11 ms·

Don't know about UK, but in Germany trains are obscenely expensive, especially when you compare them to low-cost airlines. There is nothing like "low-cost railw

by oytis 7y ago

Don't know about UK, but in Germany trains are obscenely expensive, especially when you compare them to low-cost airlines. There is nothing like "low-cost railway" so far, and I doubt there ever will be.

magduf 7y ago
In Bavaria, they're dirt cheap, at least for the regional trains. For 25 Euros cash, you can go anywhere in Bavaria all you want, for 24 hours, in as many trips as you want. Of course, this doesn't really compete with airlines, as this is for inter-city trips within the state, and no two cities in Bavaria are that far apart. But to say there's no "low-cost railway" is plainly false. Bavaria has probably one of the best train systems in the entire world, and it's not expensive by any means.
- oytis 7y ago
  Yes, sorry, I had something like "getting from Berlin to Brussels at low cost" in mind. There is no way to do it with railway, only with a plane. If I just want to travel in the same Bundesland where I am, there are plenty of cheap options, that's true.
  - wink 7y ago
    Same here, I've been to Brussels quite often (for FOSDEM) and the difference is: - flying: 120 EUR from Munich, getting up at 4-5, arriving at 9 - train: have to go the day before, have an additional night in the hotel (70 EUR) and THEN the train is more expensive than flying anyway. Maybe not so important if the company pays, but still not fun to argue (depending on the company).
  - pm215 7y ago
    How low cost do you want low cost to be, and how annoying are you prepared for it to be? I just picked (fairly arbitrarily) Monday 19th August, and although Expedia does offer a GBP18 Ryanair flight SXF - BRU you have to accept an 0620 departure time to get that, and of course no checked baggage and you need to include costs of getting to/from the airport. Given the need to arrive at least 1h before departure I would personally not even consider 0620 dep, and all the other flights Expedia suggests cost 90 quid or more. For the train loco2.com has one-way tickets Berlin Hbf -> Bruxelles-Midi from GBP63.50 at reasonable times.
    - magduf 7y ago
      As an American, I can only dream of having convenient train fares of about USD$80 to go between somewhat-distant cities. Berlin to Brussels for GPB63.50 (about $80 right now) sounds downright cheap to me.
      - objectivetruth 7y ago
        Except in very high-demand seasons/routes, Amtrak is pretty affordable. I routinely see 200-mile one-way tickets on my usual route for $30. I took my sister's kid on a fun 35-mile train ride for like $8 total. I've done Chicago -> Oakland via Amtrak for less than $200... It's brutal in coach. But I've done the same route in a private sleeper room, with 6 or 7 restaurant-quality meals included, for less than $500. It's basically a 60-hour-long well-catered scenic landscape tour of America. (But the on-board WiFi and your ability to 4G tether is basically worthless between Denver -> SLC, and between SLC -> Reno :-)
  - jlangenauer 7y ago
    Rubbish. I've travelled Berlin to Brussels (and then London) by train. It was very pleasant.
    - nudpiedo 7y ago
      Sometimes you get a group of loud people around celebrating something, like soccer cup or getting married (especially in the connections with Regionals). Also last year there were often delays and problems in the connections between Mannheim or Frankfurt; I wouldn’t just call someone’s comment rubbish.
      - purerandomness 7y ago
        For every ride like that, you could get a teenaged school class flying in your plane.
        wink 7y ago
        While you're technically right, the MUC-BRU flight is 90% businesspeople in suits on the smallest regular plane I've ever used, I can't imaging TXL-BRU being different. I.e. the chance of it having a school class in it is like winning the lottery ;)
- icebraining 7y ago
  25€ is not dirt cheap, unless you're planning on taking 4+ trips on a single day. In Belgium, a prepaid ticket for 10 rides, each from/to any station in the country, costs just 75€ (valid for one year).
  - j605 7y ago
    I guess the issue is more for intercountry rail travel.
  - magduf 7y ago
    As an American, 25 Euros is absolutely dirt cheap. We can't travel between nearby cities for anywhere near that cheap here. The 75 Euro deal sounds really cheap too.
    - icebraining 7y ago
      According to the Amtrak site, you can go from NYC to Washington DC for $53. That's more expensive, but not tremendously so.
      - magduf 7y ago
        I've looked for fares like that and never see them at convenient times. At 4AM 3 months from now, sure. That's not convenient. I tried planning out a weekend trip from DC (where I live) to NYC on Amtrak, and I couldn't make it work. The goal was to travel to NYC without flying, and without having to take time off from work (I work normal 9-5ish, flex hours). The only way to get fares cheaper than by airline is to take the train at 5AM or so. But the train station is downtown; I can't get downtown in time to catch the train by Metro (subway), because the Metro doesn't run that early. So I'd have to take a Lyft/Uber, which is expensive. If I go at a more convenient hour, the rates shoot way up, so it's more expensive than flying. Sure, I could take a day or two off from work, but that defeats the point. If I wanted to travel between Frankfurt and Munich on a weekend without taking time off from work, or between Tokyo and Osaka, I could do it more cheaply and easily than DC-NYC.
- wink 7y ago
  Also pretty pointless in terms of business travel: I've hardly ever had any customers not in Munich or in the Nuremberg (area) that weren't so far away from the station that you'd need a taxi, so you can drive anyway. Especially for conferences. Usually Munich or Nuremberg.
ahartmetz 7y ago
The regular Deutsche Bahn prices are very expensive but the special prices are often rather cheap. A further 25% less for BahnCard 25 owners. I take a lot of cheap train rides that way. https://ps.bahn.de/preissuche/preissuche/psc_angebotssuche.refresh?&countrylang=GBR_en#stay https://ps.bahn.de/preissuche/preissuche/psc_angebotssuche.r...
criddell 7y ago
Low cost rail might exist one day in relation to the cost of flying where the carbon cost is added to the plane ticket.
- oytis 7y ago
  My problem with economic solutions like carbon tax is that as it alleviates the carbon footprint, it reinforces economic inequality. Mobility will become something reserved to the rich people again. I hope we will find a better one, e.g. online conferences or putting a tax specifically on business travel on behalf of medium to large sized companies.
  - komali2 7y ago
    Technically mobility is limited to the rich right now - all of us are "environmentally rich," blissfully jetting about in environment-destroying airplanes while enjoying a relatively clean Earth. Our offspring will be Earth-poor, suffering the consequences of our frivolous "spending." In my mind a carbon tax is a wealth transfer from the present to the future. I think it's a good solution because we aren't exacting fair price for our activities. I read a great book once in which future generations sued the shoes off their elders for not paying fair price for their climate-changing activities. Wealth inequality should be addressed. We shouldn't hamstring other solutions just because it also is a problem - we can work on them in parallel. I appreciate you bringing it up though, it is a good thing to be aware of.
  - criddell 7y ago
    To offset the CO2 on a US-to-Europe round trip flight would add around $500 per ticket. As the efficiency of airplanes and CO2 concentrators improve, that should drop. That seems reasonable to me and while it will make flying to Europe too expensive for some, it wouldn't make traveling to Europe something only the rich can afford. For a typical family flying from middle America to Orlando, it would probably mean one less day at Disney.
    - brianbreslin 7y ago
jlangenauer 7y ago
So you have a moral question: Is it more important that you save a few euros, or that future generations and people in poor countries (who, let's be honest, will bear the brunt of climate change) will suffer?
- oytis 7y ago
  No, that's not the moral question I have. I personally have a choice between a few (about a hundred normally) euros and a little emissions. The society as a whole has a choice between a lot of euros and a lot of emissions. And also reducing people's mobility, where rich people are affected the least.
neuronic 7y ago
What? Of course there is low cost train travel. It is garbage, but it exists. https://www.flixtrain.com/ https://www.flixtrain.com/ However, if you want to go Hamburg-Munich on an ICE (better than flying imo IF (!) everything works) and you do not have purchased a "BahnCard" and you do not book far in advance then it is very expensive. 2nd class ICE ride on that track in 2 weeks is 153€, flex, one way. For that money you get a return flight. If you can be 100% sure to make it to one exact train you can go for ca. 50€. [1] Risk of failing to catch that train is pretty high though. [1] https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/dn?revia=yes&existOptimizePrice=1&country=DEU&dbkanal_007=L01_S01_D001_KIN0001_qf-bahn-svb-kl2_lz03&start=1&protocol=https%3A&REQ0JourneyStopsS0A=1&S=Hamburg+Hbf&REQ0JourneyStopsSID=A%3D1%40O%3DHamburg+Hbf%40X%3D10006909%40Y%3D53552733%40U%3D80%40L%3D008002549%40B%3D1%40p%3D1558994455%40&Z=M%C3%BCnchen+Hbf&REQ0JourneyStopsZID=&date=Di%2C+18.06.19&time=17%3A04&timesel=depart&returnDate=&returnTime=&returnTimesel=depart&optimize=0&auskunft_travelers_number=1&tariffTravellerType.1=E&tariffTravellerReductionClass.1=0&tariffClass=2&rtMode=DB-HYBRID&externRequest=yes&HWAI=JS%21js%3Dyes%21ajax%3Dyes%21 https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/dn?revia=yes&exi...
- Symbiote 7y ago
  You are comparing a flexible train ticket against an inflexible plane ticket. The flexible plane ticket is probably 3-10x the price, depending on the airline.
nudpiedo 7y ago
I made that a lot in Germany and it is worth if you value also the quality of the travel. There are regular offers between capitals and big cities across countries, travels I did from Stuttgart: Stuttgart-Paris 40€, Copenhagen-Stuttgart 80€ (the train got in a Ferry and then the travel continued until Hamburg!), Stuttgart Amsterdam 80€. Sometimes traveling to far places like Spain must go over Paris, and each country has their own train network with more or less adaptation. The quality of the public train got worse in Germany during the last 10 years and it is not an infrastructure thought to be run as a business with profits, but it is still one of the best transportation services for long distance. The only problems with the train is visiting remote areas where it is necessary doing to or three train changes, which increases the chance of delays.

by oytis 7y ago

magduf 7y ago

In Bavaria, they're dirt cheap, at least for the regional trains. For 25 Euros cash, you can go anywhere in Bavaria all you want, for 24 hours, in as many trips as you want. Of course, this doesn't really compete with airlines, as this is for inter-city trips within the state, and no two cities in Bavaria are that far apart. But to say there's no "low-cost railway" is plainly false. Bavaria has probably one of the best train systems in the entire world, and it's not expensive by any means.

oytis 7y ago
Yes, sorry, I had something like "getting from Berlin to Brussels at low cost" in mind. There is no way to do it with railway, only with a plane. If I just want to travel in the same Bundesland where I am, there are plenty of cheap options, that's true.
- wink 7y ago
  Same here, I've been to Brussels quite often (for FOSDEM) and the difference is: - flying: 120 EUR from Munich, getting up at 4-5, arriving at 9 - train: have to go the day before, have an additional night in the hotel (70 EUR) and THEN the train is more expensive than flying anyway. Maybe not so important if the company pays, but still not fun to argue (depending on the company).
- pm215 7y ago
  How low cost do you want low cost to be, and how annoying are you prepared for it to be? I just picked (fairly arbitrarily) Monday 19th August, and although Expedia does offer a GBP18 Ryanair flight SXF - BRU you have to accept an 0620 departure time to get that, and of course no checked baggage and you need to include costs of getting to/from the airport. Given the need to arrive at least 1h before departure I would personally not even consider 0620 dep, and all the other flights Expedia suggests cost 90 quid or more. For the train loco2.com has one-way tickets Berlin Hbf -> Bruxelles-Midi from GBP63.50 at reasonable times.
  - magduf 7y ago
    As an American, I can only dream of having convenient train fares of about USD$80 to go between somewhat-distant cities. Berlin to Brussels for GPB63.50 (about $80 right now) sounds downright cheap to me.
    - objectivetruth 7y ago
      Except in very high-demand seasons/routes, Amtrak is pretty affordable. I routinely see 200-mile one-way tickets on my usual route for $30. I took my sister's kid on a fun 35-mile train ride for like $8 total. I've done Chicago -> Oakland via Amtrak for less than $200... It's brutal in coach. But I've done the same route in a private sleeper room, with 6 or 7 restaurant-quality meals included, for less than $500. It's basically a 60-hour-long well-catered scenic landscape tour of America. (But the on-board WiFi and your ability to 4G tether is basically worthless between Denver -> SLC, and between SLC -> Reno :-)
- jlangenauer 7y ago
  Rubbish. I've travelled Berlin to Brussels (and then London) by train. It was very pleasant.
  - nudpiedo 7y ago
    Sometimes you get a group of loud people around celebrating something, like soccer cup or getting married (especially in the connections with Regionals). Also last year there were often delays and problems in the connections between Mannheim or Frankfurt; I wouldn’t just call someone’s comment rubbish.
    - purerandomness 7y ago
      For every ride like that, you could get a teenaged school class flying in your plane.
      - wink 7y ago
        While you're technically right, the MUC-BRU flight is 90% businesspeople in suits on the smallest regular plane I've ever used, I can't imaging TXL-BRU being different. I.e. the chance of it having a school class in it is like winning the lottery ;)
icebraining 7y ago
25€ is not dirt cheap, unless you're planning on taking 4+ trips on a single day. In Belgium, a prepaid ticket for 10 rides, each from/to any station in the country, costs just 75€ (valid for one year).
- j605 7y ago
  I guess the issue is more for intercountry rail travel.
- magduf 7y ago
  As an American, 25 Euros is absolutely dirt cheap. We can't travel between nearby cities for anywhere near that cheap here. The 75 Euro deal sounds really cheap too.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    According to the Amtrak site, you can go from NYC to Washington DC for $53. That's more expensive, but not tremendously so.
    - magduf 7y ago
      I've looked for fares like that and never see them at convenient times. At 4AM 3 months from now, sure. That's not convenient. I tried planning out a weekend trip from DC (where I live) to NYC on Amtrak, and I couldn't make it work. The goal was to travel to NYC without flying, and without having to take time off from work (I work normal 9-5ish, flex hours). The only way to get fares cheaper than by airline is to take the train at 5AM or so. But the train station is downtown; I can't get downtown in time to catch the train by Metro (subway), because the Metro doesn't run that early. So I'd have to take a Lyft/Uber, which is expensive. If I go at a more convenient hour, the rates shoot way up, so it's more expensive than flying. Sure, I could take a day or two off from work, but that defeats the point. If I wanted to travel between Frankfurt and Munich on a weekend without taking time off from work, or between Tokyo and Osaka, I could do it more cheaply and easily than DC-NYC.
wink 7y ago
Also pretty pointless in terms of business travel: I've hardly ever had any customers not in Munich or in the Nuremberg (area) that weren't so far away from the station that you'd need a taxi, so you can drive anyway. Especially for conferences. Usually Munich or Nuremberg.

ahartmetz 7y ago

The regular Deutsche Bahn prices are very expensive but the special prices are often rather cheap. A further 25% less for BahnCard 25 owners. I take a lot of cheap train rides that way. https://ps.bahn.de/preissuche/preissuche/psc_angebotssuche.refresh?&countrylang=GBR_en#stay https://ps.bahn.de/preissuche/preissuche/psc_angebotssuche.r...

criddell 7y ago

Low cost rail might exist one day in relation to the cost of flying where the carbon cost is added to the plane ticket.

oytis 7y ago
My problem with economic solutions like carbon tax is that as it alleviates the carbon footprint, it reinforces economic inequality. Mobility will become something reserved to the rich people again. I hope we will find a better one, e.g. online conferences or putting a tax specifically on business travel on behalf of medium to large sized companies.
- komali2 7y ago
  Technically mobility is limited to the rich right now - all of us are "environmentally rich," blissfully jetting about in environment-destroying airplanes while enjoying a relatively clean Earth. Our offspring will be Earth-poor, suffering the consequences of our frivolous "spending." In my mind a carbon tax is a wealth transfer from the present to the future. I think it's a good solution because we aren't exacting fair price for our activities. I read a great book once in which future generations sued the shoes off their elders for not paying fair price for their climate-changing activities. Wealth inequality should be addressed. We shouldn't hamstring other solutions just because it also is a problem - we can work on them in parallel. I appreciate you bringing it up though, it is a good thing to be aware of.
- criddell 7y ago
  To offset the CO2 on a US-to-Europe round trip flight would add around $500 per ticket. As the efficiency of airplanes and CO2 concentrators improve, that should drop. That seems reasonable to me and while it will make flying to Europe too expensive for some, it wouldn't make traveling to Europe something only the rich can afford. For a typical family flying from middle America to Orlando, it would probably mean one less day at Disney.
  - brianbreslin 7y ago

jlangenauer 7y ago

So you have a moral question: Is it more important that you save a few euros, or that future generations and people in poor countries (who, let's be honest, will bear the brunt of climate change) will suffer?

oytis 7y ago
No, that's not the moral question I have. I personally have a choice between a few (about a hundred normally) euros and a little emissions. The society as a whole has a choice between a lot of euros and a lot of emissions. And also reducing people's mobility, where rich people are affected the least.

neuronic 7y ago

What? Of course there is low cost train travel. It is garbage, but it exists. https://www.flixtrain.com/ https://www.flixtrain.com/ However, if you want to go Hamburg-Munich on an ICE (better than flying imo IF (!) everything works) and you do not have purchased a "BahnCard" and you do not book far in advance then it is very expensive. 2nd class ICE ride on that track in 2 weeks is 153€, flex, one way. For that money you get a return flight. If you can be 100% sure to make it to one exact train you can go for ca. 50€. [1] Risk of failing to catch that train is pretty high though. [1] https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/dn?revia=yes&existOptimizePrice=1&country=DEU&dbkanal_007=L01_S01_D001_KIN0001_qf-bahn-svb-kl2_lz03&start=1&protocol=https%3A&REQ0JourneyStopsS0A=1&S=Hamburg+Hbf&REQ0JourneyStopsSID=A%3D1%40O%3DHamburg+Hbf%40X%3D10006909%40Y%3D53552733%40U%3D80%40L%3D008002549%40B%3D1%40p%3D1558994455%40&Z=M%C3%BCnchen+Hbf&REQ0JourneyStopsZID=&date=Di%2C+18.06.19&time=17%3A04&timesel=depart&returnDate=&returnTime=&returnTimesel=depart&optimize=0&auskunft_travelers_number=1&tariffTravellerType.1=E&tariffTravellerReductionClass.1=0&tariffClass=2&rtMode=DB-HYBRID&externRequest=yes&HWAI=JS%21js%3Dyes%21ajax%3Dyes%21 https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/dn?revia=yes&exi...

Symbiote 7y ago
You are comparing a flexible train ticket against an inflexible plane ticket. The flexible plane ticket is probably 3-10x the price, depending on the airline.

nudpiedo 7y ago

I made that a lot in Germany and it is worth if you value also the quality of the travel. There are regular offers between capitals and big cities across countries, travels I did from Stuttgart: Stuttgart-Paris 40€, Copenhagen-Stuttgart 80€ (the train got in a Ferry and then the travel continued until Hamburg!), Stuttgart Amsterdam 80€. Sometimes traveling to far places like Spain must go over Paris, and each country has their own train network with more or less adaptation. The quality of the public train got worse in Germany during the last 10 years and it is not an infrastructure thought to be run as a business with profits, but it is still one of the best transportation services for long distance. The only problems with the train is visiting remote areas where it is necessary doing to or three train changes, which increases the chance of delays.