9 ms·

Germany’s ultra-cheap train ticket saved 1.8M tons of CO2

96 points by geoffbp 4y ago

mercy_dude 4y ago
Was in Germany, can confirm many locals were opting for trains. Not to say many small towns were getting long needed boosts in tourism after Covid downturn. I don’t know how small compared to overall German government balance sheet to withstand to support a program like that indefinitely but it was definitely a pleasant surprise for me coming from North America where train services are generally pretty bad. It was difficult to get seats in regional trains over the weekends though but overall trains were clean and right on time. As much as I think this is a great model for Germany, it is not optimal to apply for places like US and Canada. I remember we took a regional train from Nurnburg to Leipzig and it took us close to 6hrs. For less than 200km distance. Now imagine US where that distance can quadruple depending on the state you are driving to.
- FabHK 4y ago
  > it took us close to 6hrs That's just the regional trains, though. The Intercity Express from Düsseldorf Hbf to Frankfurt Airport is 1h 15 mins (for more than 200 km). China has nearly the area (9.6m km^2) of the US (9.8m km^2), and has plenty of railroad.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - danrl 4y ago
    China’s population density map is very different from the US’ . One can hardly compare these countries when it comes to transportation infrastructure for people.
    - adrianN 4y ago
      The US has pretty terrible public transport even in dense areas.
  - bierjunge 4y ago
    Karlsruhe - Hamburg (~600km) -> 5 hours with ICE (the Basel - Hamburg connection) or 6 hours with an IC. Karlsruhe - Paris (~550km) -> 2.5 hours with TGV (and it's mostly cheaper than traveling with DB).
    - 4ggr0 4y ago
      Out of curiosity I checked it a bit deeper - The ICE has 6 stops, while the TGV only stops once. Spiegel also has an article about these exact two trains[0]. To summarize, in Germany the trains have a couple dozen kilometers where they're allowed to go faster than 160kp/h, in France the TGV travels at around 320kp/h for quite some time. Considering all this it's not that surprising that the TGV is that much faster. Apparently the problem is that the fast trains in Germany have to share the tracks with the slower trains, in France and Japan as an example they apparently have their own tracks. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/reise/deutschland/ice-versus-tgv-warum-deutsche-schnellzuege-deutlich-langsamer-sind-a-1259209.html https://www.spiegel.de/reise/deutschland/ice-versus-tgv-waru...
      - iggldiggl 4y ago
        France operates on a "periphery-to-Paris-and-back" model, so the goal is quite clear – you build a radial line towards Paris and voilà, you've sped up that relation. "periphery-to-periphery" traffic is mostly ignored, so you get the somewhat curious situation where the geographically direct connection between two cities might be slower (or only marginally faster) than going all the way into Paris and back out again. Germany on the other hand doesn't have a single city that's as extremely dominant as Paris, so to capture a similar amount of traffic on your high speed network you need something more like a mesh, where any single route might only capture a smaller fraction of the total traffic, rather than the simply radial star you can get by in France. Of course that's not the only reason for the differing evolution of high speed rail between France and Germany, but it definitively is one of the reasons behind that difference.
    - kmlx 4y ago
      tokyo - osaka 500km -> nozomi shinkansen 2.5hrs, hikari shinkansen 3hrs, ~EUR 100-150 one-way
- kodyo 4y ago
  20 miles per hour sounds like a great model for 1880.
  - thinkcontext 4y ago
    Its a local train making many stops, the technology of the train makes no difference to how long it would take to do the schedule. I imagine almost no one rides the full length, they'd take an express train instead.
  - piva00 4y ago
    Because it's local trains with multiple stops. It's like comparing an average speed of car trips inside a city with multiple intersections (around 12-20 km/h) to a motorway average speed (100+ km/h) and saying that cars driving in the city are from the 1920s...
- nib99 4y ago
  The normal trains are two hours from Nürnberg to Leipzig. The thing is, the 9€ ticket was limited to regional trains, which stop in every village on the way. Munich/Berlin is 4 hours by train, hard to beat by car, and if you go centre to centre even by plane.
  - aeyes 4y ago
    2 hours is ICE which isn't a "normal" train to me, but even with regional trains it should only be around 4 hours. I'm not sure if the OP took the scenic route. 200km was also a very optimistic guess, it's 300km. It looks close on the map but even in a car it will take you 3 hours. It's actually faster to go from Dresden.
- ragebol 4y ago
  > Nurnburg to Leipzig and it took us close to 6hrs The 9 euro ticket only worked for regional trains. With the ICE, the high-speed intercity trains, that would have taken 2 hours and 6 minutes if you leave right when I write this comment EDIT: cost is important of course: DB says that would cost about 80 euros, which is a crime IMO. [0] Taking the car would take about half an hour longer and currently cost about 44 euro in fuel [1] [0] https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/dn?S=8000284&Z=8010205&arrival_time=%5B%222022-09-01T16:10:00%2B00:00%22%5D&boarding_time=%5B%222022-09-01T14:04:00%2B00:00%22%5D&date=01.09.22&dbkanal_004=L01_S01_D001_KPK0054_anreiselink_LZ03&from_ticketing_stop_time_id=%5B%228000284%22%5D&service_date=%5B%2220220901%22%5D&start=1&ticketing_trip_id=%5B%22DE:80:504:53%22%5D&time=16:04&to_ticketing_stop_time_id=%5B%228010205%22%5D#hfsseq1|cq.01365593.1662039035 https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/dn?S=8000284&Z=8... [1] https://www.anwb.nl/verkeer/routeplanner?area1=EU&area2=EU&displayType=instructions&lat1=49.45052&lat2=51.33969&lon1=11.08048&lon2=12.37136&name1=Neurenberg%2C%20Duitsland&name2=Leipzig%2C%20Duitsland&transportMode1=car https://www.anwb.nl/verkeer/routeplanner?area1=EU&area2=EU&d... Also: hot damn, ugly URLs
  - bakuninsbart 4y ago
    DB is very expensive when travelling spontaneously and really cheap if planning well ahead. I regularly go from Berlin to Frankfurt for 20 Euros, which is around 500km. Often times, they offer me first class upgrades for 10 Euros, too.
    - ragebol 4y ago
      Huh, did not know that. How well ahead is well ahead?
      - bakuninsbart 4y ago
        At least 2 months in advance. If it is later, the first or last connection is often times really cheap still, too.
- jeromegv 4y ago
  It's a common myth that Canada is not a good fit for train, yes it is large and low density at a country level but it has pockets of very high density. Almost half of Canadian population is within the Windsor-Quebec City corridor (which includes Toronto and Montreal), which is just about 1100 km. You can definitely have a viable train considering the millions of people that live there and the many dozens of daily short flights that happen in that corridor.
  - theluketaylor 4y ago
    The current GO Expansion to turn the greater Toronto area commuter rail into a true regional rail is a great project, and is using knowledge and expertise from the German rail network. It will electrify the trains and provide all day frequent service throughout the network that will mean not really needing to bother checking the schedule. It also flies in the face of statements that say european style rail isn't possible in north america, since the basic plan is modelled on German S-Bahn. Just this weekend I drove 1 hr to the edge of Toronto, then got on the subway to downtown for a Blue Jays game. Once GO expansion is done I'll be able to make that same trip on a single train in less time then it takes to drive. High speed rail from Quebec City to Windsor is a project we should absolutely be funding as the population and travel patterns of the corridor would easily support it. Start with Toronto->Montreal with a spur to Ottawa, then as phase 2 extend to Windsor and Quebec City.
  - master_crab 4y ago
    Yup. Both US and Canada are good fits for mass transit. The Bos-NYC-Phil-Was-(Rich-Raleigh-Atlanta?) corridor represents around 30% of the US population (well over 100 million for those counting). The distance between those US cities represents maybe less than half the high speed rail network in France but easily almost double the French population.
- xcambar 4y ago
  practical or not, the size of a country (which, should that be reminded, is a man-made construct) should not have a say on whether or not some can be “pardoned” to fly. If your country is poorly equipped in efficient rails, how would that give you the right to fly for convenience? This question comes from everyone in every other country.
- InCityDreams 4y ago
  > I remember we took a regional train from Nurnburg to Leipzig and it took us close to 6hrs. For less than 200km distance. Now imagine US where that distance can quadruple depending on the state you are driving to. Pretty sure the distance from Nurnburg to Leipzig, or 'less than 200km', would not quaruple in the States, or indeed anywhere else.
LtWorf 4y ago
This should be done in permanence also for long distance travels, where currently airplane is cheaper.
- malauxyeux 4y ago
  In a similar vein, in November 2021, a law was passed in France to disallow some domestic flights where the same destination can be reached by train in 2.5 hours or less. No idea what it did concretely. There's a big carve out for flights that are taken mostly by people traveling to further destinations.
skeeter2020 4y ago
I don't have a horse in this race, but how many extra trips did it encourage vs. staying home?
- jeromegv 4y ago
  How would we know? For the sake of the economy, more trips is typically better than less. But at the end of the day, would you rather for the only choice to be cars or have a proper sustainable/scalable way of transport?
  - iggldiggl 4y ago
    While fares shouldn't be outrageously expensive, and better national-level through-ticketing would be nice, beyond that I'd rather have better (more frequent) and reliable, rather than simply massively cheaper service with no further service improvements.
- bombcar 4y ago
  In general extra trips are "good" until the operators have to put more trains on the rails (as the marginal costs of an extra rider are nearly zero when the train is already scheduled).
martinpw 4y ago
As a visitor the 9 euro ticket was amazing. In combination with Google transit navigation, frequent reliable service and transit stops that displayed accurate time until the next bus/train, it made getting round the cities almost frictionless. Normally I avoid transit in new cities due to the hassle of figuring it out, paying for tickets etc, but in this case I used it all over Munich and Berlin for 2 months. Too bad it ended today - now need to learn how regular tickets work. One thing I heard was though is that most of the additional transit trips were not replacing car trips but were trips that would not otherwise have been taken at all. Which is not a bad thing in itself, but it would have been nice to displace more car usage.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It'd be interesting to dig further into the details. There are "car trips" that I don't take that are instead replaced by Walmart or Amazon or someone sending a truck to my house to deliver a package. If there was "free" or "low cost" way to "get into town" perhaps some of those would occur, not replacing a car trip but replacing a delivery.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  The regular ticket system is a prehistoric hassle, if you do not rely on DB-Citytickets. They actually still have those forms from 1990 if you want to close a abo in many places, almost none of them have a webshop, its a embarassing nightmare. And very expensive to use without monthly tickets.
  - kioleanu 4y ago
    To be fair it’s expensive to use with monthly tickets also. I saw an interesting discussion today on /r/de with people having to ride 1 to 3 stops and having to pay 90 to 120 euros per month. You have to be in a very privileged position to receive affordable tickets. I am lucky to work for a huge employer that offers a JobTicket which costs me 69 euros and they also subsidize half of that. Who doesn’t work at a company that has JobTickets can buy the same for 220 euros per month
danrl 4y ago
OTOH, it is a nicely hidden subsidy for the train operators. Because for every ticket sold, they get to claim a certain amount from the federal government. Luckily it is capped (per ticket) otherwise who knows what they would claim Some say it is also most beneficial to richer people as they could afford train tickets but get then for the same low price and government subsidized as everyone else. Not sure I can buy that argument, richer people pay the vast amount of Germany’s federal budget via ridiculously high income tax. From an economic perspective the 9 Euro ticket was a disaster. A popular one, though.
- Bakary 4y ago
  I don't see how it can be termed a disaster if the end result is that infrastructure companies received more money and the population received a higher (if temporary) standard of living. This also increased the probability of decreased reliance on cars in the future and increased investment in such infrastructure, increased public support for those investments. I mean, we might still die in the climate wars in twenty years, but the 9 euro tickets won't be among the reasons why.
  - iggldiggl 4y ago
    > if the end result is that infrastructure companies received more money Ha. If you literally mean infrastructure companies, then no, there wasn't any direct money in it for them. Okay, a few extra trains ran, so the infrastructure operators got to charge for those additional train paths, but in the grand scheme of things that doesn't make much of a difference. And if you actually meant the transport operators actually operating the vehicles – if the federal government mandates massively lower fares in order to score political brownie points, somebody still needs to pay for the operating expenses during that time. If you subtract that loss of income, I doubt that there was that much extra money left over, especially given significant increases on the cost side of things (rising fuel and electricity prices, staff demanding higher wages due to general inflation).
  - wh33zle 4y ago
    I guess it depends a lot on what you think a government should spend money on or what its role is. IMO the 9€ ticket was a great idea because it was simple and unconditional. Social security laws and subsidies are usually riddeled with exceptions and rules on when you qualify which require more people (meaning more expenses for the government) to check them. In a society that is constantly chasing for even more convenience, reducing as much friction as possible for taking public transport seems like a good idea and far from a disaster?
tpmx 4y ago
The cost to pax payers per saved ton of emitted CO2 was EUR 1388 (about the same in USD). That seems very steep. https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-9-ticket-is-it-here-to-stay/a-62669414 https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-9-ticket-is-it-here-to-stay/a... The federal government is footing the bill, propping up state and municipal transport companies with an additional €2.5 billion ($2.53 billion).
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  If saving CO2 were the only goal, sure.
  - tpmx 4y ago
    Right. I wrote that in the context of the linked article. So don't think of this scheme as a reasonably efficient way of saving CO2 emissions (there are other much more economically efficient ways); at most it's a bonus. It follows that it doesn't make sense to justify the scheme on the CO2 emissions benefit. I've seen a lot of that on European subreddits.
  - tomjen3 4y ago
    But with global warming, that should be almost the only goal for an environmental policy.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      The nine euro tickets weren't an environmental policy. The environmental effect is a bonus.
- Chabsff 4y ago
  If CO2 reduction was the only goal, then yes, that would be a very steep number. That's obviously not the case though.
- ablatner 4y ago
  The cost to tax payers isn't a hit to the overall economy though. The government spending replaced fees that would ordinarily be payed by taxpayers and tourists.
fulafel 4y ago
The ETS cost per ton is 90€ [1]. Apparently the budget cost of this program was 2.5 G€[2]. 2500M/1.8M gives 1400 €/ton. The article doesn't seem to comment anything about this poor ratio, did I count wrong or did the article just ignore the 20x efficiency delta to market rate emission reductions? (Of course free train travel is great and being able to do it while reducing emissions instead of icnreasing them is excellent in itself, but still the reduction headline would call for analysis) [1] https://ember-climate.org/data/data-tools/carbon-price-viewer/ https://ember-climate.org/data/data-tools/carbon-price-viewe... [2] https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-9-ticket-is-it-here-to-stay/a-62669414 https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-9-ticket-is-it-here-to-stay/a...
BurningFrog 4y ago
Tons of CO₂ is maybe the most meaningless unit.
kitkat_new 4y ago
living in Germany: replaced my remaining car trips with train+bike (bike - train bike) - still sucked, but at least it was cheaper than going by car. I do everyday tasks tasks entirely by bike. There is a significant risk that you couldn't enter, because there are too many people. Sucks if you have to take multiple trains in a row, then strand somewhere in the middle of the route, and the next train will not drive for an hour or even not before the next day The trains drive quite slowly (100 km/h?). Overall trip time 2-3 car trip time. Trains were almost always late. You had to pray to be on time for the follow up train despite 10+min gaps. Often the follow up train was late too, which ironically helped. Extra bike tickets were necessary, with local rules and tickets. You don't know if you get a seat let alone a table or WiFi, so productivity is close to zero.
- chkal 4y ago
  Living in Germany as well and I can confirm that 100% of this is true and matches my experience.
jope12 4y ago
The price per ticket was 9 Euro, but the cost for the taxpayers was billions. This ticket was pure subsidization.
wuschel 4y ago
To;dr: Train travel in Germany was a complete mess for business / long distance travellers in the last three months. The other side of the coin is: the ultra cheap train ticket exposed the deficiencies in Germany’s rail system. For years, investments have been delayed and critical rail tracks have been reduced to the bear minimum of bandwidth. Regional trains and high-speed long-distance trains were sharing the same tracks. The former completely overcrowded, running late most of the time, and therefore affecting the latter. trains were running late most of the time, cancellations were frequent. Or even worse: Elderly people and small kids were stuck in standing, overheated trains (bonus: air con was defective) with no water, or possibilities to sit. A logistical failure. I’m paying for a flat rate for all trains in Germany, not only the regional ultra cheap category. I’m using this to travel frequently from the north or the south of Germany for business matters. The service and information policy was abysmal. I had to take the cab about 10 times for long-distance travel, and checked on multiple times in hotels to stay overnight. Who pays for that? Answer: the taxpayer. The Deutsche Bahn (German train company) was and is not prepared for this kind usage pattern.

96 points by geoffbp 4y ago

Was in Germany, can confirm many locals were opting for trains. Not to say many small towns were getting long needed boosts in tourism after Covid downturn. I don’t know how small compared to overall German government balance sheet to withstand to support a program like that indefinitely but it was definitely a pleasant surprise for me coming from North America where train services are generally pretty bad. It was difficult to get seats in regional trains over the weekends though but overall trains were clean and right on time. As much as I think this is a great model for Germany, it is not optimal to apply for places like US and Canada. I remember we took a regional train from Nurnburg to Leipzig and it took us close to 6hrs. For less than 200km distance. Now imagine US where that distance can quadruple depending on the state you are driving to.

FabHK 4y ago
> it took us close to 6hrs That's just the regional trains, though. The Intercity Express from Düsseldorf Hbf to Frankfurt Airport is 1h 15 mins (for more than 200 km). China has nearly the area (9.6m km^2) of the US (9.8m km^2), and has plenty of railroad.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- danrl 4y ago
  China’s population density map is very different from the US’ . One can hardly compare these countries when it comes to transportation infrastructure for people.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    The US has pretty terrible public transport even in dense areas.
- bierjunge 4y ago
  Karlsruhe - Hamburg (~600km) -> 5 hours with ICE (the Basel - Hamburg connection) or 6 hours with an IC. Karlsruhe - Paris (~550km) -> 2.5 hours with TGV (and it's mostly cheaper than traveling with DB).
  - 4ggr0 4y ago
    Out of curiosity I checked it a bit deeper - The ICE has 6 stops, while the TGV only stops once. Spiegel also has an article about these exact two trains[0]. To summarize, in Germany the trains have a couple dozen kilometers where they're allowed to go faster than 160kp/h, in France the TGV travels at around 320kp/h for quite some time. Considering all this it's not that surprising that the TGV is that much faster. Apparently the problem is that the fast trains in Germany have to share the tracks with the slower trains, in France and Japan as an example they apparently have their own tracks. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/reise/deutschland/ice-versus-tgv-warum-deutsche-schnellzuege-deutlich-langsamer-sind-a-1259209.html https://www.spiegel.de/reise/deutschland/ice-versus-tgv-waru...
    - iggldiggl 4y ago
      France operates on a "periphery-to-Paris-and-back" model, so the goal is quite clear – you build a radial line towards Paris and voilà, you've sped up that relation. "periphery-to-periphery" traffic is mostly ignored, so you get the somewhat curious situation where the geographically direct connection between two cities might be slower (or only marginally faster) than going all the way into Paris and back out again. Germany on the other hand doesn't have a single city that's as extremely dominant as Paris, so to capture a similar amount of traffic on your high speed network you need something more like a mesh, where any single route might only capture a smaller fraction of the total traffic, rather than the simply radial star you can get by in France. Of course that's not the only reason for the differing evolution of high speed rail between France and Germany, but it definitively is one of the reasons behind that difference.
  - kmlx 4y ago
    tokyo - osaka 500km -> nozomi shinkansen 2.5hrs, hikari shinkansen 3hrs, ~EUR 100-150 one-way
kodyo 4y ago
20 miles per hour sounds like a great model for 1880.
- thinkcontext 4y ago
  Its a local train making many stops, the technology of the train makes no difference to how long it would take to do the schedule. I imagine almost no one rides the full length, they'd take an express train instead.
- piva00 4y ago
  Because it's local trains with multiple stops. It's like comparing an average speed of car trips inside a city with multiple intersections (around 12-20 km/h) to a motorway average speed (100+ km/h) and saying that cars driving in the city are from the 1920s...
nib99 4y ago
The normal trains are two hours from Nürnberg to Leipzig. The thing is, the 9€ ticket was limited to regional trains, which stop in every village on the way. Munich/Berlin is 4 hours by train, hard to beat by car, and if you go centre to centre even by plane.
- aeyes 4y ago
  2 hours is ICE which isn't a "normal" train to me, but even with regional trains it should only be around 4 hours. I'm not sure if the OP took the scenic route. 200km was also a very optimistic guess, it's 300km. It looks close on the map but even in a car it will take you 3 hours. It's actually faster to go from Dresden.
ragebol 4y ago
> Nurnburg to Leipzig and it took us close to 6hrs The 9 euro ticket only worked for regional trains. With the ICE, the high-speed intercity trains, that would have taken 2 hours and 6 minutes if you leave right when I write this comment EDIT: cost is important of course: DB says that would cost about 80 euros, which is a crime IMO. [0] Taking the car would take about half an hour longer and currently cost about 44 euro in fuel [1] [0] https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/dn?S=8000284&Z=8010205&arrival_time=%5B%222022-09-01T16:10:00%2B00:00%22%5D&boarding_time=%5B%222022-09-01T14:04:00%2B00:00%22%5D&date=01.09.22&dbkanal_004=L01_S01_D001_KPK0054_anreiselink_LZ03&from_ticketing_stop_time_id=%5B%228000284%22%5D&service_date=%5B%2220220901%22%5D&start=1&ticketing_trip_id=%5B%22DE:80:504:53%22%5D&time=16:04&to_ticketing_stop_time_id=%5B%228010205%22%5D#hfsseq1|cq.01365593.1662039035 https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/dn?S=8000284&Z=8... [1] https://www.anwb.nl/verkeer/routeplanner?area1=EU&area2=EU&displayType=instructions&lat1=49.45052&lat2=51.33969&lon1=11.08048&lon2=12.37136&name1=Neurenberg%2C%20Duitsland&name2=Leipzig%2C%20Duitsland&transportMode1=car https://www.anwb.nl/verkeer/routeplanner?area1=EU&area2=EU&d... Also: hot damn, ugly URLs
- bakuninsbart 4y ago
  DB is very expensive when travelling spontaneously and really cheap if planning well ahead. I regularly go from Berlin to Frankfurt for 20 Euros, which is around 500km. Often times, they offer me first class upgrades for 10 Euros, too.
  - ragebol 4y ago
    Huh, did not know that. How well ahead is well ahead?
    - bakuninsbart 4y ago
      At least 2 months in advance. If it is later, the first or last connection is often times really cheap still, too.
jeromegv 4y ago
It's a common myth that Canada is not a good fit for train, yes it is large and low density at a country level but it has pockets of very high density. Almost half of Canadian population is within the Windsor-Quebec City corridor (which includes Toronto and Montreal), which is just about 1100 km. You can definitely have a viable train considering the millions of people that live there and the many dozens of daily short flights that happen in that corridor.
- theluketaylor 4y ago
  The current GO Expansion to turn the greater Toronto area commuter rail into a true regional rail is a great project, and is using knowledge and expertise from the German rail network. It will electrify the trains and provide all day frequent service throughout the network that will mean not really needing to bother checking the schedule. It also flies in the face of statements that say european style rail isn't possible in north america, since the basic plan is modelled on German S-Bahn. Just this weekend I drove 1 hr to the edge of Toronto, then got on the subway to downtown for a Blue Jays game. Once GO expansion is done I'll be able to make that same trip on a single train in less time then it takes to drive. High speed rail from Quebec City to Windsor is a project we should absolutely be funding as the population and travel patterns of the corridor would easily support it. Start with Toronto->Montreal with a spur to Ottawa, then as phase 2 extend to Windsor and Quebec City.
- master_crab 4y ago
  Yup. Both US and Canada are good fits for mass transit. The Bos-NYC-Phil-Was-(Rich-Raleigh-Atlanta?) corridor represents around 30% of the US population (well over 100 million for those counting). The distance between those US cities represents maybe less than half the high speed rail network in France but easily almost double the French population.
xcambar 4y ago
practical or not, the size of a country (which, should that be reminded, is a man-made construct) should not have a say on whether or not some can be “pardoned” to fly. If your country is poorly equipped in efficient rails, how would that give you the right to fly for convenience? This question comes from everyone in every other country.
InCityDreams 4y ago
> I remember we took a regional train from Nurnburg to Leipzig and it took us close to 6hrs. For less than 200km distance. Now imagine US where that distance can quadruple depending on the state you are driving to. Pretty sure the distance from Nurnburg to Leipzig, or 'less than 200km', would not quaruple in the States, or indeed anywhere else.

LtWorf 4y ago

This should be done in permanence also for long distance travels, where currently airplane is cheaper.

malauxyeux 4y ago
In a similar vein, in November 2021, a law was passed in France to disallow some domestic flights where the same destination can be reached by train in 2.5 hours or less. No idea what it did concretely. There's a big carve out for flights that are taken mostly by people traveling to further destinations.

skeeter2020 4y ago

I don't have a horse in this race, but how many extra trips did it encourage vs. staying home?

jeromegv 4y ago
How would we know? For the sake of the economy, more trips is typically better than less. But at the end of the day, would you rather for the only choice to be cars or have a proper sustainable/scalable way of transport?
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  While fares shouldn't be outrageously expensive, and better national-level through-ticketing would be nice, beyond that I'd rather have better (more frequent) and reliable, rather than simply massively cheaper service with no further service improvements.
bombcar 4y ago
In general extra trips are "good" until the operators have to put more trains on the rails (as the marginal costs of an extra rider are nearly zero when the train is already scheduled).

martinpw 4y ago

As a visitor the 9 euro ticket was amazing. In combination with Google transit navigation, frequent reliable service and transit stops that displayed accurate time until the next bus/train, it made getting round the cities almost frictionless. Normally I avoid transit in new cities due to the hassle of figuring it out, paying for tickets etc, but in this case I used it all over Munich and Berlin for 2 months. Too bad it ended today - now need to learn how regular tickets work. One thing I heard was though is that most of the additional transit trips were not replacing car trips but were trips that would not otherwise have been taken at all. Which is not a bad thing in itself, but it would have been nice to displace more car usage.

bombcar 4y ago
It'd be interesting to dig further into the details. There are "car trips" that I don't take that are instead replaced by Walmart or Amazon or someone sending a truck to my house to deliver a package. If there was "free" or "low cost" way to "get into town" perhaps some of those would occur, not replacing a car trip but replacing a delivery.
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
The regular ticket system is a prehistoric hassle, if you do not rely on DB-Citytickets. They actually still have those forms from 1990 if you want to close a abo in many places, almost none of them have a webshop, its a embarassing nightmare. And very expensive to use without monthly tickets.
- kioleanu 4y ago
  To be fair it’s expensive to use with monthly tickets also. I saw an interesting discussion today on /r/de with people having to ride 1 to 3 stops and having to pay 90 to 120 euros per month. You have to be in a very privileged position to receive affordable tickets. I am lucky to work for a huge employer that offers a JobTicket which costs me 69 euros and they also subsidize half of that. Who doesn’t work at a company that has JobTickets can buy the same for 220 euros per month

danrl 4y ago

OTOH, it is a nicely hidden subsidy for the train operators. Because for every ticket sold, they get to claim a certain amount from the federal government. Luckily it is capped (per ticket) otherwise who knows what they would claim Some say it is also most beneficial to richer people as they could afford train tickets but get then for the same low price and government subsidized as everyone else. Not sure I can buy that argument, richer people pay the vast amount of Germany’s federal budget via ridiculously high income tax. From an economic perspective the 9 Euro ticket was a disaster. A popular one, though.

Bakary 4y ago
I don't see how it can be termed a disaster if the end result is that infrastructure companies received more money and the population received a higher (if temporary) standard of living. This also increased the probability of decreased reliance on cars in the future and increased investment in such infrastructure, increased public support for those investments. I mean, we might still die in the climate wars in twenty years, but the 9 euro tickets won't be among the reasons why.
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  > if the end result is that infrastructure companies received more money Ha. If you literally mean infrastructure companies, then no, there wasn't any direct money in it for them. Okay, a few extra trains ran, so the infrastructure operators got to charge for those additional train paths, but in the grand scheme of things that doesn't make much of a difference. And if you actually meant the transport operators actually operating the vehicles – if the federal government mandates massively lower fares in order to score political brownie points, somebody still needs to pay for the operating expenses during that time. If you subtract that loss of income, I doubt that there was that much extra money left over, especially given significant increases on the cost side of things (rising fuel and electricity prices, staff demanding higher wages due to general inflation).
- wh33zle 4y ago
  I guess it depends a lot on what you think a government should spend money on or what its role is. IMO the 9€ ticket was a great idea because it was simple and unconditional. Social security laws and subsidies are usually riddeled with exceptions and rules on when you qualify which require more people (meaning more expenses for the government) to check them. In a society that is constantly chasing for even more convenience, reducing as much friction as possible for taking public transport seems like a good idea and far from a disaster?

tpmx 4y ago

The cost to pax payers per saved ton of emitted CO2 was EUR 1388 (about the same in USD). That seems very steep. https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-9-ticket-is-it-here-to-stay/a-62669414 https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-9-ticket-is-it-here-to-stay/a... The federal government is footing the bill, propping up state and municipal transport companies with an additional €2.5 billion ($2.53 billion).

ceejayoz 4y ago
If saving CO2 were the only goal, sure.
- tpmx 4y ago
  Right. I wrote that in the context of the linked article. So don't think of this scheme as a reasonably efficient way of saving CO2 emissions (there are other much more economically efficient ways); at most it's a bonus. It follows that it doesn't make sense to justify the scheme on the CO2 emissions benefit. I've seen a lot of that on European subreddits.
- tomjen3 4y ago
  But with global warming, that should be almost the only goal for an environmental policy.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    The nine euro tickets weren't an environmental policy. The environmental effect is a bonus.
Chabsff 4y ago
If CO2 reduction was the only goal, then yes, that would be a very steep number. That's obviously not the case though.
ablatner 4y ago
The cost to tax payers isn't a hit to the overall economy though. The government spending replaced fees that would ordinarily be payed by taxpayers and tourists.

fulafel 4y ago

The ETS cost per ton is 90€ [1]. Apparently the budget cost of this program was 2.5 G€[2]. 2500M/1.8M gives 1400 €/ton. The article doesn't seem to comment anything about this poor ratio, did I count wrong or did the article just ignore the 20x efficiency delta to market rate emission reductions? (Of course free train travel is great and being able to do it while reducing emissions instead of icnreasing them is excellent in itself, but still the reduction headline would call for analysis) [1] https://ember-climate.org/data/data-tools/carbon-price-viewer/ https://ember-climate.org/data/data-tools/carbon-price-viewe... [2] https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-9-ticket-is-it-here-to-stay/a-62669414 https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-9-ticket-is-it-here-to-stay/a...

BurningFrog 4y ago

Tons of CO₂ is maybe the most meaningless unit.

kitkat_new 4y ago

living in Germany: replaced my remaining car trips with train+bike (bike - train bike) - still sucked, but at least it was cheaper than going by car. I do everyday tasks tasks entirely by bike. There is a significant risk that you couldn't enter, because there are too many people. Sucks if you have to take multiple trains in a row, then strand somewhere in the middle of the route, and the next train will not drive for an hour or even not before the next day The trains drive quite slowly (100 km/h?). Overall trip time 2-3 car trip time. Trains were almost always late. You had to pray to be on time for the follow up train despite 10+min gaps. Often the follow up train was late too, which ironically helped. Extra bike tickets were necessary, with local rules and tickets. You don't know if you get a seat let alone a table or WiFi, so productivity is close to zero.

chkal 4y ago
Living in Germany as well and I can confirm that 100% of this is true and matches my experience.

jope12 4y ago

The price per ticket was 9 Euro, but the cost for the taxpayers was billions. This ticket was pure subsidization.

wuschel 4y ago

To;dr: Train travel in Germany was a complete mess for business / long distance travellers in the last three months. The other side of the coin is: the ultra cheap train ticket exposed the deficiencies in Germany’s rail system. For years, investments have been delayed and critical rail tracks have been reduced to the bear minimum of bandwidth. Regional trains and high-speed long-distance trains were sharing the same tracks. The former completely overcrowded, running late most of the time, and therefore affecting the latter. trains were running late most of the time, cancellations were frequent. Or even worse: Elderly people and small kids were stuck in standing, overheated trains (bonus: air con was defective) with no water, or possibilities to sit. A logistical failure. I’m paying for a flat rate for all trains in Germany, not only the regional ultra cheap category. I’m using this to travel frequently from the north or the south of Germany for business matters. The service and information policy was abysmal. I had to take the cab about 10 times for long-distance travel, and checked on multiple times in hotels to stay overnight. Who pays for that? Answer: the taxpayer. The Deutsche Bahn (German train company) was and is not prepared for this kind usage pattern.