€ would already be noticeable, the additional 6€ would be neglectible to the consumer in comparison to the already offered discount (not to mention that these new tickets can be used in the entire country).

And those who will now leave their car in the garage will probably be saving even more. At least in my case it was always cheaper to use public transport to go to the city, at least if I also considered the parking cost. This for a 1-day ticket, which already costs a bit over 6€.

[0] https://www.vvs.de/tickets/zeittickets-abo-polygo/monatstick...

drakonka4 tahun yang lalu

Why? Presumably they took into account their own financial situation when setting this price. Why would you want an organization to try and claw a few _more_ euros out of people when they've already agreed on 9€? I guess I just don't understand where you're coming from in terms of the purpose of this suggestion.

wwwwasmistake4 tahun yang lalu

Maybe this time it's because of rising energy cost, but I remember there was very same deal for short time, little more than 10 years ago when I was visiting there. If one feels adventurous, I can highly recommend buying this ticket.

Tenoke4 tahun yang lalu

>What a nice idea to double the price! i suggest to triple it, so they can make even more profits!

Pretty sure they wouldn't be making any profit at 15e or 27e either.

mtmail4 tahun yang lalu

> Are you american by chance?

That was unneccessary. _Microft shared several German news articles in the past.

darrenf4 tahun yang lalu

Surely the question was aimed at @qwertox, not @_Microft?

_Microft4 tahun yang lalu

I don't think that the message was addressed at me but I agree that it was unnecessarily personal. You inferred my nationality correctly btw ;)

GavinMcG4 tahun yang lalu

I'm an American who has lived in Germany, and it didn't seem like a personal attack to me. It's a reasonable thing to wonder when someone espouses a profits-first view in response to a social program.

_Microft4 tahun yang lalu

OK, I hadn't considered that. Thanks for the perspective!

dmurray4 tahun yang lalu

Isn't the taxpayer paying the shortfall, rather than the "railway operators"?

_ph_4 tahun yang lalu

Right, it is tax-funded.

Don't ask me how exactly they assign the tax money to the train companies, but probably they get a fixed amount per ticket sold, which would be another reason why it is important to "sell" those tickets.

phh4 tahun yang lalu

Uh this offer is paid by the railway operators, not by the government?

chmod7754 tahun yang lalu

No. It's paid for by the government and expected to cost around 2.5 billion EUR.

It's part of this: https://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/Standardar...

phh4 tahun yang lalu

Thanks. Then I don't understand commenter's "helped the railway operators a good deal"

alecco4 tahun yang lalu

Populism. This will make the country consume more energy. There's a crisis and the solution is saving as much energy as possible. And help companies not go bankrupt. But that doesn't sell...

macco4 tahun yang lalu

If people use the train instead of their cars, it will save energy by a lot. Trains are the most efficient form of transportation, cars the least efficient.

ryukafalz4 tahun yang lalu

Bicycles are the most efficient form of transportation if we’re talking energy use, but yes, trains beat out cars by a lot. :)

freemint4 tahun yang lalu

Absolutetly not since the fuel (human food) is horribly CO2 intensive to produce.

ryukafalz4 tahun yang lalu

You’re still going to eat no matter how you travel though! That’s non-negotiable regardless of mode.

(Also, e-bikes exist too, if you’re really worried that people exercising might eat a little bit more.)

Aldipower4 tahun yang lalu

The more fitness you gain, the more effective you are in your energy utilization. Sportive people need less energy! Hard, but true.

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

It’ll move energy use from highly inefficient personal vehicles burning gasoline to highly efficient trains using mostly renewable electricity, during the summer where more than enough electricity is available.

iggldiggl4 tahun yang lalu

If this was really about saving energy, they wouldn't also simultaneously lower gas taxes during the same period as well.

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

As is common in coalition governments, the 9-Euro-Ticket is a pet project of the greens to save energy and save people money, while the gas taxes are a pet project of the neoliberals to save people money :)

iggldiggl4 tahun yang lalu

Indeed…

k8sToGo4 tahun yang lalu

Still plenty of diesel run train engines in Germany.

Also coal is still being burnt. So I don't think it is mostly renewable.

kuschku4 tahun yang lalu

In both of these cases, the energy per person-kilometer of transportation is orders of magnitudes lower than with an ICE car. So the energy usage would still go down

april_224 tahun yang lalu

I think that the Deutsche Bahn runs 100% on clean energy.

sneusse4 tahun yang lalu

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftwerk_Datteln

40% ~ 400MW of this coal plant go directly to DB. They argue that it’s only used for freight and not for public transport but meh - a useless differentiation IMO.

sascha_sl4 tahun yang lalu

A lot of regional lines are already at max capacity in terms of rolling stock and track capacity. This will incentivise less car use for journeys where direct connections are available.

It will also give access to public transport to those in extreme poverty who have no other means of mobility, whom Germany has been prosecuting as criminals and putting in jail when their fines add up enough. Speeding and parking offenses are civil offenses. Public transport without a ticket? Felony.

mbg7214 tahun yang lalu

When is there not a crisis? If you're running a train anyway, the marginal cost of attaching a couple more cars for the extra demand seems pretty small.

sascha_sl4 tahun yang lalu

Not even that. Most lines are already at maximum capacity, and the number of cars is usually dependent on the shortest platform on the line already.

We take this so seriously, any stop, even unplanned, where the doors might open aside from absolute emergencies must be on a platform of sufficient length.

bloak4 tahun yang lalu

In the UK it's quite normal, I think, for them to tell people who want to get off at stop X that they have to be in carriages Y-Z because the platform isn't long enough for them to open the doors of other carriages. There seems to be a Wikipedia page on the general topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_door_operation ("Selective Door Operation enables trains to call at a station where the platform is shorter than the train.")

It's my understanding that the capacity of the UK train network is mostly limited by the granularity of the signalling.

mbg7214 tahun yang lalu

That's one of the situations where the UK seems like a halfway-honorary US state, in a "Hold my damn beer--you're all right!" sort of way.

poooogles4 tahun yang lalu

>Not even that. Most lines are already at maximum capacity, and the number of cars is usually dependent on the shortest platform on the line already.

Here in the UK we run trains that are longer than platforms quite frequently. I'm talking about 9 car trains stopping at 2 car platforms here as well, not 9 car trains where the front and rear doors of the first and last carriage don't open.

iknownothow4 tahun yang lalu

Sources for claims? Genuinely curious.

tauchunfall4 tahun yang lalu

It will consume more energy, when they need more trains or train cars. Excluding the energy needed for devices and in the restaurant on board.

edit: clearified a sentence.