Germany's €9 transit ticket cuts 1.8 million tonnes of CO2(weforum.org)
weforum.org
Germany's €9 transit ticket cuts 1.8 million tonnes of CO2
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/08/germanys-9-euro-transport-ticket-cut-1-8-million-tons-of-co2/
76 comments
It's interesting watching the difference in how transit is treated by officials between NYC (where I lived last year) and Berlin (where I live this year).
In NYC, we're ramping up enforcement and cracking down on fare jumping. In Berlin, it's the opposite-- less fare-enforcement and more subsidies for people to take the train. I really have a hard time seeing how NYC's strategy could be more effective. It's not even like it's cheap.
In NYC, we're ramping up enforcement and cracking down on fare jumping. In Berlin, it's the opposite-- less fare-enforcement and more subsidies for people to take the train. I really have a hard time seeing how NYC's strategy could be more effective. It's not even like it's cheap.
It's true that Berlin public transit has no physical fare enforcement (e.g. there are no ticket gates at subway stations), but the state operator of public transit is anything but lax on fare dodgers: the tickets are being checked randomly by undercover ticket inspectors, and every so often there's news of an inspector being violent [0]. The reality with ticket inspectors stands in stark contrast to the witty and playful online identity maintained by the BVG.
Additionally, repeated fare dodging is treated as fraud by the German law and repeated offences can land you in jail [1].
[0] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/bvg-berlin-strassenbahn...
[1] https://taz.de/Haftstrafen-fuer-Schwarzfahren/!5529577/
[0] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/bvg-berlin-strassenbahn...
[1] https://taz.de/Haftstrafen-fuer-Schwarzfahren/!5529577/
Yes generally, but during this €9 fare summer, I haven’t seen any checks at all. They just assume you all paid for it.
As much as maybe fare evasion is a secondary concern, I think the main reason they're cracking down on the subways in NYC is because people weren't feeling safe on the trains anymore.
As much as I love a free and open and fair society, you can see why people not my size might be uncomfortable next to people growling, sleeping with trash bags filled with their belongings, drinking out of brown paper bags, rolling and smoking blunts and cigarettes. (I mostly bike these days but I saw all of that in recent subway trips during the early summer).
And then there was the rash of incidents on the subway with people getting shot at stations, the guy who tried to set off a smoke bomb and pulled out a gun on the car and started shooting, the guy who smeared shit on someone's face, the people who've been pushed onto tracks.
These incidents are _incredibly_ rare, but the way humans work doesn't let a lot of us shake off that perception of the subways being less safe than they used to be.
I'm not one of those people, I base my fears on statistics, but you can't expect every human being, especially smaller people, the elderly, and women to be as carefree.
As much as I love a free and open and fair society, you can see why people not my size might be uncomfortable next to people growling, sleeping with trash bags filled with their belongings, drinking out of brown paper bags, rolling and smoking blunts and cigarettes. (I mostly bike these days but I saw all of that in recent subway trips during the early summer).
And then there was the rash of incidents on the subway with people getting shot at stations, the guy who tried to set off a smoke bomb and pulled out a gun on the car and started shooting, the guy who smeared shit on someone's face, the people who've been pushed onto tracks.
These incidents are _incredibly_ rare, but the way humans work doesn't let a lot of us shake off that perception of the subways being less safe than they used to be.
I'm not one of those people, I base my fears on statistics, but you can't expect every human being, especially smaller people, the elderly, and women to be as carefree.
in new delhi, india, metro is "actually amazing"....
you have mandatory baggage x-ray checking and a physcial patdown, both for men and women EVERYTIME you enter the station so you cant have weapons of any sort.
the stations are guarded by trained police (cisf) whole job profile is to only secure highly sensitive operations and they are trained to actually do their job.... you have full CCTV coverage of stations and trains and it is generally safe. for women, the first carriage of every train is mandatory for women only and any men who board that carriage are fined and removed from the train...
you cannot eat or even "sit on the floor of the train" so its very clean even when many thousand passengers ride it every single day...
tickets are enforced so you cannot just freeride the stations and cars. you need a card/ticket to enter and exit and are charged by the time between these two entries so there aren't panhandlers, beggars there...
india has a generally dirty habit of doing chewing tobacco and the city stinks with the stink of red stains on every building, wall, road, vehicles but spitting is an offense in the station/train permises so its also clean by that way.
if you are in india and in delhi, try it once. you will enjoy the ride
you have mandatory baggage x-ray checking and a physcial patdown, both for men and women EVERYTIME you enter the station so you cant have weapons of any sort.
the stations are guarded by trained police (cisf) whole job profile is to only secure highly sensitive operations and they are trained to actually do their job.... you have full CCTV coverage of stations and trains and it is generally safe. for women, the first carriage of every train is mandatory for women only and any men who board that carriage are fined and removed from the train...
you cannot eat or even "sit on the floor of the train" so its very clean even when many thousand passengers ride it every single day...
tickets are enforced so you cannot just freeride the stations and cars. you need a card/ticket to enter and exit and are charged by the time between these two entries so there aren't panhandlers, beggars there...
india has a generally dirty habit of doing chewing tobacco and the city stinks with the stink of red stains on every building, wall, road, vehicles but spitting is an offense in the station/train permises so its also clean by that way.
if you are in india and in delhi, try it once. you will enjoy the ride
I've just had a look at the pictures:
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/delhi-metro-average-wait...
It looks very nice, even nicer than in some European cities.
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/delhi-metro-average-wait...
It looks very nice, even nicer than in some European cities.
I don't have an issue with tougher policing of the fare with actual doors and police presence but a patdown is kind of ridiculous. I'm afraid people too easily give up their freedom for a tiny increase in safety
nope. a patdown to prevent any concealed weapons is a good thing....
may i ask, what kind of freedoms do you loose if you are 100% sure that in a train station or in a train that no one is carrying a knife or a gun or something lethal?
>tiny increase in safety
yeah, right... guns don't kill people, it is people who kill people. same for cigarettes i suppose.
>tiny increase in safety
yeah, right... guns don't kill people, it is people who kill people. same for cigarettes i suppose.
I dunno, that seems like a lot to me living in NYC where we have basically none of that and life is fine. We all get on the train and go our ways and peak ridership is millions a day (prepandemic was almost 6 million on the MTA trains alone (not including the LIRR, Metro North, and NJ Transit, and Amtrak)).
I don't think anyone in NYC wants that. Talk about a police presence sheesh.
And yea I just talked about the perception issues, which is why they're cracking down on fare evaders. Basically increasing police presence to make people feel like it's the safe system they've been using for years before the pandemic.
I don't think anyone in NYC wants that. Talk about a police presence sheesh.
And yea I just talked about the perception issues, which is why they're cracking down on fare evaders. Basically increasing police presence to make people feel like it's the safe system they've been using for years before the pandemic.
NYC subway is said to be stinky, with homeless people and people dying and such, people throwing fights and stuff...
>And yea I just talked about the perception issues, which is why they're cracking down on fare evaders.
why should that not be a problem when they are running a public utility? oh, did i mention that women just have to carry an empty "card" with no balance and they can "actually freeride" the whole train for as long as they want ?
so only men have to pay for their rides and everyone is happy with the arrangement in delhi so why should they NOT enforce men not paying?
>And yea I just talked about the perception issues, which is why they're cracking down on fare evaders.
why should that not be a problem when they are running a public utility? oh, did i mention that women just have to carry an empty "card" with no balance and they can "actually freeride" the whole train for as long as they want ?
so only men have to pay for their rides and everyone is happy with the arrangement in delhi so why should they NOT enforce men not paying?
I see people jump the turnstiles all the time, and they're usually not the type that growl at you. Usually (at least in my area) it is young, teenage or early 20-something brown/black males who blend back into the crowd immediately.
I agree the types of people you described are a problem, but they aren't the farejumpers.
I agree the types of people you described are a problem, but they aren't the farejumpers.
lol brown/black males. Isn't that a bit passive aggressive version of racism hidden under "just pointing out what I noticed"? Is that because you are biased that you notice or is it the actual reality?
Please expand on what was racist about my message. Was it where I said that fare jumpers just blended in with the crowd and didn't growl at people, and were not the problem makers that OP was describing?
Was I also sexist in pointing out it is mostly males I see doing it?
Was I also sexist in pointing out it is mostly males I see doing it?
I’ve been to Berlin once in the last 10 or so years. Took the bus. Had to pay with a 20€ bill. The driver looked at me as if I’m trying to hand him something poisonous and waved me through.
It got better. Now you can use Android pay in the buses and at train stations. The ticket app is decent too.
Only the old machines in the tram remain. Those only take coins.
Only the old machines in the tram remain. Those only take coins.
I live in Dresden and can’t remember exactly what when the last time my ticket was checked in the bus or tram. IIRC last time was July and I ride the tram and bus daily
But I always have my ticket with me; as another mentioned, there are undercover control checks that will surprise you
But I always have my ticket with me; as another mentioned, there are undercover control checks that will surprise you
You can add Seattle to your comparison. Fare enforcement is almost non-existing at the moment, and more and more groups are traveling for free. However transit quality is not nearly on the same level as in New York or Berlin.
From reading reddit, I learned that a large part was also how it simplified things. Here in the north it’s pretty straightforward, but as you can see on this map [0] it gets slightly more confusing in large parts of Germany.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_transport_assoc...
edit: Just to explain how the north is even simpler than it looks, VGSF is not relevant and simply included in NAH.SH, and HVV has a tight cooperation with NAH.SH, so it’s often just one ticket for Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_transport_assoc...
edit: Just to explain how the north is even simpler than it looks, VGSF is not relevant and simply included in NAH.SH, and HVV has a tight cooperation with NAH.SH, so it’s often just one ticket for Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein.
It's the Holy Roman Empire of modern times.
It's a bit frustrating to see that sunset clauses for laws trying something controversial aren't more common. What we're seeing right now (everyone debating whether this was good or not) is what I'd have wanted to see for most/all surveillance laws.
I'm hoping they find something reasonable to follow up; for what it costs it really left a huge impression on everyone I've been talking to, quite the flagship project.
I'm hoping they find something reasonable to follow up; for what it costs it really left a huge impression on everyone I've been talking to, quite the flagship project.
The "PATROIT" act did have sunset clauses. It kept getting re-uped but finally expired on March 15th, 2020 mainly due to Trump's veto threat. The vote on the bill to extend the act was indefinitely postponed.[1] So you are right that having those sunset clauses are important.
That being said, many of the surveillance provisions in the act were retained in other bills and the history and current situation is pretty complicated[2].
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act#Section_expiration... [2]https://www.justsecurity.org/78753/rethinking-surveillance-o...
That being said, many of the surveillance provisions in the act were retained in other bills and the history and current situation is pretty complicated[2].
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act#Section_expiration... [2]https://www.justsecurity.org/78753/rethinking-surveillance-o...
Yeah, it was quite tiring for the agents and strained the infrastructure, but they now have solid data on the effect of such policy, and can now plan how to incorporate the policy completely, or find a middle ground, and adjust the infrastructure accordingly.
The 9€ ticket "success story" looks like a large hoax mainly created by green-friendly media.
1) The CO2 savings are nothing more than a wild guess rather than a scientifically sound estimation. The real numbers might be as low as 600000 tonns. And even these numbers are unsure because they include all those car drivers who have used this ticket only once during the 3-month test period, out of curiosity, and therefore can't be used for reliable prediction of what would happen if this kind of tickets will be introduced permanently.
2) At the same time, we don't know the real costs of this experiment yet. Some sources call it to be 10 billions instead of 2,5 billions.
3) Overall, only 10% of ticket users chose public transport instead of their car. Most of the trips has been generated by people who wouldn't travel at all if the ticket was not so cheap. And on the other hand, there are many news that people who usually commute using public transportation had to fall back to the cars, because the trains were so overcrowded and were frequently cancelled.
More scientific studies are needed to research the REAL effects of this experiment. We shouldn't make any political decisions based on the wishful thinking only.
1) The CO2 savings are nothing more than a wild guess rather than a scientifically sound estimation. The real numbers might be as low as 600000 tonns. And even these numbers are unsure because they include all those car drivers who have used this ticket only once during the 3-month test period, out of curiosity, and therefore can't be used for reliable prediction of what would happen if this kind of tickets will be introduced permanently.
2) At the same time, we don't know the real costs of this experiment yet. Some sources call it to be 10 billions instead of 2,5 billions.
3) Overall, only 10% of ticket users chose public transport instead of their car. Most of the trips has been generated by people who wouldn't travel at all if the ticket was not so cheap. And on the other hand, there are many news that people who usually commute using public transportation had to fall back to the cars, because the trains were so overcrowded and were frequently cancelled.
More scientific studies are needed to research the REAL effects of this experiment. We shouldn't make any political decisions based on the wishful thinking only.
1) The 9 € ticket wasn't about CO2 reduction, it was about providing cheap(er) public transportation for the masses.
2) Even 10 billion is not really much money for a state like Germany. If the 9 € ticket, or a successor, would be rolled out permanently you'd expect savings in different areas which could make up for the additional cost of a subsidized ticket. Make the ticket 30 €/month and you'll only have a third of the costs left.
3) Sounds fine to me: People who would normally not be able to pay for a train ticket were able to do so, enjoy what they could reach by train and have a nice summer. I don't think there's anything bad in this, especially for people with a lower income.
What this "experiment" clearly showed is:
- Make public transportation easy and cheap to use and people will use it
- German public transportation massively lacks capacity
You might call it a "hoax" but it showed that we're just as bad in public transportation as we are in broadband internet access. Politics didn't do anything to improve this situation in the last 20 years because gas was cheap and everything else was fine, too.
2) Even 10 billion is not really much money for a state like Germany. If the 9 € ticket, or a successor, would be rolled out permanently you'd expect savings in different areas which could make up for the additional cost of a subsidized ticket. Make the ticket 30 €/month and you'll only have a third of the costs left.
3) Sounds fine to me: People who would normally not be able to pay for a train ticket were able to do so, enjoy what they could reach by train and have a nice summer. I don't think there's anything bad in this, especially for people with a lower income.
What this "experiment" clearly showed is:
- Make public transportation easy and cheap to use and people will use it
- German public transportation massively lacks capacity
You might call it a "hoax" but it showed that we're just as bad in public transportation as we are in broadband internet access. Politics didn't do anything to improve this situation in the last 20 years because gas was cheap and everything else was fine, too.
What it didn't show is "name a price" so that the tax payer can know what they're getting back for the money.
What do you mean by that?
How good is the bang for the buck in reducing CO2 emissions compared eg on the CO2 credit prices on the EU carbon trading market?
Apparently this program cost 2.5 billion (https://www.german-way.com/travel-and-tourism/public-transpo...)
Edit: so 2.5 B / 1.8 M is 1400€/ton. Credits have been about 80€/ton this year according to https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/carbon - so direct emission reduction cost of this program are about 18x vs buying and sequestering credits from market. (Both ways have second order emissions effects of course, eg getting people to give up cars if this is continued, increasing carbon credit market costs for industry etc.)
Apparently this program cost 2.5 billion (https://www.german-way.com/travel-and-tourism/public-transpo...)
Edit: so 2.5 B / 1.8 M is 1400€/ton. Credits have been about 80€/ton this year according to https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/carbon - so direct emission reduction cost of this program are about 18x vs buying and sequestering credits from market. (Both ways have second order emissions effects of course, eg getting people to give up cars if this is continued, increasing carbon credit market costs for industry etc.)
Reducing CO2 emissions was not the primary purpose of this program. The goal was to financially support people because prices, especially energy have increased considerably.
The program made mobility accessible to many more people as well, so it's not like you can divide the cost by co2 savings
I agree the other benefits justify it independent of the CO2 picture. But given the headline, the cost effectiveness wrt CO2 would be a good perspective to have as well, and to evaluate this aspect you can just divide it like that.
Trains are so fixed cost heavy that I think it would always be worth it to price them for maximum utilization of capacity. It probably makes sense to subsidize them this way for that reason. The marginal cost of more passangers is so small.
Trains are so fixed cost heavy that I think it would always be worth it to price them for maximum utilization of capacity. It probably makes sense to subsidize them this way for that reason. The marginal cost of more passangers is so small.
This program was made to help the German people with the rising price of fuel for the Russian war. Not to cut the emissions, this is only a consequence.
Tangential, but why is it so hard in 2022 to make your simple article load without JavaScript? No reader mode either.
Well, because the served page is just a shell, and the actual article content is served via a separate graphql query. Obviously the only way to do it!
For content like this (ie not actually interactive content that might require javascript), I send it to archive.ph, and then almost always you can load the page in readermode or at least with javascript disabled)
For content like this (ie not actually interactive content that might require javascript), I send it to archive.ph, and then almost always you can load the page in readermode or at least with javascript disabled)
Thanks for the archive.ph tip! That's a pretty neat trick. I'll try that out going forward.
It's not hard, but you're probably not their target audience so they don't care. The best you can do these days is to either use a compromise like and archive.org plugin or ublock origin.
I use uBlock Origin to block all Javascript by default with custom rules for websites that need it. IMO, articles aren't websites that need an exception, but that's changing more and more every day. I'm definitely not their target audience, agreed.
That 9 Euro ticket was awesome when I visited! Totally recommend! Applaud the initiative. Really neat.
In the UK they're making it so that from Jan-March all bus journeys will be £2. I live just outside of a city (in a different county) and a single ticket is about £4 at the moment to where I work. I'll definitely be getting the bus for that period.
If the goal is to reduce CO2 emissions, why not tax CO2 emissions?
Shouldn't the market work it out in the best possible way then?
Shouldn't the market work it out in the best possible way then?
We do. In Germany emissions from burning fuel for transportation and heating is taxed with €30/kg CO2, rising to €55/kg CO2 by 2026.
There's also a cap-and-trade scheme at EU level that covers various industries [1]. It was very tame for a long time, with prices hovering around €5/kg CO2, but since 2018 prices have gone up a lot and it now sits around €80/kg CO2.
Still, German public transit is in need of some reforms, and seeing that an experiment produced greenhouse gas reductions is a positive signal.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_Tradi...
[2] https://icapcarbonaction.com/en/ets-prices (click on systems to filter)
There's also a cap-and-trade scheme at EU level that covers various industries [1]. It was very tame for a long time, with prices hovering around €5/kg CO2, but since 2018 prices have gone up a lot and it now sits around €80/kg CO2.
Still, German public transit is in need of some reforms, and seeing that an experiment produced greenhouse gas reductions is a positive signal.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emissions_Tradi...
[2] https://icapcarbonaction.com/en/ets-prices (click on systems to filter)
In the UK road tax is based on your car's CO2 emissions.
The problem is when the VW scandal broke, lots of people had bought diesels to lower their CO2 and suddenly diesels were evil and needed disincentivising. So the problem is anything like that isn't cleverly designed enough to be trustworthy, or even if it is, political whim could still overturn it.
The problem is when the VW scandal broke, lots of people had bought diesels to lower their CO2 and suddenly diesels were evil and needed disincentivising. So the problem is anything like that isn't cleverly designed enough to be trustworthy, or even if it is, political whim could still overturn it.
I seriously doubt diesels were ever bought to "lower their CO2 emissions". At no point in time there was ever doubt that diesels were the more polluting option.
People bought diesels due to their lower consumption per 100km and lower diesel prices in comparison to 95.
People bought diesels due to their lower consumption per 100km and lower diesel prices in comparison to 95.
> I seriously doubt diesels were ever bought to "lower their CO2 emissions". At no point in time there was ever doubt that diesels were the more polluting option.
That's two entirely independent statements. VW Diesels do produce lower CO2 emissions. But when building an engine, there's a tradeoff: the leaner it burns, the lower the CO2 emissions and the higher the NOx emissions.
The Diesel scandal was about NOx.
That's two entirely independent statements. VW Diesels do produce lower CO2 emissions. But when building an engine, there's a tradeoff: the leaner it burns, the lower the CO2 emissions and the higher the NOx emissions.
The Diesel scandal was about NOx.
That's it. The UK government incentivised low CO2, i.e. diesel, so lots of diesels were bought, then after dieselgate there was lots of condemnation of diesels.
> At no point in time there was ever doubt that diesels were the more polluting option.
Now I never closely looked into this as I never planned on owning a car, but until then just from what I picked up reading newspapers and things (in Germany), I actually assumed they were the more environmentally friendly option.
Now I never closely looked into this as I never planned on owning a car, but until then just from what I picked up reading newspapers and things (in Germany), I actually assumed they were the more environmentally friendly option.
It just depends on whether you want CO2 (bad for planet) or NOx and particulates (bad for nearby humans). With ICE cars you just have to choose.
Nothing I read back then (again, without going deep) had that kind of granularity. It was all bad vs good ;)
Yes, quite. That's what happens when "journalism" becomes a generic thing you can study, instead of experts in a field becoming journalists in that field. All your news sources barely know what they're writing about.
Old man rant over.
Old man rant over.
Not everyone has the same belief in market based solutions as you do.
It would be the number one way to not being re-elected. I think herding people towards a better alternative via creative strategies while not creating public outrage is a good way to go from a politician's perspective.
[deleted]
This has cost the German government 2.5 billion Euros [1].
That’s $1388 per metric ton of CO2. Current direct air capture technology is estimated to cost between $132 and $342 per metric ton [2]. If the goal was to reduce carbon emissions, this was a giant waste of money, even compared to the most expensive forms of carbon reduction.
[1] https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.9-euro-ticket-kost...
[2] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/is-carbon-capture-too-expen...
edit: corrected price per ton
That’s $1388 per metric ton of CO2. Current direct air capture technology is estimated to cost between $132 and $342 per metric ton [2]. If the goal was to reduce carbon emissions, this was a giant waste of money, even compared to the most expensive forms of carbon reduction.
[1] https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.9-euro-ticket-kost...
[2] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/is-carbon-capture-too-expen...
edit: corrected price per ton
But that really wasn’t the intent. The intent was to lighten the burden of the parts of the society that did not profit from the gas subsidy. What you see here is basically the knock on effect of what essentially-free public transport changes in travel behavior without the time to actually affect vehicle inventory (ie it’s a lower bound)
There is also the point of scale, I wouldn’t bet on the capacity for carbon removal on that scale exists today (not that I would be against investing that amount of additional funding for carbon capture technology)
There is also the point of scale, I wouldn’t bet on the capacity for carbon removal on that scale exists today (not that I would be against investing that amount of additional funding for carbon capture technology)
That’s the cost of today’s direct air capture. When scaled up, these costs will go down due to economics of scale.
> If the goal was to reduce carbon emission
It wasn't, but it's a neat side effect.
It wasn't, but it's a neat side effect.
It was part of a relieve packet to help people through high fuel prices: make it easier to travel by public transit, along with a reduction in gasoline tax (that cost us 3.15 billion euros).
Seeing that one of those two even reduced emissions is a nice bonus. It didn't have to do that at all to be a success.
[1] https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2022/kw20-de-e...
Seeing that one of those two even reduced emissions is a nice bonus. It didn't have to do that at all to be a success.
[1] https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2022/kw20-de-e...
Of course this isn't the whole story.
- You need to subtract the cost of road maintenance that may have been saved with less cars driving.
- You need to add gas tax that wasn't collected.
- You need to add the sales tax for trips that people took that they may not have otherwise.
- You need to subtract the healthcare costs of reduced pollution and accidents.
- Capturing carbon is less efficient that preventing it begin produced in the first place because that ignores the carbon emitted in the production of fuels and materials.
Basically the word is incredibly complicated. It is hard to equate this "nearly free" far with direct carbon capture.
- You need to subtract the cost of road maintenance that may have been saved with less cars driving.
- You need to add gas tax that wasn't collected.
- You need to add the sales tax for trips that people took that they may not have otherwise.
- You need to subtract the healthcare costs of reduced pollution and accidents.
- Capturing carbon is less efficient that preventing it begin produced in the first place because that ignores the carbon emitted in the production of fuels and materials.
Basically the word is incredibly complicated. It is hard to equate this "nearly free" far with direct carbon capture.
Sure, I don’t think this changes the numbers fundamentally though.
Direct air capture hasn't been proven to work at scale. And the key thing we need to do is to reduce emissions, which is done exactly by incentives like this. Was the €9 ticket perfect? No, but it was a good first shot, now we have data and can improve.
Furthermore, as others have stated, this was not even the primary goal of this program.
Furthermore, as others have stated, this was not even the primary goal of this program.
Your argument is that we should focus on expensive initiatives that don’t reduce carbon emissions as much as alternatives because you like them personally?
But how much money flows into their coffers from increased tourism/isn't spent to bail out businesses with less customers?
I think this leaves out that people who can more readily access more of Germany spend more money when they get off the transit systems.
I think this leaves out that people who can more readily access more of Germany spend more money when they get off the transit systems.
Climate change doesn't care about increased tourism.
> That’s $655 per metric ton of CO2. Current direct air capture technology is estimated to cost between $132 and $342 per metric ton
Ah yes. Let's totally forget about the actual traveling of passengers that this allowed in the first place.
Ah yes. Let's totally forget about the actual traveling of passengers that this allowed in the first place.
Article was about the carbon emission reductions (titled "Germany's €9 transit ticket cuts 1.8 million tonnes of CO2"). Nobody is disputing that more people used public transport when it was almost free. My point was that it's really expensive as a means to reduce carbon emissions. It does have other effects that would be desirable. If it was for me, public transportation would be entirely free for everybody. There is evidence that the cost savings in ticket machine and fare enforcement infrastructure would make this especially appealing due to cost savings.
“The discounted ticket constituted a major price reduction. Normally, monthly tickets for local transportation in Berlin cost €107.“
107€? That's the most expensive monthly pass (it includes Zone C, which is the area beyond the city limits). The 86€ pass is plenty for most, and a yearly abo would reduce it to 63€ a month. It's also tax-deductible.
https://www.bvg.de/en/tickets-tariffs/all-tickets
https://www.bvg.de/en/tickets-tariffs/all-tickets
Fantastic policy, would love to see it elsewhere
This claim was already discussed, and arguably refuted[1] a week ago.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32659581
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32659581
German €9 transit ticket would be even more effective, if they didn't mandate wearing masks in public transport.
I know many people that previously used public transport, and now use cars exclusively, only because they don't have desire to wear masks during the commute.
I know many people that previously used public transport, and now use cars exclusively, only because they don't have desire to wear masks during the commute.
For me it's the opposite: I wouldn't use public transportation and resort to my private car if masks were not mandated. I know getting covid is now the coolest thing on earth by I'll take a pass while I can.
I can't imagine that masks alone were the reason. I use them for two 1h commutes per day and I simply can't understand how they are such an issue. It is a bit annoying but you get used to it. Even longer distances like three hours are easily manageable.
I would understand tough, if they would switch to the car because of increased risk of catching the virus.
I would understand tough, if they would switch to the car because of increased risk of catching the virus.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32652591