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Germany's New Crowdfunded Train

233 points by misnamed 10y ago

lenni 10y ago
I do the Berlin-Stuttgart train journey regularly to visit my parents and quite like taking the train as it gives me a block of uninterupted time to read, work and just plain relax that I usually take for myself. So this sounds like an excellent way of making this even more enjoyable. I think I will give this a try next time I'm travelling south.
nobrains 10y ago
"speed or price? A new, crowdfunded entrant in Germany’s passenger rail scene is betting on the former, offering low-price but slightly slower than average" Betting ON the former or Betting AGAINST the former?
- nmstoker 10y ago
  Indeed! The article content is the important thing, but this is distracting given they missed the error right at the opening
- dao- 10y ago
  Probably confused "former" with "latter" rather than "on" with "against" :)
patall 10y ago
While I like the idea and will probably try it out in January, I think this article takes it bit too easy. The price of the cheapest ticket maybe €22, but by that measure, I was also able to do the same journey for €14.25 with Deutsche Bahn this year. They are mostly cheaper but not that much as the those tickets are for particular trains which are also cheaper on DB. And other admenities like Wifi will also finally come to ICE this year, there are already family zones. Besides maybe the seat gurantee, the other features sound more like gimmiks to me, nice on the first look but not really world changing. I like the croudfunding aspect though.
- cknight 10y ago
  Exactly. "A €22 ($23.50) one-way ticket is less than a quarter of DB’s €115.90 ($123) standard fare." is a bit misleading, given that DB's Standard fare is far from their cheapest. I have a BahnCard 25 (so a 25% discount), and always use Saver fares instead of Standard - meaning I have to take a particular train at a particular time... like with Locomore. A "Standard" DB fare, for those who don't know, means you can take any train(s) at any time on the date for your destination, and for some that flexibility is hugely valuable. I am travelling between Christmas and New Year this year, and even though it is along Locomore's single serviced line, the price will actually be the same. Since Locomore only stops once a day in my city at an ungodly hour of the morning, it's not so convenient. So I'm going with DB in the evening. Now, I am glad the city I live in and the one I visit my friends in are both on Locomore's line, as I am looking forward to trying it out, but as with you, I'll probably only try it out later, at a time when DB's fares aren't looking competitive. It really depends on how far you're going, what times are acceptable, and what discounts are available. Locomore's prices are roughly doubled during the festive period while DB has a mix of regular and high priced stuff. All that said, seeing some actual competition in this area is great.
  - lucb1e 10y ago
    > DB's Standard fare is far from their cheapest. I have a BahnCard 25 (so a 25% discount) Well the price of the bahncard should be added to the price you pay per trip, so the question is, how much is that card? Then people can figure out for themselves how often they'd commute and whether they'd save anything. And still, 25% off of €116 vs. €22 doesn't sound too appealing. Not criticizing the rest of your post, e.g. I agree that competition is good and available discounts should surely be included in comparisons!
    - lima 10y ago
      Bahncard 25 is 60€ (so it pays itself as long as you take 2-3 long-distance trips a year)
    - cknight 10y ago
      We're talking 25% off a Saver fare, which can often be well under half the price of a Standard fare. Because Locomore has only one train for one line, virtually all Locomore customers are going to be long distance DB customers as well, for all their other travel needs. Hence, a huge portion are going to have a BahnCard of some kind already. My BahnCard 25 maintains that discount for the local trams and buses in my city, so that's icing on the cake. For ~€60 a year, it's a no-brainer. The only people I know here without one are people who really do only take a train once or twice a year. All in all, Locomore seems competitive. But that's all, it doesn't seem like much of a market disruptor yet. Of course, with their expansion plans already in the works, I am excited to see what comes next. It's going to be an uphill battle but I'm glad someone has taken it on.
daenney 10y ago
It's really nice to see a project like this crop up after the rail privatisation. In the EU countries that have gone through that transition the situation for the passenger hasn't improved much and since there usually still only is a single provider for most routes the prices tend to only go up without much for it in return. That's not to say it would necessarily have been better to keep it public, just that the promise of privatisation hasn't really delivered, in my experience. This might not be groundbreaking, it might not even work but I'm really happy to see someone try something new(ish) in this arena. Also, trains are the best. Choo-choo!
- pluma 10y ago
  The only thing the privatisation originally did was eliminate DB's accountability and allow them to cut costs like infrastructure maintenance. I think the mistake was to turn a state monopoly into a private monopoly. I'm still not convinced privatising infrastructure like rail passenger transport is better than socialising it and at least on the communal level I'm convinced socialised public transport would be a better approach (i.e. treat trams and roads equivalently). But DB only really cares about their high speed trains, so it's good to see someone try to improve the rest.
- lambertsimnel 10y ago
  It vaguely reminds me of this planned cooperative British rail service: http://go-op.coop/ http://go-op.coop/ Go-Op aims to run passenger owned trains in competition with franchises granted by the government to conventional profit-distributing businesses. As far as I know, its trains haven't yet started running, but I'm pleased to see that it hasn't been abandoned, especially in light of Southern Rail's troubles.
jpatokal 10y ago
Way more interesting than this is the upcoming plan to liberalize rail transport across the entire EU. This should allow effectively anybody (meeting certain standards) to operate services on common infrastructure, introducing actual competition to the passenger rail market. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/20160420IPR24132/agreement-on-opening-up-of-the-eu-passenger-railway-market http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/20160420IPR2...
- carlob 10y ago
  See how well that went in the UK… We've had this in Italy for high speed trains for a while, and so far the only private competitor is close to bankruptcy.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  Are there any good studies on countries where this has already been done? Looking at the situation in Sweden where there has been rail liberalization, it seems like it mostly leads to underinvestment in the infrastructure because you can always just blame the passenger train companies... I haven't heard any happy stories from the UK either. I'm for it in principal (especially harmonization - any train border crossing in Europe can be a nightmare) but the incentives need to be engineered just right
  - daenney 10y ago
    I go between Uppsala and Stockholm regularly (it's roughly 70km, so a 38m ride) with SJ and I have to say though, most of the time I do blame SJ. The amount of times my train gets cancelled because their locomotives crap out is far larger than whenever it's because of infrastructure related reasons. Considering their latest price hike I'm not very happy with them. MTR does provide a nice alternative to SJ though when you want to get to Göteborg, Malmö or Köpenhamn. For a country as big as Sweden though there's a notable lack of high-speed rail to anything north of Stockholm and there doesn't seem to be any interest or incentive to improve that situation.
    - kalleboo 10y ago
kriro 10y ago
I think there's a market for a one route alternative "experience" train where the train isn't only the means to get from A to B but the journey itself provides value. I still vividly remember travelling to a Chaos Communication Congress on a privately operated "hack train". Must have been around 2000. Not the fastest connection but loads of fun :)
carlob 10y ago
I think this is more of a statement to how bad DB is. In Germany traveling with blablacar or mitfahrtgelegenheit is still very very popular, because trains are slow and incredibly expensive. Even if in my own country (Italy) people love to say that everything in Germany is better, but it's incredible to see how much worse trains are, and for 3x the price!
- dom0 10y ago
  Depends. For commuting they aren't bad at all (I've been commuting for a decade now).
- mschuster91 10y ago
  Slow? Okay, we don't have as much high-speed rails as France, but e.g. Hamburg-Munich (775km, once across the whole country) is 5:40h, while traveling by car is ~8h. Flight may be 1:15h pure flight time, but you have to add 1.5h of public transit time to get to/from the airports, plus ~1h for security and pre-boarding wait times, and luggage costs are enormous. Oh, and the security checks make you feel like a terrorist. Buses are f...ing cheap, but take ~10-11h. So, the train is still the fastest and most time-efficient way to travel across big distances. The only problem is that it's expensive as hell, because unlike the regional trains, the ICE trains don't get any public subsidies and have to be profitable on their own.
  - jmanderley 10y ago
    But that's the same pretty much everywhere. The Austrian Railjet Vienna - Salzburg, for example, isn't subsidized at all, but still much cheaper than DB. Or check out the prices of the Austrian operator "Westbahn". They are even using brand new Stadtler train sets, not decades old DB cars like Locomore.
    - mschuster91 10y ago
      I regularly travel with Westbahn, because they partner with Flixbus... their trains and the personnel are awesome (for what it's worth, they operate a smokers lounge on the train... a blessing for every smoker!). The problem with Westbahn is that they're likely deep in debt and still not profitable (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westbahn_(Unternehmen)#Gesch.C3.A4ftsergebnisse https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westbahn_(Unternehmen)#Gesch.C...). And for the Railjet: it's cheaper because the track fees are lower - here figures from 2011: http://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?3,5403272 http://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?3,5403272
linohh 10y ago
I own a Bahncard 100 which is a rail pass for the entire country. Unfortunately due to wtf, I cannot use it on this train. There's still a lot to be done.
- sauerbraten 10y ago
  Your BahnCard 100 is only for DB trains, and their partners like regional transport associations. Not sure why you suspect it to be valid for a competitor's service. And I doubt Locomore will ever partner with DB...
  - linohh 10y ago
    That's not how it works. There's the tariff union TBNE which covers almost every train in the country. I can use non DB trains without a problem (e.g. the HKX) - just not this one (and Thalys).
    - dao- 10y ago
      I suspect TBNE is pretty much what your parent comment meant by "...only for DB trains, and their partners like regional transport associations." I.e. DB would only partner with regional operators on tracks where DB itself doesn't operate anymore.
      - linohh 10y ago
        no. it's up to locomore to join, they just don't want to. same with HKX, in the beginning they didn't want to join, eventually they did.
    - gpvos 10y ago
      I thought HKX was also a competitor? What changed?
kriro 10y ago
I was wondering how they crowdfunded this and expected some sort of ticket prepurchase kickstarter. It seems that you can actually loan them money instead (over five years): 1500 Euro: 3,45% (6,9% if you take tickets not cash) 2500 Euro: 3,75% (7,3%) 5000 Euro: 4,15% (8,3%) Max. of 100k
thatfrenchguy 10y ago
Yeah, let's waste energy operate trains from the 1970's (or buses) and pretend it's a good thing because "look it's cheaper and you get organic food inside".
- linohh 10y ago
  The locomotive is brand new. The only thing missing is regenerative braking in the carriages which DBs long distance carriages also don't have.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- skrause 10y ago
  I doubt modern trains are much more efficient, electric engines have been very efficient for a long time.
- morsch 10y ago
  What makes you think those carriages are significantly less efficient than those made today? The engines[1] are fairly modern. Plus, they only drive at a leisurely (and more efficient) 200 km/h. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_ES64U2 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_ES64U2
galfarragem 10y ago
The 'idea' is not new, it recalls me Polish trains: old and slow but so cheap that everybody can afford them. Few years ago you could travel 500km for 15€. Despite that, there were still massive discounts (50%) for students and elders. Who cares if the trains are the fast/most comfortable if you can't afford to use them regularly.
- user5994461 10y ago
  > Who cares if the trains are the fast/most comfortable if you can't afford to use them regularly. People who don't need to travel 500km regularly.
dep_b 10y ago
It kind of baffles me that the only long distance trains that are still being done on European scale are prestigious high speed trains (usually connecting Brussels to X) that are much more expensive than plane tickets or anything else really. I wouldn't mind to take a trip to Paris from Amsterdam in a slower train for 20-30 euro, but this is really impossible unless you spend almost a day piecing badly connecting trains together. Especially when it's slightly more entertaining with draft beer, coffee, wi-fi and such.
- danieldk 10y ago
  It kind of baffles me that the only long distance trains that are still being done on European scale are prestigious high speed trains (usually connecting Brussels to X) that are much more expensive than plane tickets or anything else really. When I travel for work within Germany or just to a neighboring country, I want to get to get from A (which happens to be near Stuttgart) to B as fast as possible. Taking a plane from Stuttgart is even faster, but since climate change is real, I am now trying to avoid flying as much as possible. Hence, Deutsche Bahn. Going by high-speed train is also very comfortable if you reserve seats and do not have to transfer often. I should also point out that if you book timely, you can often get German train tickets very cheaply at the 'Sparpreis', which starts at 29 Euro. When we had less money, we would often reserve tickets in the minutes after the 'Sparpreis' became available. tl;dr you can travel cheaply in German by high-speed train. You just have to plan your trip and book tickets timely.
  - rublev 10y ago
    >but since climate change is real, I am now trying to avoid flying as much as possible. Can you go into more details about this?
    - morsch 10y ago
      Here's the IPCC's take: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/aviation/index.php?idp=64 http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/aviation/index.php?idp=6... One interesting aspect is that for high altitude airplanes, water vapour emissions may be as problematic as CO2.
posterboy 10y ago
Crowd funding the new word for financed by shareholders.
- dmurray 10y ago
  Bondholders, according to a very interesting parent comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13200369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13200369
moomin 10y ago
I think the bus vs train analysis is missing an important dimension: travelling on the bus is unpleasant. You can't stand, your kids feel sick. The same amount of time on a train is vastly preferable.
- LeanderK 10y ago
  i regularly travel from karlsruhe to munich and i can't work on the bus, since there is not enough space for my laptop. Working inside the train is pleasant and after christmas every ICE has free wifi (wow, that took forever for them to decide to implement it! Rolling out was rather quick)
pluma 10y ago
More competition might help DB to address some of its problems, but as a commuter one of the most frustrating problems with public transport is the chaotic pricing. Others have explained why DB's own pricing is a mess, but on a communal level public transport is even more of a mess[0]. You might think getting a "BahnCard 100" (a 100% discount card that costs ~€400/month) might be worth it if you travel a lot but if you routinely travel by train you'll also likely have to rely on public transport at your destination but bus and tram are often not part of the deal (i.e. no discount is applied whatsoever). I live in Cologne in NRW. If I only moved around within Cologne, I could get a monthly ticket for all tram and bus transport (for ~€100/month) in Cologne from the KVB (the city's privatised transport agency). If I want to go beyond that, I could instead get a monthly ticket for the regional railway from the VRS (the regional privatised transport alliance that includes the KVB). But although I generally stay within NRW I regularly commute to a city that's not within the boundaries of the VRS (or its parent alliance, the NVR). It's actually part of another alliance, the NWL. So I would need a ticket to move within the VRS region and then another to move within the NWL region. But there are actually three such alliances in NRW and I need to cross the region of the third alliance to get from one to the other, which is the VRR. So I would need a ticket for the VRS, another for the VRR and then another for NWL. But that's obviously silly, so there's also the NRW-ticket which covers the regions of all three alliances as a yearly subscription (which works out to ~€300/month). But of course that's only for NRW (one of the sixteen states/counties in Germany) and only for busses, trams and regional rail. If you want to use the intercity or ICE trains, even within NRW, you still need an extra ticket at the full price. Likewise if you ever need to cross the borders of NRW. As for the joys of actually using and validating the various tickets you might have to buy in addition to whichever subscription you end up with, that's what the article I linked to is about. [0]: http://www.wiwo.de/unternehmen/dienstleister/werner-knallhart-das-ticket-chaos-bei-bus-und-bahn-macht-arm-und-krank/9984412.html http://www.wiwo.de/unternehmen/dienstleister/werner-knallhar... (German)
- L_Rahman 10y ago
  And here I thought Americans were the only ones with a chaotic set of transit agencies serving the same region In all seriousness though, I'm very curious about the structural incentives at each of these places. Presumably, the people who run them care to some degree about customer experience. How then have they built a system that clearly doesn't?
limaoscarjuliet 10y ago
"Runs entirely on green electricity" - so is Deutsche Bahn at times, as Germany has been reported to produce more renewable electricity than they can consume.
- iso-8859-1 10y ago
  When the weather is nice... See these graphs: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/news/news-2016/germanys-electricity-exports-surplus-brings-record-revenue-of-over-two-billion-euros https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/news/news-2016/germanys-ele... Why would Germany sell electricity to the Netherlands but buy it from France? Because, when the weather is bad, Germany can't produce enough to cover its own needs. So Germany is still involved in nuclear power.
gravypod 10y ago
Aren't all trains crowdfunded? Isn't that what tax is?
mrweasel 10y ago
I don't know if this is still a thing in German trains in general, but the main selling point for me would be the fact that it looks like the train has coupes. A coupe is so much nice than a big open carriage.
lh7 10y ago
The idea of having "zones" for people with different interests sounds good. Given the sort of amenities on offer and the unusual founding route, not to mention its Eastern endpoint, it would have been more accurate to refer to this as "zones for hipsters with different interests" though. :-) Piss-taking aside, I think it's nicely representative of a certain "Germanness" trait which is perhaps not so well-known outside the country, where the stereotype of a population of humourless engineers still prevails.
jaclaz 10y ago
AFAIK it is not just Germany trains that are a mess (regarding fares), it is the same all over the world. What I really hate is that every time I take a train (in Italy) I can be sure that: 1) the lady in front of me payed 30% less than me (OK, she is elderly and some discount may be fine) 2) the guy on my right payed 25% less than me (OK, he is a student, and has one of those cards) 3) the girl on my left has payed 45% less than me (OK, she has a special discount as a woman and booked the ticket in large advance) 4) the guy in businessman suit on the seat on the other side of the aisle has paid anyething between 50%, 80% or 100% less than me (OK, because he is an employee of the railway or of the government) 5) etc. Simplified, I am the only one that is paying the full fare.
- ghaff 10y ago
  At least the routes on Amtrak that I take in the US don't seem to have huge variances based on booking ahead. Fares do vary and the prime slots for business travel tend to be pricier. (And the Acela carries a significant premium.) But it doesn't seem to be like what I've both observed and been told is the case in the UK where last minute/flexible/etc. fares can easily be triple what they are if you book a month or even a couple of weeks ahead of time.
- gotofritz 10y ago
  > OK, she is elderly and some discount may be fine And who reimburses the rail company for those discounts? > the girl on my left has payed 45% less than me (OK, she has a special discount as a woman and booked the ticket in large advance) "she has a special discount as a woman" - What? I call BS. "booked the ticket in large advance" - better. And what's stopping you from doing the same? > (OK, because he is an employee of the railway or of the government) And how many of those there are? > Simplified, I am the only one that is paying the full fare. Simplified, you are someone who exaggerates to use as an excuse for whinging about non existent unfairness.
  - vintageseltzer 10y ago
    Thank you for responding. The parent comment has to be one of the worst HN comments I have ever read. It is important that people who exaggerate and lie are held accountable for their words.
tiatia 10y ago
Weird train rides in Germany? I guess you could give this a try: http://www.un-verschaemt.de/ http://www.un-verschaemt.de/
nathanbarry 10y ago
I love the idea of having a car specifically for children to play. I'd pay extra for my kids (5 and 2) to have a place to play. Just a carpeted car with basic toys like many airports have.
eva55 10y ago
I think it's good idea, but if I had a chance to choose,definitely I would prefer to take my trip by plane. I used to book cheap tickets at https://lowcost.club/ https://lowcost.club/ to save money. I like to travel and usually visit 3 or 4 new countries per year. To travel by plane is easy, simple, and, of course, is faster.

233 points by misnamed 10y ago

lenni 10y ago

I do the Berlin-Stuttgart train journey regularly to visit my parents and quite like taking the train as it gives me a block of uninterupted time to read, work and just plain relax that I usually take for myself. So this sounds like an excellent way of making this even more enjoyable. I think I will give this a try next time I'm travelling south.

nobrains 10y ago

"speed or price? A new, crowdfunded entrant in Germany’s passenger rail scene is betting on the former, offering low-price but slightly slower than average" Betting ON the former or Betting AGAINST the former?

nmstoker 10y ago
Indeed! The article content is the important thing, but this is distracting given they missed the error right at the opening
dao- 10y ago
Probably confused "former" with "latter" rather than "on" with "against" :)

patall 10y ago

While I like the idea and will probably try it out in January, I think this article takes it bit too easy. The price of the cheapest ticket maybe €22, but by that measure, I was also able to do the same journey for €14.25 with Deutsche Bahn this year. They are mostly cheaper but not that much as the those tickets are for particular trains which are also cheaper on DB. And other admenities like Wifi will also finally come to ICE this year, there are already family zones. Besides maybe the seat gurantee, the other features sound more like gimmiks to me, nice on the first look but not really world changing. I like the croudfunding aspect though.

cknight 10y ago
Exactly. "A €22 ($23.50) one-way ticket is less than a quarter of DB’s €115.90 ($123) standard fare." is a bit misleading, given that DB's Standard fare is far from their cheapest. I have a BahnCard 25 (so a 25% discount), and always use Saver fares instead of Standard - meaning I have to take a particular train at a particular time... like with Locomore. A "Standard" DB fare, for those who don't know, means you can take any train(s) at any time on the date for your destination, and for some that flexibility is hugely valuable. I am travelling between Christmas and New Year this year, and even though it is along Locomore's single serviced line, the price will actually be the same. Since Locomore only stops once a day in my city at an ungodly hour of the morning, it's not so convenient. So I'm going with DB in the evening. Now, I am glad the city I live in and the one I visit my friends in are both on Locomore's line, as I am looking forward to trying it out, but as with you, I'll probably only try it out later, at a time when DB's fares aren't looking competitive. It really depends on how far you're going, what times are acceptable, and what discounts are available. Locomore's prices are roughly doubled during the festive period while DB has a mix of regular and high priced stuff. All that said, seeing some actual competition in this area is great.
- lucb1e 10y ago
  > DB's Standard fare is far from their cheapest. I have a BahnCard 25 (so a 25% discount) Well the price of the bahncard should be added to the price you pay per trip, so the question is, how much is that card? Then people can figure out for themselves how often they'd commute and whether they'd save anything. And still, 25% off of €116 vs. €22 doesn't sound too appealing. Not criticizing the rest of your post, e.g. I agree that competition is good and available discounts should surely be included in comparisons!
  - lima 10y ago
    Bahncard 25 is 60€ (so it pays itself as long as you take 2-3 long-distance trips a year)
  - cknight 10y ago
    We're talking 25% off a Saver fare, which can often be well under half the price of a Standard fare. Because Locomore has only one train for one line, virtually all Locomore customers are going to be long distance DB customers as well, for all their other travel needs. Hence, a huge portion are going to have a BahnCard of some kind already. My BahnCard 25 maintains that discount for the local trams and buses in my city, so that's icing on the cake. For ~€60 a year, it's a no-brainer. The only people I know here without one are people who really do only take a train once or twice a year. All in all, Locomore seems competitive. But that's all, it doesn't seem like much of a market disruptor yet. Of course, with their expansion plans already in the works, I am excited to see what comes next. It's going to be an uphill battle but I'm glad someone has taken it on.

daenney 10y ago

It's really nice to see a project like this crop up after the rail privatisation. In the EU countries that have gone through that transition the situation for the passenger hasn't improved much and since there usually still only is a single provider for most routes the prices tend to only go up without much for it in return. That's not to say it would necessarily have been better to keep it public, just that the promise of privatisation hasn't really delivered, in my experience. This might not be groundbreaking, it might not even work but I'm really happy to see someone try something new(ish) in this arena. Also, trains are the best. Choo-choo!

pluma 10y ago
The only thing the privatisation originally did was eliminate DB's accountability and allow them to cut costs like infrastructure maintenance. I think the mistake was to turn a state monopoly into a private monopoly. I'm still not convinced privatising infrastructure like rail passenger transport is better than socialising it and at least on the communal level I'm convinced socialised public transport would be a better approach (i.e. treat trams and roads equivalently). But DB only really cares about their high speed trains, so it's good to see someone try to improve the rest.
lambertsimnel 10y ago
It vaguely reminds me of this planned cooperative British rail service: http://go-op.coop/ http://go-op.coop/ Go-Op aims to run passenger owned trains in competition with franchises granted by the government to conventional profit-distributing businesses. As far as I know, its trains haven't yet started running, but I'm pleased to see that it hasn't been abandoned, especially in light of Southern Rail's troubles.

jpatokal 10y ago

Way more interesting than this is the upcoming plan to liberalize rail transport across the entire EU. This should allow effectively anybody (meeting certain standards) to operate services on common infrastructure, introducing actual competition to the passenger rail market. http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/20160420IPR24132/agreement-on-opening-up-of-the-eu-passenger-railway-market http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/20160420IPR2...

carlob 10y ago
See how well that went in the UK… We've had this in Italy for high speed trains for a while, and so far the only private competitor is close to bankruptcy.
kalleboo 10y ago
Are there any good studies on countries where this has already been done? Looking at the situation in Sweden where there has been rail liberalization, it seems like it mostly leads to underinvestment in the infrastructure because you can always just blame the passenger train companies... I haven't heard any happy stories from the UK either. I'm for it in principal (especially harmonization - any train border crossing in Europe can be a nightmare) but the incentives need to be engineered just right
- daenney 10y ago
  I go between Uppsala and Stockholm regularly (it's roughly 70km, so a 38m ride) with SJ and I have to say though, most of the time I do blame SJ. The amount of times my train gets cancelled because their locomotives crap out is far larger than whenever it's because of infrastructure related reasons. Considering their latest price hike I'm not very happy with them. MTR does provide a nice alternative to SJ though when you want to get to Göteborg, Malmö or Köpenhamn. For a country as big as Sweden though there's a notable lack of high-speed rail to anything north of Stockholm and there doesn't seem to be any interest or incentive to improve that situation.
  - kalleboo 10y ago

kriro 10y ago

I think there's a market for a one route alternative "experience" train where the train isn't only the means to get from A to B but the journey itself provides value. I still vividly remember travelling to a Chaos Communication Congress on a privately operated "hack train". Must have been around 2000. Not the fastest connection but loads of fun :)

carlob 10y ago

I think this is more of a statement to how bad DB is. In Germany traveling with blablacar or mitfahrtgelegenheit is still very very popular, because trains are slow and incredibly expensive. Even if in my own country (Italy) people love to say that everything in Germany is better, but it's incredible to see how much worse trains are, and for 3x the price!

dom0 10y ago
Depends. For commuting they aren't bad at all (I've been commuting for a decade now).
mschuster91 10y ago
Slow? Okay, we don't have as much high-speed rails as France, but e.g. Hamburg-Munich (775km, once across the whole country) is 5:40h, while traveling by car is ~8h. Flight may be 1:15h pure flight time, but you have to add 1.5h of public transit time to get to/from the airports, plus ~1h for security and pre-boarding wait times, and luggage costs are enormous. Oh, and the security checks make you feel like a terrorist. Buses are f...ing cheap, but take ~10-11h. So, the train is still the fastest and most time-efficient way to travel across big distances. The only problem is that it's expensive as hell, because unlike the regional trains, the ICE trains don't get any public subsidies and have to be profitable on their own.
- jmanderley 10y ago
  But that's the same pretty much everywhere. The Austrian Railjet Vienna - Salzburg, for example, isn't subsidized at all, but still much cheaper than DB. Or check out the prices of the Austrian operator "Westbahn". They are even using brand new Stadtler train sets, not decades old DB cars like Locomore.
  - mschuster91 10y ago
    I regularly travel with Westbahn, because they partner with Flixbus... their trains and the personnel are awesome (for what it's worth, they operate a smokers lounge on the train... a blessing for every smoker!). The problem with Westbahn is that they're likely deep in debt and still not profitable (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westbahn_(Unternehmen)#Gesch.C3.A4ftsergebnisse https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westbahn_(Unternehmen)#Gesch.C...). And for the Railjet: it's cheaper because the track fees are lower - here figures from 2011: http://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?3,5403272 http://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?3,5403272

linohh 10y ago

I own a Bahncard 100 which is a rail pass for the entire country. Unfortunately due to wtf, I cannot use it on this train. There's still a lot to be done.

sauerbraten 10y ago
Your BahnCard 100 is only for DB trains, and their partners like regional transport associations. Not sure why you suspect it to be valid for a competitor's service. And I doubt Locomore will ever partner with DB...
- linohh 10y ago
  That's not how it works. There's the tariff union TBNE which covers almost every train in the country. I can use non DB trains without a problem (e.g. the HKX) - just not this one (and Thalys).
  - dao- 10y ago
    I suspect TBNE is pretty much what your parent comment meant by "...only for DB trains, and their partners like regional transport associations." I.e. DB would only partner with regional operators on tracks where DB itself doesn't operate anymore.
    - linohh 10y ago
      no. it's up to locomore to join, they just don't want to. same with HKX, in the beginning they didn't want to join, eventually they did.
  - gpvos 10y ago
    I thought HKX was also a competitor? What changed?

kriro 10y ago

I was wondering how they crowdfunded this and expected some sort of ticket prepurchase kickstarter. It seems that you can actually loan them money instead (over five years): 1500 Euro: 3,45% (6,9% if you take tickets not cash) 2500 Euro: 3,75% (7,3%) 5000 Euro: 4,15% (8,3%) Max. of 100k

thatfrenchguy 10y ago

Yeah, let's waste energy operate trains from the 1970's (or buses) and pretend it's a good thing because "look it's cheaper and you get organic food inside".

linohh 10y ago
The locomotive is brand new. The only thing missing is regenerative braking in the carriages which DBs long distance carriages also don't have.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
skrause 10y ago
I doubt modern trains are much more efficient, electric engines have been very efficient for a long time.
morsch 10y ago
What makes you think those carriages are significantly less efficient than those made today? The engines[1] are fairly modern. Plus, they only drive at a leisurely (and more efficient) 200 km/h. [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_ES64U2 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_ES64U2

galfarragem 10y ago

The 'idea' is not new, it recalls me Polish trains: old and slow but so cheap that everybody can afford them. Few years ago you could travel 500km for 15€. Despite that, there were still massive discounts (50%) for students and elders. Who cares if the trains are the fast/most comfortable if you can't afford to use them regularly.

user5994461 10y ago
> Who cares if the trains are the fast/most comfortable if you can't afford to use them regularly. People who don't need to travel 500km regularly.

dep_b 10y ago

It kind of baffles me that the only long distance trains that are still being done on European scale are prestigious high speed trains (usually connecting Brussels to X) that are much more expensive than plane tickets or anything else really. I wouldn't mind to take a trip to Paris from Amsterdam in a slower train for 20-30 euro, but this is really impossible unless you spend almost a day piecing badly connecting trains together. Especially when it's slightly more entertaining with draft beer, coffee, wi-fi and such.

danieldk 10y ago
It kind of baffles me that the only long distance trains that are still being done on European scale are prestigious high speed trains (usually connecting Brussels to X) that are much more expensive than plane tickets or anything else really. When I travel for work within Germany or just to a neighboring country, I want to get to get from A (which happens to be near Stuttgart) to B as fast as possible. Taking a plane from Stuttgart is even faster, but since climate change is real, I am now trying to avoid flying as much as possible. Hence, Deutsche Bahn. Going by high-speed train is also very comfortable if you reserve seats and do not have to transfer often. I should also point out that if you book timely, you can often get German train tickets very cheaply at the 'Sparpreis', which starts at 29 Euro. When we had less money, we would often reserve tickets in the minutes after the 'Sparpreis' became available. tl;dr you can travel cheaply in German by high-speed train. You just have to plan your trip and book tickets timely.
- rublev 10y ago
  >but since climate change is real, I am now trying to avoid flying as much as possible. Can you go into more details about this?
  - morsch 10y ago
    Here's the IPCC's take: http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/aviation/index.php?idp=64 http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/aviation/index.php?idp=6... One interesting aspect is that for high altitude airplanes, water vapour emissions may be as problematic as CO2.

posterboy 10y ago

Crowd funding the new word for financed by shareholders.

dmurray 10y ago
Bondholders, according to a very interesting parent comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13200369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13200369

moomin 10y ago

I think the bus vs train analysis is missing an important dimension: travelling on the bus is unpleasant. You can't stand, your kids feel sick. The same amount of time on a train is vastly preferable.

LeanderK 10y ago
i regularly travel from karlsruhe to munich and i can't work on the bus, since there is not enough space for my laptop. Working inside the train is pleasant and after christmas every ICE has free wifi (wow, that took forever for them to decide to implement it! Rolling out was rather quick)

pluma 10y ago

More competition might help DB to address some of its problems, but as a commuter one of the most frustrating problems with public transport is the chaotic pricing. Others have explained why DB's own pricing is a mess, but on a communal level public transport is even more of a mess[0]. You might think getting a "BahnCard 100" (a 100% discount card that costs ~€400/month) might be worth it if you travel a lot but if you routinely travel by train you'll also likely have to rely on public transport at your destination but bus and tram are often not part of the deal (i.e. no discount is applied whatsoever). I live in Cologne in NRW. If I only moved around within Cologne, I could get a monthly ticket for all tram and bus transport (for ~€100/month) in Cologne from the KVB (the city's privatised transport agency). If I want to go beyond that, I could instead get a monthly ticket for the regional railway from the VRS (the regional privatised transport alliance that includes the KVB). But although I generally stay within NRW I regularly commute to a city that's not within the boundaries of the VRS (or its parent alliance, the NVR). It's actually part of another alliance, the NWL. So I would need a ticket to move within the VRS region and then another to move within the NWL region. But there are actually three such alliances in NRW and I need to cross the region of the third alliance to get from one to the other, which is the VRR. So I would need a ticket for the VRS, another for the VRR and then another for NWL. But that's obviously silly, so there's also the NRW-ticket which covers the regions of all three alliances as a yearly subscription (which works out to ~€300/month). But of course that's only for NRW (one of the sixteen states/counties in Germany) and only for busses, trams and regional rail. If you want to use the intercity or ICE trains, even within NRW, you still need an extra ticket at the full price. Likewise if you ever need to cross the borders of NRW. As for the joys of actually using and validating the various tickets you might have to buy in addition to whichever subscription you end up with, that's what the article I linked to is about. [0]: http://www.wiwo.de/unternehmen/dienstleister/werner-knallhart-das-ticket-chaos-bei-bus-und-bahn-macht-arm-und-krank/9984412.html http://www.wiwo.de/unternehmen/dienstleister/werner-knallhar... (German)

L_Rahman 10y ago
And here I thought Americans were the only ones with a chaotic set of transit agencies serving the same region In all seriousness though, I'm very curious about the structural incentives at each of these places. Presumably, the people who run them care to some degree about customer experience. How then have they built a system that clearly doesn't?

limaoscarjuliet 10y ago

"Runs entirely on green electricity" - so is Deutsche Bahn at times, as Germany has been reported to produce more renewable electricity than they can consume.

iso-8859-1 10y ago
When the weather is nice... See these graphs: https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/news/news-2016/germanys-electricity-exports-surplus-brings-record-revenue-of-over-two-billion-euros https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/news/news-2016/germanys-ele... Why would Germany sell electricity to the Netherlands but buy it from France? Because, when the weather is bad, Germany can't produce enough to cover its own needs. So Germany is still involved in nuclear power.

gravypod 10y ago

Aren't all trains crowdfunded? Isn't that what tax is?

mrweasel 10y ago

I don't know if this is still a thing in German trains in general, but the main selling point for me would be the fact that it looks like the train has coupes. A coupe is so much nice than a big open carriage.

lh7 10y ago

The idea of having "zones" for people with different interests sounds good. Given the sort of amenities on offer and the unusual founding route, not to mention its Eastern endpoint, it would have been more accurate to refer to this as "zones for hipsters with different interests" though. :-) Piss-taking aside, I think it's nicely representative of a certain "Germanness" trait which is perhaps not so well-known outside the country, where the stereotype of a population of humourless engineers still prevails.

jaclaz 10y ago

AFAIK it is not just Germany trains that are a mess (regarding fares), it is the same all over the world. What I really hate is that every time I take a train (in Italy) I can be sure that: 1) the lady in front of me payed 30% less than me (OK, she is elderly and some discount may be fine) 2) the guy on my right payed 25% less than me (OK, he is a student, and has one of those cards) 3) the girl on my left has payed 45% less than me (OK, she has a special discount as a woman and booked the ticket in large advance) 4) the guy in businessman suit on the seat on the other side of the aisle has paid anyething between 50%, 80% or 100% less than me (OK, because he is an employee of the railway or of the government) 5) etc. Simplified, I am the only one that is paying the full fare.

ghaff 10y ago
At least the routes on Amtrak that I take in the US don't seem to have huge variances based on booking ahead. Fares do vary and the prime slots for business travel tend to be pricier. (And the Acela carries a significant premium.) But it doesn't seem to be like what I've both observed and been told is the case in the UK where last minute/flexible/etc. fares can easily be triple what they are if you book a month or even a couple of weeks ahead of time.
gotofritz 10y ago
> OK, she is elderly and some discount may be fine And who reimburses the rail company for those discounts? > the girl on my left has payed 45% less than me (OK, she has a special discount as a woman and booked the ticket in large advance) "she has a special discount as a woman" - What? I call BS. "booked the ticket in large advance" - better. And what's stopping you from doing the same? > (OK, because he is an employee of the railway or of the government) And how many of those there are? > Simplified, I am the only one that is paying the full fare. Simplified, you are someone who exaggerates to use as an excuse for whinging about non existent unfairness.
- vintageseltzer 10y ago
  Thank you for responding. The parent comment has to be one of the worst HN comments I have ever read. It is important that people who exaggerate and lie are held accountable for their words.

tiatia 10y ago

Weird train rides in Germany? I guess you could give this a try: http://www.un-verschaemt.de/ http://www.un-verschaemt.de/

nathanbarry 10y ago

I love the idea of having a car specifically for children to play. I'd pay extra for my kids (5 and 2) to have a place to play. Just a carpeted car with basic toys like many airports have.

eva55 10y ago

I think it's good idea, but if I had a chance to choose,definitely I would prefer to take my trip by plane. I used to book cheap tickets at https://lowcost.club/ https://lowcost.club/ to save money. I like to travel and usually visit 3 or 4 new countries per year. To travel by plane is easy, simple, and, of course, is faster.