27 ms·

Germany considers free public transport in fight to banish air pollution

290 points by keeganjw 9y ago

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
Is this like, a version of Unix to standardize all the version? You just end up with - another version of Unix. So, more cars on the road (at least at first) will help with pollution?
- mcny 9y ago
  If you take it to the extreme and stop externalizing the environmental cost of transportation, how do people reach schools and hospitals?
- dx034 9y ago
  Not really. It's not about starting a lot of public transport companies, more about expanding the existing ones. Public transport is heavily regulated in Germany, you won't find more than one provider in most cities (mostly because it's loss making).
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    Again, expanding a losing (low ridership?) business is unlikely to reduce total cars on the road?
    - dx034 9y ago
      It's not low ridership, it's mostly losing money due to low prices. A large group of people tends to get free transport (university students, children, the elderly, disabled people) which means that in the end, only part of those using the system actually pay. Monthly tickets are also often heavily discounted (not in all cities though).
      - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
        Good to know. Still I wonder how many of those folks would have driven a car. Don't get me wrong; public transport is a great thing. But just pasting it onto a culture of driving cars is going to fail, at least at the start.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
adrianN 9y ago
This seems like such a no brainer to me that I wonder why it wasn't implemented much sooner. The biggest problem seems to be how to handle increased demand. But increasing demand is exactly the goal of this measure!
- detaro 9y ago
  It's going to be expensive. With EU fines of a couple hundred million euro looming for missing air pollution targets and not doing enough to work towards them, spending that money is getting more attractive. + giving people stuff for free is a lot more popular than other options, e.g. temporary bans of diesel cars etc. (both with owners and the poor, poor car companies...)
- fmax30 9y ago
  I don't think that this is such a good idea, as mentioned above by others, during peak hours the trains are almost over capacity (At least in Munich where I currently live). Making them free would lead to a degraded experience for everyone. One of the major reasons that I am not in favor is because in Pakistan ( where I am originally from) they launched a Metro Bus service a few years ago, the fare was a nominal flat rate ( ~ 15 euro-cents) for traveling as much as you can in one direction. Now although it is a great service for the people but the buses are always over crowded, and because they are incurring a loss and the government has to spend millions of dollars per year in subsidies just to keep it afloat; They have not upgraded capacity and it is really inconvenient to travel on those buses ( I remember getting sick 4-5 times a year when I regularly traveled on those buses). A better solution would to be start banning the diesel engine, ramp up the taxes for fossil fuel based cars. And to force factories to reduce their carbon emissions.
  - vidarh 9y ago
    It will only lead to overcrowding if the service is still good enough that more people than today find it worthwhile to deal with.
walkingolof 9y ago
Probably a great way to making money in the long run, wonder what healthcare cost for all people going sick by the environment.
- nwellnhof 9y ago
  OTOH, when I was using Munich's public transport daily, I always caught a cold once or twice per year. This never happened since I stopped using it regularly. And I know a few people who made the same experience.
  - Bdiem 9y ago
    Exactly, apparently the "ÖPNV-Immunisierung" (public transport immunization) was fake news, too. I can report the same experience for Hamburg.
thesumofall 9y ago
This initiative gets a nice public discussion going with most people seemingly in favor. The best argument I’ve read against this initiative so far is that it may disadvantage rural folks. The idea is: tax money goes into urban transport hence further benefiting people in cities while giving little back to those cut off the transport networks. Personally, I believe it is the best for the environment if most people move into the cities - so I’m not convinced by that point; but still always good to know the opposite side
- bdhess 9y ago
  The pilot is taking place in cities but the article isn’t clear on whether this might be expanded to regional rail lines as well if the pilot is successful. Many small/rural towns in Germany have rail service.
- psychometry 9y ago
  If Germany is anything like the U.S. (it might not be), the economically prosperous cities are subsidizing/propping up rural areas already.
  - dx034 9y ago
    It is not. Germany has a much higher population density, from pretty much any point within the country it's no more than 2 miles to the next village. And those tend to be larger than rural US villages, often 3,000-5,000 people. So public transport doesn't work as well in rural areas but there's generally some service for most of the population.
    - franzpeterfolz 9y ago
      And these villages have a pretty nice industry. There are many so called "Hidden Champions", which are often located in these areas. Farming and so on is not very typical for German villages. A village with 3,000 people has perhaps one to three farms employing at most 10 - 20 people.
chopin 9y ago
The biggest problem in Germany is that the short-haul service is bad. My half-an-hour car commute would turn to more than an hour. With unreliable service and too few or insufficient connections (overcrowded at peak hours and too few outside). This needs to be fixed first.
- elros 9y ago
  Germany's a big place. Where exactly are you talking about? My 20 minutes U-Bahn commute from Britz to Kreuzberg becomes a 35 minutes one if I ride a car. That's also assuming that finding a parking spot is instantaneous, which it isn't.
  - chopin 9y ago
    I live outside of one of the large cities. Apart from Berlin and maybe Hamburg people tend to live more in the outskirts. That's where the service is bad. I've been in Japan last year for vacation. Public transportation was a breeze compared to Germany (5 min stepover time was no problem; try this in Germany). Anecdotal: We returned from (another) vacation by plane and took the train back home from the airport. We had to stepover once. Not only was the first train late, but also time schedule of the catching train was at odds. When we left the train station there was (in the train!) an announcement that the train will not stop at some of the advertised stops in order to catch up with time. We had to leave the train at an earlier station and where left to sort out the problem ourselves.
    - guitarbill 9y ago
      I would have to agree with this. In the last few years, the terrible connection and high train prices have been "solved" by private bus companies, e.g. Flixbus et al. But light rail services outside of city centres usually suck. Japan's rail is on a whole different level though. Also anecdotally, living in a rural area and getting a bus to school in the city was at least a 45 minute bus journey, with busses maybe every hour. Driving was 20 minutes. I had no choice, at that age I couldn't drive. But if I started working, no way I would do that. A nice side effect of this is people leave these rural-isa areas to move to cities, which increases congestion.
martinald 9y ago
Poor idea. 1) It will have an enormous cost. TfL in London collects £5bn/yr in fare revenue. While fares are lower in Berlin and it's a less busy system, it will still probably cost €500mn/yr for Berlin alone. 2) Most people driving are not doing it because they cannot afford public transit fares. They are either wanting a more 'luxurious' environment, can't get where they are going easily on public transit, etc. I'm not convinced it would actually induce much demand on the system from car drivers. 3) It may induce a load of demand from non-car drivers, who can now do a load more trips, longer commutes, etc. 4) Most public transit systems are at peak capacity in rush hour. In London if you switched everyone who was driving to public transit you'd need to double the capacity to do so. Considering crossrail is being built for ~£20bn to increase capacity 10%, you'd probably be needing to spend hundreds of billions of euro on capacity upgrades. Much better to actually tax the diesel cars properly for the externality cost rather than do some other policy which doesn't directly address the issue.
- thesumofall 9y ago
  (1) Almost impossible to say at this moment. There are so many externalities: current waste of land, time wasted in traffic jams, environmental damage, ... (2) Partially true, I guess. However, public transport would get a lot better due to higher frequencies, etc. There will also be a lot of people who would actually enjoy time for reading (instead of traffic jams) and don’t quite understand their current costs of running a car (3) Yes. And also demand by people who can’t afford mobility today but would love to be mobile (4) Yes, not sure if that’s a con? Diesel tax: Nice complement to free public transport
  - martinald 9y ago
    A lot (most?) transit systems in europe are completely at capacity at peak hours. In London and Paris they are at the physical limits of what you can do, say a train every 90 seconds. You cannot physically increase frequencies above that. I also don't think you're doing a lot of reading in crush loaded trains, but whatever. I take the train every day but it's not like a nice relaxing intercity journey, in London rush hour it can be complete hell and is completely not productive when you have 4 people in a sqm.
Overtonwindow 9y ago
After living in Berlin for a month I honestly thought it was free. Never saw a fare gate and was never asked for a ticket. A wonderful system.
- jotm 9y ago
  It's pretty embarrassing to get caught. Prepare for angry fast German, a fine and threats of jail. Probably less funny when you live there and commute regularly :D
byteofprash 9y ago
The last mile problem is what usually makes me skip the Ubahn. I've tried to solve the last mile problem using the bike. I would happily stop using the car if this happens along with a solution for taking bikes. Currently, I should buy a separate ticket to take my bike along with me(around €2.50 in Munich for a day) and I'm allowed to take the bike only during 6am to 9am and 4pm to 6pm.
swombat 9y ago
Counter-intuitively, given the state of German infrastructure it seems to me they should consider doing the opposite, if it will help motivate them to actually invest in their public transport infrastructure...
- Shivetya 9y ago
  well it has been shown to not have had much of an effect when practiced elsewhere. More services is a far better option than free. example story https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/why-cant-public-transit-be-free/384929/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/why-can...
revelation 9y ago
Don't take this too serious. If it would stop driving bans for diesels, this government would also consider rainbow unicorns for every school kid. (Hello downvotes? If you are not in tune with German politics: this is the same government that is in contempt of court for failing to enforce effective measurements to stop excessive pollution levels. This is not at all a sincere suggestion.)
- ju-st 9y ago
  I don't understand why you are getting downvoted either but keep in mind that complaining about downvotes is not allowed on HN.
daxfohl 9y ago
How about offering tax breaks to companies that promote telecommuting in some fashion?
- gruez 9y ago
  then a bunch of companies who already do telecommuting (call centers come to mind) all relocate there, causing a net impact of 0 on pollution.
- dx034 9y ago
  Because then everyone will promote it without any real change. Suddenly there will be more remote working policies without people using them (because their boss tells them off the record that they are not supposed to use them).
majewsky 9y ago
> Other attempts around the world to offer citizens free travel have failed, including in US city Seattle. Why do they not mention the large amount of cities where free public transit is working just fine (most notably Estonian capitol Tallinn)? List: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport#List_of_towns_and_cities_with_area-wide_zero-fare_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport#List_of_...
- Quarrelsome 9y ago
  Tallinn is not very big though compared to other European capitals, also they have form for it as it was former USSR. They never even put up barriers when you had to pay (trains would have inspectors and buses were self ticket stamping).
  - dx034 9y ago
    Few German stations have barriers. It's actually "profitable" in most cities to never buy a ticket, checks are rare. I guess German mentality helps avoiding widespread abuse (and the fact that it's a crime under German law).
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      Germany is the only country I ever visited where i feared the ticket inspector. I've seen them put fines. They go undercover in the metro: sometimes its just a dude sitting there suddenly takes the gadget out and yells out a control. I've had foreign friends, as tourists having to pay the fine. In SF you can simply not pay,there is no control. In argentina, the bus driver might not start the bus if you don't pay, turning the whole bus people against you. In germany, you get a damn ticket very fast, which you can pay with credit card. I once didnt pay the ticket and felt like Jason Bourne.
      - dx034 9y ago
        Problem is that this can get you in legal trouble after a few times. While first offender cases always get dropped, you'll get a court date if you get caught too often. I once witnessed a case where someone had to spend a short time in jail because of that. He got caught 13 times over two years (not sure how he managed that) but still appears quite harsh. The fact that Germany doesn't have massively overcrowded jails shows that most people end up paying at some point.
hannob 9y ago
Before you get too excited: This is nothing more than a vague idea at the moment. No specific plans and particularly no budget for it. I'd be extremely surprised if this becomes a real project.
- cf498 9y ago
  There is really nothing more to say to this news report. To give some context, Germany is currently in coalition talks for the forming of a new government and the Social Democrats(SPD) are screwed. They promised no more coalition government before the election but stepped back on that. The party voted by a hair to take up negotiations for a new coalition, during which the prime candidate(Schulz) was completely abandoned after trying to give him the post of former SPD foreign minister Gabriel. Now they face a party vote on getting involved in a new government and they fall in polls almost every week[1]. There is absolutely no substance on this topic. [1] https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/ https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
nostromo 9y ago
In Seattle the “Ride Free Zone” caused the busses to be used as makeshift homeless shelters. This lead to a common sentiment that busses were smelly, unsafe places, and it was eventually scraped. (Germany seems to have less of a homeless population than West Coast cities, so perhaps this won’t be an issue for them.)
- goalieca 9y ago
  So instead of fixing the problem of homelessness, Seattle decided to compromise on transportation. Is this ideological or pathological or both??
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Since nobody anywhere has ever "fixed" homelessness, not really fair to criticize Seattle for not doing it.
    - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
      On the contrary, when comparing the percentage of homeless people with the average income and wealth in a city, many cities in US, including San Francisco and Seattle, stand out for their striking inequality. Many cities in other developed countries are doing much better.
    - pgeorgi 9y ago
      That sounds to me like https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527 https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-na... Seattle has ~3x as many homeless per population than the US average. The US has ~3x as many homeless per population than Germany. That's about one decimal magnitude of difference (at a somewhat comparable climate - San Francisco likes to claim that they have to deal with so many homeless people because of the accomodating weather) Whatever is going on in Seattle, there's likely room to improve.
      - jdminhbg 9y ago
YouAreGreat 9y ago
Buses are heated and air-conditioned... so nice of Germany to plan to provide mobile homes and rolling pubs for the lower 20%. That could motivate the marginal user from the upper 50% to use their own cars exclusively, missing the pollution point entirely.
helloworld04 9y ago
Ironic the idea is just downplayed by the next day article >https://www.thelocal.de/20180214/government-plays-down-free-public-transport-plan https://www.thelocal.de/20180214/government-plays-down-free-...
franzpeterfolz 9y ago
Well, plans say the government is subsidizing Electric cars and Plugin-Hybrids with 4,000 Euro. Half payed by the government and the other half from car manufacturers. They even want to expand these subsidies to small businesses and extend the amount to 8,000 Euros. The problem indeed is that this would not help to banish air pollution, because the numbers are to low. The second thing is, that only wealthier people would benefit from these subsidies. You have to be able to afford a new car at first. And second you have to be able to afford an electric car. And even if you are the typical buy brand new cars guy, you typically drive these cars 6 to 10 years. So these subsidies might come in an unpleasent moment of your car-buying-cycle. Free public transportation could reduce car traffic and everybody could benefit. Even poor people.
- guitarbill 9y ago
  In light of this, the decision to shut down nuclear power plants by 2022, but keep the coal power plants is, err, interesting? Sure, renewable sources are increasing, but fossil fuels are still the biggest source. I wonder where the energy for electric cars will come from if they truly become popular. Keep in mind that Germany imports energy. So phasing out nuclear power, while still importing from nations running nuclear is somewhat hypocritical (e.g. France has some plants along the border). Even in Germany, politics are politics and fears are not always rational.
  - lispm 9y ago
    > Keep in mind that Germany imports energy. Germany imports energy. It also imports electricity sometimes. But Germany actually has a large export surplus for electricity over the last five years - even though several nuclear power plants have been closed. And the surplus is widening. > So phasing out nuclear power, while still importing from nations running nuclear is somewhat hypocritical (e.g. France has some plants along the border). Germany has now the largest electricity export surplus in Europe. Germany also has a large electricity export surplus with France. The German export surplus of electricity in 2017 was 60TWH. 2016 56 TWH, 2015 57TWH. Etc. https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=import-export&period=annual&year=2017 https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=import-export... In money this means an export surplus in 2017 of 1.4 Billion Euro. Renewable energy is now at 36% for electricity and Germany now for the first time has days where the whole country is powered by renewable electricity. > e.g. France has some plants along the border The old french nuclear power plants Germany would like to see closed. > I wonder where the energy for electric cars will come from if they truly become popular. Depends where you are, but I live in North Germany and it's possible to have large amount of surplus electricity in one or two decades from wind with buffers (like hydro in Norway which is then transported via HVDC lines to Germany).
johnydepp 9y ago
I applaud EU countries of being so considerate about pollution and climate change, be it renewable energy, pollution control by traffic and other industries. On the other hand we have my country India where in budget 2018, not much attention is given to any of these matters.
- frandroid 9y ago
  I wish India would ban two-stroke engines (phase them out, not ban them outright obviously), that would make a huuuuggeee difference in the air pollution of the large cities.
  - johnydepp 9y ago
    You have a good point but only stopping two-stroke engines is not going to help. Single person car driving is a big problem and cab sharing is still premature. I think these are by-products of the poor public transport. Major cities don't have fully connected subway system, inter-city public transport is even worse, be it railways (sigh!) or public buses. Other bigger factors to pollution are industries and electricity production. Curbing pollution is not possible if country/states are not very concerned about it, be it regulating the industries, making better public transport or focusing on renewable energy. Problem is, some of the leaders are focused on politics and others care only about growth and economics. They don't even think that pollution is a real issue. And those who care and think about it, are not allowed to live and do their work!
zwieback 9y ago
Corvallis, OR is just a small (55K) wealthy college town but all our buses are free to everyone all the time.
jlebrech 9y ago
one of the socialism's PROs. if done right. transport.
conanbatt 9y ago
I wonder what this would do to bikers. Suddenly buying a bike is more expensive than energy consuming public transportation.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jonashnk 9y ago
In Tallinn (Estonia) free public transport was launched on the municipality level. What's interesting, is that despite criticism that this is too expensive for the city - free transportation has actually turned out to be profitable. This is because only residents of the city can use public transport for free. So thousands of people, who have lived there already, but were not registered as residents, now declared their residency to access free public transport—and started paying their taxes there too.
- propter_hoc 9y ago
  This does not make sense. If the citizen (as you say) is deciding between paying taxes or buying transit tickets on a monetary basis, he or she will choose the cheapest option, and the city will lose out on revenue. On a purely financial basis making this the citizen's choice cannot be a win-win for the citizen and the city. Besides the above argument, it is also unlikely that there is any possibility of net revenue to the city. Even if a few people irrationally decide to pay more taxes than they were paying in transit fares, and hence generate some revenue, there are presumably only a small minority of the population who make this decision. But these additional tax revenues have to cover not just what these citizens were spending on their own transit passes, but also the loss in revenue to the city from everyone else in the city not paying for transit anymore. Certainly, it is likely that free public transport enhances the economy and generates revenue in other ways, but it does not add up in the way you have presented it.
  - jedrek 9y ago
    It doesn't make sense because you don't understand how registered addresses and taxes work in the former eastern bloc. It's common for people to move to a large city and officially still be registered as living at home. Sometimes it's due to laziness, sometimes they don't want to get the paperwork to get registered at their new address, sometimes they just like having mom take care of all their paperwork/tickets/etc. Free public transportation is incentivizing these people to register where they actually live. They aren't paying more in taxes, they've just registered as official residents of the city, so their taxes are counted as being paid in the city.
ataturk 9y ago
Free = somehow someone else pays for it
bischofs 9y ago
FYI they are currently downplaying the contents of this article https://www.thelocal.de/20180214/government-plays-down-free-public-transport-plan https://www.thelocal.de/20180214/government-plays-down-free-...
lnino 9y ago
If you want to banish air pollution then allow only electric cars. Perhaps let some basic services use combustion engines because it's cheaper. There is no "free" transportation.
bickfordb 9y ago
Downtown Portland used to have free public transit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fareless_Square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fareless_Square
Robotbeat 9y ago
Try allowing only electric cars in the city center. That should help a lot. And electrifying buses is pretty easy and fast, comparatively speaking. Buses tend to have a shorter operational life than commuter cars and are in use a lot more and there's a lot fewer of them. Replacing tens of millions of commuter cars is a lot harder than tens of thousands of transit buses. ...of course, Germany's grid is pretty dirty since they keep building coal ("lignite", a sort of euphemistic way of saying "brown coal") infrastructure while shutting down perfectly good, clean nuclear power. But should still help.
grey-sunshine 9y ago
By how much does the income tax increase.
zanny 9y ago
Practically every city with a transit system should be giving away free rides all the time. Something along the lines of every citizen can come get a ride card that gives you 4 free rides a week on the tube or 4 free bus rides within city limits. It accomplishes a ton: * It gets people who cannot afford regular fares to use these services when appropriate, rather than what might be less desirable (having a friend drive them around if they are too poor, etc). * It gets people using services they might not use otherwise. A lot of commuters would take the train once or twice just because its free. If you can get people started on using public transit, they might just keep using it. * You can also give away free rides during low density hours, such as at night. This can help offset daytime load by getting people to do their time-flexible commutes at off hours. Now there are a lot of tweaks on the model, like making free rides only eligible for non-peak hours. But the whole point of public transit is to increase the efficiency of people and business in the economy where it is built - it is never meant to turn a profit, and if it is profitable it is probably failing on that first premise by costing so much to use. Making it completely free all the time makes it rife for abuse unless you institute a system where riders who ride the most get the least priority. But honestly if anyone were willing to implement such a system making the transit free and just using the tax revenue of booming business to pay for the transit is a much more sensible model than trying to keep your transit system revenue neutral or even cash positive (cough, Amtrak).
- pmoleri 9y ago
  While I agree I want to point out that I find reliability and punctuality far more important than price when it comes to get people into public transport. Germany probably excels at both, but it not the same for other countries / cities.
  - qweqweqweqw 9y ago
    As if! Deutsche Bahn is late all the time, some WWII bomb is found and the track goes through the evacuation zone, someone blocks the trains door from closing because he wants to finish smoking his cigarette, train stops on a turnout track because of course freight trains are more important, people on the rails, fallen tree after a storm, etc etc. Of course compared to other countries our trains are probably still pretty punctual, but it's still annoying when you are stuck at the station for an hour when your whole trip only takes 45 minutes otherwise. Especially the WWII bomb thing is annoying, because they tend to find one every few weeks when there's construction near the tracks.
TomK32 9y ago
At first I was like "a word of caution" because Germany is inbetween governments (even though they will be the same) but seeing that ministers from all three parties involved support it, there might be something in it. On the other hand, the EU as well as the German Bundesverwaltungsgericht are playing hard regarding air quality in cities. The source I've read (http://taz.de/Regierung-erwaegt-kostenlosen-OePNV/!5481464/ http://taz.de/Regierung-erwaegt-kostenlosen-OePNV/!5481464/ ) mentions seven more ideas in the letter to the EU, only the free public transport standing out as radical. Traffic restrictions, incentives for e-mobility and upgrading pollution vehicles are others. I bet that's what is to be expected sooner or later and someone just slipped the radical idea about free public transport in to see the fallout.
Spooks 9y ago
Instead of making it free, could they improve the speed and comfort of public transport? I don't drive because it is cheaper, I drive because it is faster, more comfortable and more convenient (it gets me closer to where I want to be).
- SomewhatLikely 9y ago
  Agreed. I actually think it could be possible to make transit faster than driving by implementing the right infrastructure. For example, bus only lanes. I think there's still big issues with first and last mile though. One of the things that kills bus time is stopping at many stops and waits between transfers.
woodpanel 9y ago
Not so fast! This "consideration" comes with a couple grains of salt. First the regulatory-political climate: The pronouncement was stated days ahead of a court ruling regarding what measurements communities could take to reduce air pollution, as well as weeks ahead of a decision the EU will make about how to punish countries that repeatedly miss pollution thresholds, like Germany. That means: The government is telling communities 'behave', dare not prohibit any type of cars (diesel) from entering your cities, you may get into our "free public transport program" instead. That it is a crude plan is exemplified by the fact, that some of the "first tier" communities in the plan didn't knew about the plan at all and first heard from it in the news, most of them were just informed days before. So far, all communities criticize the idea. The estimated costs for Hamburg alone would amount to 800-900 million EUR/year, paid by all the rest of Germany. And then there is the problem that public transit crosses community boundaries - the crude plan though as it is, would grant citizens of one community free access to the same transit system that the neighbouring citizens would have to pay in full. Regardless of whether free public transit makes sense at all - The fact that it is brought up in such a crude proposal and the fact that it is a progressive idea taken "hostage" by conservatives it is an idea bound to fail and to be muted a long time afterwards.
gaius 9y ago
Or they could just invest in clean, carbon-free nuclear power... oh wait.
garfieldnate 9y ago
I don't know how the public transportation is in Berlin or Bonn, but I remain pretty unimpressed with it in Düsseldorf. The train schedule is very unreliable; trains and cars share the same road, and the train is regularly held up by cars. It is difficult to buy a ticket because the machines on the train only take coins, do not offer guidance on which ticket to buy, and are regularly out of order. Tickets are not checked before boarding. Instead, they regularly send stealth ticket checkers into the trains and give fines to people that weren't honest or bought the wrong ticket. Many stops are not elderly/wheelchair accessible, and it would take a lot of work to update them. That said, I did move here from Japan, so I have a high expectation. If I had come from the US, I would have been pretty happy just to see that trains exist! Minus the handicap-unfriendliness; everywhere I've been in the US, the bus drivers get out and set up a ramp for wheelchair users when needed.

290 points by keeganjw 9y ago

Is this like, a version of Unix to standardize all the version? You just end up with - another version of Unix. So, more cars on the road (at least at first) will help with pollution?

mcny 9y ago
If you take it to the extreme and stop externalizing the environmental cost of transportation, how do people reach schools and hospitals?
dx034 9y ago
Not really. It's not about starting a lot of public transport companies, more about expanding the existing ones. Public transport is heavily regulated in Germany, you won't find more than one provider in most cities (mostly because it's loss making).
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  Again, expanding a losing (low ridership?) business is unlikely to reduce total cars on the road?
  - dx034 9y ago
    It's not low ridership, it's mostly losing money due to low prices. A large group of people tends to get free transport (university students, children, the elderly, disabled people) which means that in the end, only part of those using the system actually pay. Monthly tickets are also often heavily discounted (not in all cities though).
    - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
      Good to know. Still I wonder how many of those folks would have driven a car. Don't get me wrong; public transport is a great thing. But just pasting it onto a culture of driving cars is going to fail, at least at the start.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

adrianN 9y ago

This seems like such a no brainer to me that I wonder why it wasn't implemented much sooner. The biggest problem seems to be how to handle increased demand. But increasing demand is exactly the goal of this measure!

detaro 9y ago
It's going to be expensive. With EU fines of a couple hundred million euro looming for missing air pollution targets and not doing enough to work towards them, spending that money is getting more attractive. + giving people stuff for free is a lot more popular than other options, e.g. temporary bans of diesel cars etc. (both with owners and the poor, poor car companies...)
fmax30 9y ago
I don't think that this is such a good idea, as mentioned above by others, during peak hours the trains are almost over capacity (At least in Munich where I currently live). Making them free would lead to a degraded experience for everyone. One of the major reasons that I am not in favor is because in Pakistan ( where I am originally from) they launched a Metro Bus service a few years ago, the fare was a nominal flat rate ( ~ 15 euro-cents) for traveling as much as you can in one direction. Now although it is a great service for the people but the buses are always over crowded, and because they are incurring a loss and the government has to spend millions of dollars per year in subsidies just to keep it afloat; They have not upgraded capacity and it is really inconvenient to travel on those buses ( I remember getting sick 4-5 times a year when I regularly traveled on those buses). A better solution would to be start banning the diesel engine, ramp up the taxes for fossil fuel based cars. And to force factories to reduce their carbon emissions.
- vidarh 9y ago
  It will only lead to overcrowding if the service is still good enough that more people than today find it worthwhile to deal with.

walkingolof 9y ago

Probably a great way to making money in the long run, wonder what healthcare cost for all people going sick by the environment.

nwellnhof 9y ago
OTOH, when I was using Munich's public transport daily, I always caught a cold once or twice per year. This never happened since I stopped using it regularly. And I know a few people who made the same experience.
- Bdiem 9y ago
  Exactly, apparently the "ÖPNV-Immunisierung" (public transport immunization) was fake news, too. I can report the same experience for Hamburg.

thesumofall 9y ago

This initiative gets a nice public discussion going with most people seemingly in favor. The best argument I’ve read against this initiative so far is that it may disadvantage rural folks. The idea is: tax money goes into urban transport hence further benefiting people in cities while giving little back to those cut off the transport networks. Personally, I believe it is the best for the environment if most people move into the cities - so I’m not convinced by that point; but still always good to know the opposite side

bdhess 9y ago
The pilot is taking place in cities but the article isn’t clear on whether this might be expanded to regional rail lines as well if the pilot is successful. Many small/rural towns in Germany have rail service.
psychometry 9y ago
If Germany is anything like the U.S. (it might not be), the economically prosperous cities are subsidizing/propping up rural areas already.
- dx034 9y ago
  It is not. Germany has a much higher population density, from pretty much any point within the country it's no more than 2 miles to the next village. And those tend to be larger than rural US villages, often 3,000-5,000 people. So public transport doesn't work as well in rural areas but there's generally some service for most of the population.
  - franzpeterfolz 9y ago
    And these villages have a pretty nice industry. There are many so called "Hidden Champions", which are often located in these areas. Farming and so on is not very typical for German villages. A village with 3,000 people has perhaps one to three farms employing at most 10 - 20 people.

chopin 9y ago

The biggest problem in Germany is that the short-haul service is bad. My half-an-hour car commute would turn to more than an hour. With unreliable service and too few or insufficient connections (overcrowded at peak hours and too few outside). This needs to be fixed first.

elros 9y ago
Germany's a big place. Where exactly are you talking about? My 20 minutes U-Bahn commute from Britz to Kreuzberg becomes a 35 minutes one if I ride a car. That's also assuming that finding a parking spot is instantaneous, which it isn't.
- chopin 9y ago
  I live outside of one of the large cities. Apart from Berlin and maybe Hamburg people tend to live more in the outskirts. That's where the service is bad. I've been in Japan last year for vacation. Public transportation was a breeze compared to Germany (5 min stepover time was no problem; try this in Germany). Anecdotal: We returned from (another) vacation by plane and took the train back home from the airport. We had to stepover once. Not only was the first train late, but also time schedule of the catching train was at odds. When we left the train station there was (in the train!) an announcement that the train will not stop at some of the advertised stops in order to catch up with time. We had to leave the train at an earlier station and where left to sort out the problem ourselves.
  - guitarbill 9y ago
    I would have to agree with this. In the last few years, the terrible connection and high train prices have been "solved" by private bus companies, e.g. Flixbus et al. But light rail services outside of city centres usually suck. Japan's rail is on a whole different level though. Also anecdotally, living in a rural area and getting a bus to school in the city was at least a 45 minute bus journey, with busses maybe every hour. Driving was 20 minutes. I had no choice, at that age I couldn't drive. But if I started working, no way I would do that. A nice side effect of this is people leave these rural-isa areas to move to cities, which increases congestion.

martinald 9y ago

Poor idea. 1) It will have an enormous cost. TfL in London collects £5bn/yr in fare revenue. While fares are lower in Berlin and it's a less busy system, it will still probably cost €500mn/yr for Berlin alone. 2) Most people driving are not doing it because they cannot afford public transit fares. They are either wanting a more 'luxurious' environment, can't get where they are going easily on public transit, etc. I'm not convinced it would actually induce much demand on the system from car drivers. 3) It may induce a load of demand from non-car drivers, who can now do a load more trips, longer commutes, etc. 4) Most public transit systems are at peak capacity in rush hour. In London if you switched everyone who was driving to public transit you'd need to double the capacity to do so. Considering crossrail is being built for ~£20bn to increase capacity 10%, you'd probably be needing to spend hundreds of billions of euro on capacity upgrades. Much better to actually tax the diesel cars properly for the externality cost rather than do some other policy which doesn't directly address the issue.

thesumofall 9y ago
(1) Almost impossible to say at this moment. There are so many externalities: current waste of land, time wasted in traffic jams, environmental damage, ... (2) Partially true, I guess. However, public transport would get a lot better due to higher frequencies, etc. There will also be a lot of people who would actually enjoy time for reading (instead of traffic jams) and don’t quite understand their current costs of running a car (3) Yes. And also demand by people who can’t afford mobility today but would love to be mobile (4) Yes, not sure if that’s a con? Diesel tax: Nice complement to free public transport
- martinald 9y ago
  A lot (most?) transit systems in europe are completely at capacity at peak hours. In London and Paris they are at the physical limits of what you can do, say a train every 90 seconds. You cannot physically increase frequencies above that. I also don't think you're doing a lot of reading in crush loaded trains, but whatever. I take the train every day but it's not like a nice relaxing intercity journey, in London rush hour it can be complete hell and is completely not productive when you have 4 people in a sqm.

Overtonwindow 9y ago

After living in Berlin for a month I honestly thought it was free. Never saw a fare gate and was never asked for a ticket. A wonderful system.

jotm 9y ago
It's pretty embarrassing to get caught. Prepare for angry fast German, a fine and threats of jail. Probably less funny when you live there and commute regularly :D

byteofprash 9y ago

The last mile problem is what usually makes me skip the Ubahn. I've tried to solve the last mile problem using the bike. I would happily stop using the car if this happens along with a solution for taking bikes. Currently, I should buy a separate ticket to take my bike along with me(around €2.50 in Munich for a day) and I'm allowed to take the bike only during 6am to 9am and 4pm to 6pm.

swombat 9y ago

Counter-intuitively, given the state of German infrastructure it seems to me they should consider doing the opposite, if it will help motivate them to actually invest in their public transport infrastructure...

Shivetya 9y ago
well it has been shown to not have had much of an effect when practiced elsewhere. More services is a far better option than free. example story https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/why-cant-public-transit-be-free/384929/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/why-can...

revelation 9y ago

Don't take this too serious. If it would stop driving bans for diesels, this government would also consider rainbow unicorns for every school kid. (Hello downvotes? If you are not in tune with German politics: this is the same government that is in contempt of court for failing to enforce effective measurements to stop excessive pollution levels. This is not at all a sincere suggestion.)

ju-st 9y ago
I don't understand why you are getting downvoted either but keep in mind that complaining about downvotes is not allowed on HN.

daxfohl 9y ago

How about offering tax breaks to companies that promote telecommuting in some fashion?

gruez 9y ago
then a bunch of companies who already do telecommuting (call centers come to mind) all relocate there, causing a net impact of 0 on pollution.
dx034 9y ago
Because then everyone will promote it without any real change. Suddenly there will be more remote working policies without people using them (because their boss tells them off the record that they are not supposed to use them).

majewsky 9y ago

> Other attempts around the world to offer citizens free travel have failed, including in US city Seattle. Why do they not mention the large amount of cities where free public transit is working just fine (most notably Estonian capitol Tallinn)? List: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport#List_of_towns_and_cities_with_area-wide_zero-fare_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport#List_of_...

Quarrelsome 9y ago
Tallinn is not very big though compared to other European capitals, also they have form for it as it was former USSR. They never even put up barriers when you had to pay (trains would have inspectors and buses were self ticket stamping).
- dx034 9y ago
  Few German stations have barriers. It's actually "profitable" in most cities to never buy a ticket, checks are rare. I guess German mentality helps avoiding widespread abuse (and the fact that it's a crime under German law).
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    Germany is the only country I ever visited where i feared the ticket inspector. I've seen them put fines. They go undercover in the metro: sometimes its just a dude sitting there suddenly takes the gadget out and yells out a control. I've had foreign friends, as tourists having to pay the fine. In SF you can simply not pay,there is no control. In argentina, the bus driver might not start the bus if you don't pay, turning the whole bus people against you. In germany, you get a damn ticket very fast, which you can pay with credit card. I once didnt pay the ticket and felt like Jason Bourne.
    - dx034 9y ago
      Problem is that this can get you in legal trouble after a few times. While first offender cases always get dropped, you'll get a court date if you get caught too often. I once witnessed a case where someone had to spend a short time in jail because of that. He got caught 13 times over two years (not sure how he managed that) but still appears quite harsh. The fact that Germany doesn't have massively overcrowded jails shows that most people end up paying at some point.

hannob 9y ago

Before you get too excited: This is nothing more than a vague idea at the moment. No specific plans and particularly no budget for it. I'd be extremely surprised if this becomes a real project.

cf498 9y ago
There is really nothing more to say to this news report. To give some context, Germany is currently in coalition talks for the forming of a new government and the Social Democrats(SPD) are screwed. They promised no more coalition government before the election but stepped back on that. The party voted by a hair to take up negotiations for a new coalition, during which the prime candidate(Schulz) was completely abandoned after trying to give him the post of former SPD foreign minister Gabriel. Now they face a party vote on getting involved in a new government and they fall in polls almost every week[1]. There is absolutely no substance on this topic. [1] https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/ https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/

nostromo 9y ago

In Seattle the “Ride Free Zone” caused the busses to be used as makeshift homeless shelters. This lead to a common sentiment that busses were smelly, unsafe places, and it was eventually scraped. (Germany seems to have less of a homeless population than West Coast cities, so perhaps this won’t be an issue for them.)

goalieca 9y ago
So instead of fixing the problem of homelessness, Seattle decided to compromise on transportation. Is this ideological or pathological or both??
- ams6110 9y ago
  Since nobody anywhere has ever "fixed" homelessness, not really fair to criticize Seattle for not doing it.
  - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
    On the contrary, when comparing the percentage of homeless people with the average income and wealth in a city, many cities in US, including San Francisco and Seattle, stand out for their striking inequality. Many cities in other developed countries are doing much better.
  - pgeorgi 9y ago
    That sounds to me like https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527 https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-na... Seattle has ~3x as many homeless per population than the US average. The US has ~3x as many homeless per population than Germany. That's about one decimal magnitude of difference (at a somewhat comparable climate - San Francisco likes to claim that they have to deal with so many homeless people because of the accomodating weather) Whatever is going on in Seattle, there's likely room to improve.
    - jdminhbg 9y ago

YouAreGreat 9y ago

Buses are heated and air-conditioned... so nice of Germany to plan to provide mobile homes and rolling pubs for the lower 20%. That could motivate the marginal user from the upper 50% to use their own cars exclusively, missing the pollution point entirely.

helloworld04 9y ago

Ironic the idea is just downplayed by the next day article >https://www.thelocal.de/20180214/government-plays-down-free-public-transport-plan https://www.thelocal.de/20180214/government-plays-down-free-...

franzpeterfolz 9y ago

Well, plans say the government is subsidizing Electric cars and Plugin-Hybrids with 4,000 Euro. Half payed by the government and the other half from car manufacturers. They even want to expand these subsidies to small businesses and extend the amount to 8,000 Euros. The problem indeed is that this would not help to banish air pollution, because the numbers are to low. The second thing is, that only wealthier people would benefit from these subsidies. You have to be able to afford a new car at first. And second you have to be able to afford an electric car. And even if you are the typical buy brand new cars guy, you typically drive these cars 6 to 10 years. So these subsidies might come in an unpleasent moment of your car-buying-cycle. Free public transportation could reduce car traffic and everybody could benefit. Even poor people.

guitarbill 9y ago
In light of this, the decision to shut down nuclear power plants by 2022, but keep the coal power plants is, err, interesting? Sure, renewable sources are increasing, but fossil fuels are still the biggest source. I wonder where the energy for electric cars will come from if they truly become popular. Keep in mind that Germany imports energy. So phasing out nuclear power, while still importing from nations running nuclear is somewhat hypocritical (e.g. France has some plants along the border). Even in Germany, politics are politics and fears are not always rational.
- lispm 9y ago
  > Keep in mind that Germany imports energy. Germany imports energy. It also imports electricity sometimes. But Germany actually has a large export surplus for electricity over the last five years - even though several nuclear power plants have been closed. And the surplus is widening. > So phasing out nuclear power, while still importing from nations running nuclear is somewhat hypocritical (e.g. France has some plants along the border). Germany has now the largest electricity export surplus in Europe. Germany also has a large electricity export surplus with France. The German export surplus of electricity in 2017 was 60TWH. 2016 56 TWH, 2015 57TWH. Etc. https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=import-export&period=annual&year=2017 https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=import-export... In money this means an export surplus in 2017 of 1.4 Billion Euro. Renewable energy is now at 36% for electricity and Germany now for the first time has days where the whole country is powered by renewable electricity. > e.g. France has some plants along the border The old french nuclear power plants Germany would like to see closed. > I wonder where the energy for electric cars will come from if they truly become popular. Depends where you are, but I live in North Germany and it's possible to have large amount of surplus electricity in one or two decades from wind with buffers (like hydro in Norway which is then transported via HVDC lines to Germany).

johnydepp 9y ago

I applaud EU countries of being so considerate about pollution and climate change, be it renewable energy, pollution control by traffic and other industries. On the other hand we have my country India where in budget 2018, not much attention is given to any of these matters.

frandroid 9y ago
I wish India would ban two-stroke engines (phase them out, not ban them outright obviously), that would make a huuuuggeee difference in the air pollution of the large cities.
- johnydepp 9y ago
  You have a good point but only stopping two-stroke engines is not going to help. Single person car driving is a big problem and cab sharing is still premature. I think these are by-products of the poor public transport. Major cities don't have fully connected subway system, inter-city public transport is even worse, be it railways (sigh!) or public buses. Other bigger factors to pollution are industries and electricity production. Curbing pollution is not possible if country/states are not very concerned about it, be it regulating the industries, making better public transport or focusing on renewable energy. Problem is, some of the leaders are focused on politics and others care only about growth and economics. They don't even think that pollution is a real issue. And those who care and think about it, are not allowed to live and do their work!

zwieback 9y ago

Corvallis, OR is just a small (55K) wealthy college town but all our buses are free to everyone all the time.

jlebrech 9y ago

one of the socialism's PROs. if done right. transport.

conanbatt 9y ago

I wonder what this would do to bikers. Suddenly buying a bike is more expensive than energy consuming public transportation.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jonashnk 9y ago

In Tallinn (Estonia) free public transport was launched on the municipality level. What's interesting, is that despite criticism that this is too expensive for the city - free transportation has actually turned out to be profitable. This is because only residents of the city can use public transport for free. So thousands of people, who have lived there already, but were not registered as residents, now declared their residency to access free public transport—and started paying their taxes there too.

propter_hoc 9y ago
This does not make sense. If the citizen (as you say) is deciding between paying taxes or buying transit tickets on a monetary basis, he or she will choose the cheapest option, and the city will lose out on revenue. On a purely financial basis making this the citizen's choice cannot be a win-win for the citizen and the city. Besides the above argument, it is also unlikely that there is any possibility of net revenue to the city. Even if a few people irrationally decide to pay more taxes than they were paying in transit fares, and hence generate some revenue, there are presumably only a small minority of the population who make this decision. But these additional tax revenues have to cover not just what these citizens were spending on their own transit passes, but also the loss in revenue to the city from everyone else in the city not paying for transit anymore. Certainly, it is likely that free public transport enhances the economy and generates revenue in other ways, but it does not add up in the way you have presented it.
- jedrek 9y ago
  It doesn't make sense because you don't understand how registered addresses and taxes work in the former eastern bloc. It's common for people to move to a large city and officially still be registered as living at home. Sometimes it's due to laziness, sometimes they don't want to get the paperwork to get registered at their new address, sometimes they just like having mom take care of all their paperwork/tickets/etc. Free public transportation is incentivizing these people to register where they actually live. They aren't paying more in taxes, they've just registered as official residents of the city, so their taxes are counted as being paid in the city.

ataturk 9y ago

Free = somehow someone else pays for it

bischofs 9y ago

FYI they are currently downplaying the contents of this article https://www.thelocal.de/20180214/government-plays-down-free-public-transport-plan https://www.thelocal.de/20180214/government-plays-down-free-...

lnino 9y ago

If you want to banish air pollution then allow only electric cars. Perhaps let some basic services use combustion engines because it's cheaper. There is no "free" transportation.

bickfordb 9y ago

Downtown Portland used to have free public transit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fareless_Square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fareless_Square

Robotbeat 9y ago

Try allowing only electric cars in the city center. That should help a lot. And electrifying buses is pretty easy and fast, comparatively speaking. Buses tend to have a shorter operational life than commuter cars and are in use a lot more and there's a lot fewer of them. Replacing tens of millions of commuter cars is a lot harder than tens of thousands of transit buses. ...of course, Germany's grid is pretty dirty since they keep building coal ("lignite", a sort of euphemistic way of saying "brown coal") infrastructure while shutting down perfectly good, clean nuclear power. But should still help.

grey-sunshine 9y ago

By how much does the income tax increase.

zanny 9y ago

Practically every city with a transit system should be giving away free rides all the time. Something along the lines of every citizen can come get a ride card that gives you 4 free rides a week on the tube or 4 free bus rides within city limits. It accomplishes a ton: * It gets people who cannot afford regular fares to use these services when appropriate, rather than what might be less desirable (having a friend drive them around if they are too poor, etc). * It gets people using services they might not use otherwise. A lot of commuters would take the train once or twice just because its free. If you can get people started on using public transit, they might just keep using it. * You can also give away free rides during low density hours, such as at night. This can help offset daytime load by getting people to do their time-flexible commutes at off hours. Now there are a lot of tweaks on the model, like making free rides only eligible for non-peak hours. But the whole point of public transit is to increase the efficiency of people and business in the economy where it is built - it is never meant to turn a profit, and if it is profitable it is probably failing on that first premise by costing so much to use. Making it completely free all the time makes it rife for abuse unless you institute a system where riders who ride the most get the least priority. But honestly if anyone were willing to implement such a system making the transit free and just using the tax revenue of booming business to pay for the transit is a much more sensible model than trying to keep your transit system revenue neutral or even cash positive (cough, Amtrak).

pmoleri 9y ago
While I agree I want to point out that I find reliability and punctuality far more important than price when it comes to get people into public transport. Germany probably excels at both, but it not the same for other countries / cities.
- qweqweqweqw 9y ago
  As if! Deutsche Bahn is late all the time, some WWII bomb is found and the track goes through the evacuation zone, someone blocks the trains door from closing because he wants to finish smoking his cigarette, train stops on a turnout track because of course freight trains are more important, people on the rails, fallen tree after a storm, etc etc. Of course compared to other countries our trains are probably still pretty punctual, but it's still annoying when you are stuck at the station for an hour when your whole trip only takes 45 minutes otherwise. Especially the WWII bomb thing is annoying, because they tend to find one every few weeks when there's construction near the tracks.

TomK32 9y ago

At first I was like "a word of caution" because Germany is inbetween governments (even though they will be the same) but seeing that ministers from all three parties involved support it, there might be something in it. On the other hand, the EU as well as the German Bundesverwaltungsgericht are playing hard regarding air quality in cities. The source I've read (http://taz.de/Regierung-erwaegt-kostenlosen-OePNV/!5481464/ http://taz.de/Regierung-erwaegt-kostenlosen-OePNV/!5481464/ ) mentions seven more ideas in the letter to the EU, only the free public transport standing out as radical. Traffic restrictions, incentives for e-mobility and upgrading pollution vehicles are others. I bet that's what is to be expected sooner or later and someone just slipped the radical idea about free public transport in to see the fallout.

Spooks 9y ago

Instead of making it free, could they improve the speed and comfort of public transport? I don't drive because it is cheaper, I drive because it is faster, more comfortable and more convenient (it gets me closer to where I want to be).

SomewhatLikely 9y ago
Agreed. I actually think it could be possible to make transit faster than driving by implementing the right infrastructure. For example, bus only lanes. I think there's still big issues with first and last mile though. One of the things that kills bus time is stopping at many stops and waits between transfers.

woodpanel 9y ago

Not so fast! This "consideration" comes with a couple grains of salt. First the regulatory-political climate: The pronouncement was stated days ahead of a court ruling regarding what measurements communities could take to reduce air pollution, as well as weeks ahead of a decision the EU will make about how to punish countries that repeatedly miss pollution thresholds, like Germany. That means: The government is telling communities 'behave', dare not prohibit any type of cars (diesel) from entering your cities, you may get into our "free public transport program" instead. That it is a crude plan is exemplified by the fact, that some of the "first tier" communities in the plan didn't knew about the plan at all and first heard from it in the news, most of them were just informed days before. So far, all communities criticize the idea. The estimated costs for Hamburg alone would amount to 800-900 million EUR/year, paid by all the rest of Germany. And then there is the problem that public transit crosses community boundaries - the crude plan though as it is, would grant citizens of one community free access to the same transit system that the neighbouring citizens would have to pay in full. Regardless of whether free public transit makes sense at all - The fact that it is brought up in such a crude proposal and the fact that it is a progressive idea taken "hostage" by conservatives it is an idea bound to fail and to be muted a long time afterwards.

gaius 9y ago

Or they could just invest in clean, carbon-free nuclear power... oh wait.

garfieldnate 9y ago

I don't know how the public transportation is in Berlin or Bonn, but I remain pretty unimpressed with it in Düsseldorf. The train schedule is very unreliable; trains and cars share the same road, and the train is regularly held up by cars. It is difficult to buy a ticket because the machines on the train only take coins, do not offer guidance on which ticket to buy, and are regularly out of order. Tickets are not checked before boarding. Instead, they regularly send stealth ticket checkers into the trains and give fines to people that weren't honest or bought the wrong ticket. Many stops are not elderly/wheelchair accessible, and it would take a lot of work to update them. That said, I did move here from Japan, so I have a high expectation. If I had come from the US, I would have been pretty happy just to see that trains exist! Minus the handicap-unfriendliness; everywhere I've been in the US, the bus drivers get out and set up a ramp for wheelchair users when needed.