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Providing these €49 tickets requires an annual subsidy of around €3bn, on top of already substantial subsidies for the rail industry. If we accept that it reduc

Providing these €49 tickets requires an annual subsidy of around €3bn, on top of already substantial subsidies for the rail industry. If we accept that it reduces carbon emissions by 6.7 million tonnes per year, then that works out to €447 per tonne. That really isn't good value - most carbon abatement methods cost well under $100 per tonne. I do recognise that modal shift towards rail may have other positive externalities, but I don't know how to price any of them. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/ghg-abatement-costs-for-selected-measures-of-the-sustainable-recovery-plan https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/ghg-abatement...

szundi 2y ago
Secret plan of car driving politicians to decrease the traffic for themselves
Arn_Thor 2y ago
When you say “carbon abatement” do you mean carbon credits/cleanup or other ways of emitting less of it in the first place?
V__ 2y ago
> already substantial subsidies for the rail industry Though to be fair, there are also substantial subsidies for the whole road network.
- theendisney4 2y ago
  Roads are much more efficient with fewer cars.
  - kachapopopow 2y ago
    The weather would like to have a word with you.
  - bmoxb 2y ago
    By what metric?
  - lispm 2y ago
    A German study from 2021 says road traffic created 70 billion euros costs per year. Of that 45 billion had to be paid from general taxes.
  - msandford 2y ago
    This was phrased poorly if I understand the meaning. "If there is limited use, roads are more efficient than rail" That's probably true as roads tend to cost less per mile than rail and you don't have transfer problems. When heavily utilized the opposite is true: rail is more efficient than roads.
    - theendisney4 2y ago
      I dont know how things are in germany but in the netherlands a lot more people own cars which slows down traffic. All over the world they keep rebuilding congestion points only for traffic to increase. If making public transport cheaper attracts more travelers there will be fewer cars on the road. The money spend on public transport will aso make car travel more efficiënt. Roads will last longer. Fewer upgrades are needed. Cars will last longer. etc It is hard to picture how many cars it takes to move a train full of people. > 7.6 percent fewer kilometres travelled by car. > German cars were recorded to have travelled 582.4 billion kilometers.
  - taberiand 2y ago
    That's why motorists should always vote for more public transport, instead of increasing road lanes - road per user is improved if you reduce the number of other cars
- jdietrich 2y ago
  Road vehicles are heavily taxed in European countries. I don't have the figures for Germany, but the UK spends £12bn per year on roads, while it collects £25bn in road fuel duty and £7bn in vehicle excise duty. https://www.statista.com/statistics/298675/united-kingdom-uk-public-sector-expenditure-transport-by-category/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/298675/united-kingdom-uk... https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/fuel-duties/ https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/... https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/vehicle-excise-duty/ https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/...
  - V__ 2y ago
    Vehicle, gas and similar taxes are about €50bn in Germany. The cost of the road system is about €70bn. [1] https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/oekonomie/autos-und-co.-decken-kostenbedarf-des-strassenverkehrs-kaum-13376725 https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/oekonomie/au...
  - taffer 2y ago
    According to a study by the HTW Berlin, Germany collects €50 billion in road taxes and duties, but spends €30 billion on road maintenance and €30 billion on traffic police and road accident victims. Add to this an estimated €10-30 billion in environmental damage due to air and noise pollution.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    There are also deaths caused by road accidents and health issues caused by pollution. Those have real economic impacts which aren’t being reflected in the true cost of cars.
    - okr 2y ago
      [flagged]
2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
> Providing these €49 tickets requires an annual subsidy of around €3bn and how was this number actually calculated?
- jdietrich 2y ago
  https://urban-mobility-observatory.transport.ec.europa.eu/news-events/news/germanys-eu49-public-transport-ticket-remains-its-price-remains-uncertain-after-2024-2023-11-23_en https://urban-mobility-observatory.transport.ec.europa.eu/ne...
  - 2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
    just around 2 billion
    - iggldiggl 2y ago
      Where are you reading that? The 2 billion (2.3 billions exactly) figure was for 2023 and only covered the period from the ticket's introduction in May through to December, i.e. only two thirds of a fully year.
ccppurcell 2y ago
I find the word subsidy to be a possible weasel word here. I don't know all the details but a railway system has certain costs (fuel, personnel, water, upkeep, the trains themselves and so on) and takes in a certain amount of revenue (fares and subsidies, also food etc). It might be true that the government increased the subsidy in order to support the cheaper tickets. But that's not the same as "requires". Perhaps I'm splitting hairs but there's a strong danger of comparing apples and oranges if these things aren't spelled out imo.
- Swizec 2y ago
  Here’s another way to think about it: Germany invested N billion into shifting behavior to rail. How many billions in subsidies has OpenAI gotten to build us a chatbot?
  - vkreso 2y ago
    You mean another example of apples and oranges? Is software and transportation really a good example?
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I'm not aware of any subsidies openAi has received. Did I miss something or is this one of the situations we're we are making up new definitions for words?
    - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
      > I'm not aware of any subsidies openAi has received. It is rumored that the military (and perhaps three-letter agencies) has/have special contracts with OpenAI. This can definitely be called a subsidy.
      - punchmesan 2y ago
        A contract isn't a subsidy... A subsidy would be giving them dollars without any particular strings attached except perhaps to use those funds to develop the product. If the contract is to provide money in exchange for services, that's called a transaction.
arcticbull 2y ago
What’s the subsidy to road and oil companies right now? Might be nice to just shift it over.
londons_explore 2y ago
> requires an annual subsidy of around €3bn I suspect the key is to find ways to run railways cheaper. It has been a long time since railways were under severe cost competition encouraging people to look for efficiencies. I think the main one would be to find a way for railways to operate with no staff. Just like a typical road operates most of the time with no staff. That means you need to redesign everything that currently uses people to not need people. Sure - there would still be occasional maintenance - but nobody always on duty driving trains (automated), nobody selling tickets (online), nobody cleaning stuff (automated cleaning of trains inside and out) etc.
- luckylion 2y ago
  I doubt that moves the needle a lot unless you're making _everything_ fully automatic, i.e. including the infrastructure creation & maintenance and streamline that extremely well. If you take a ride from Hamburg to Berlin with the ICE, there's maybe 8 staff on board, 200-300 passengers, it takes ~2 hours and the average ticket price is 77€ according to some travel app. Even if you get rid of all 8 of them, the price per ticket isn't going to be lowered significantly.
  - Paradigma11 2y ago
    Why would there be 8 staff on board? Isn't there typically one train driver and one attendant?
    - luckylion 2y ago
      I don't know. They have the restaurant car on some trains so that's another 2-3 people, and I really have no idea about their operation so I added some buffer. I wouldn't expect there to be more than 8 on a train unless it's some special event.
    - macbr 2y ago
      For some high speed routes there’s a limit on how many carriages one attendant can supervise (maybe to ensure timely evacuation?) so a 12 carriage ICE train needs 3 attendants to fully operate.
ericd 2y ago
The only carbon capture/sequestration method I’m aware of without significant tradeoffs outside of price is direct air capture, and last I saw, that clocked in at $600-1200/ton (Climeworks). So maybe not such a terrible deal?
- DoreenMichele 2y ago
  Wetlands do a better job of carbon sequestration than trees. Globally, we've lost 85 percent of our wetlands since the 1700s. Maybe we should restore them.
- hedora 2y ago
  The startups in this space were targeting $100/ton before the recent inflation hit. It turns out if you divide the $/ton by 100, you get $/gallon of gas equivalent. Burning a gallon of gas emits 20 lbs of CO2 (most of the weight is in the oxygen), and a ton is 2000 lbs. Anyway, at $6-12 dollars per gallon of gasoline, direct air capture is clearly much worse than just not burning oil. At $1-2, it’s less than the current gasoline taxes in the US.
_cenw 2y ago
The system simply doesn't have more capacity right now. Germany neglected or even removed their rail infrastructure, especially for the past 25 or so years, after privatization. These "subsidies" are a course correction. These investments also make it a real pain to use the system right now, because a lot of lines are closing months at a time and the alternatives are already overloaded. I'd rather have a car for the next 5-10 years too - and I live very central with many connections. Here's a map of disruptions for reference: https://www.zuginfo.nrw/map.html#!P|HimSearch!histId|1!histKey|H600365 https://www.zuginfo.nrw/map.html#!P|HimSearch!histId|1!histK...
- tourmalinetaco 2y ago
  Me and my wife are certainly considering getting a car. Cars are a pain in cities, but it would save literally hundreds of hours over the course of even a single year due to just how poor the infra is.
- Arn_Thor 2y ago
  Everybody say it with me: “privatization of natural monopolies is dumb and wasteful!”
- jamil7 2y ago
  For people less familiar. Germany privatised its national rail company in the 90s but the federal government is the only shareholder. It’s a weird model that doesn’t make much sense. DB is a monopoly so the rules of competition don’t apply (and don’t work with railways anyway) it’s led to perverse cost cutting incentives and fat bonus programs for C level employees. Combine that with a conservative government’s austerity politics since the GFC and the whole system is at breaking point at the moment. Reforms and work is happening but the amount of work is staggering and means frequent line closures. DB estimates its trains to be running reliably in 2070.
  - Pamar 2y ago
    Expat in Germany since 2014. (Also, I do not own a car). I can confirm that Dbahn service was not so great from the start, and became noticeably worse after COVID. I live in Rostock. 2 weeks ago I landed in Hamburg at 2:30pm and tried to return home by train. Distance is 185 km, and I arrived home at 10:00pm Reasons: works on the line that forced us to go to Lubeck first, then take two more regional trains to reach Rostock. On top of that, one train from Lubeck to the next stop was so full that a hundred passenger could not get in (me included). The next train was canceled. Finally we got a (packed) train at around 8pm. All "fine" except that this is the third time in the last 12 months that the same line undergoes maintenance forcing you to move to Lubeck first and adding 1 hour to your trip. Rostock-Berlin: similar story. For three times in the last year there were some problems between Oranienburg and Berlin, forcing you to either travel around it with a 1 hour detour or to disembark in Oraniemburg and move to S-Bahn (sort like BART). In other words: railways are overstressed and failing repeatedly causing massive delays; Oraniemburg is 40km from Berlin Central Station. I find it unconceivable that you have to repair the same short segment thrice in 12 months.
barrkel 2y ago
Cars also have a huge subsidy in the form of roads
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  There are generally taxes (e.g., car or gas taxes) that cover the costs. I don't know about Germany's situation, but it is not impossible to make that net zero.
  - eigenspace 2y ago
    Not even close to net zero in Germany. Do you have any examples of countries where car and gas taxes do actually cover the cost of roads?
  - threeseed 2y ago
    In Australia, petrol tax raises ~18bn. Cost of road infrastructure is ~36bn.
    - ben-schaaf 2y ago
      And these comparisons often exclude externalities like carbon emissions, pollution from tires and brakes, road accident costs, noise pollution and the cost of suburban sprawl.
  - andrepd 2y ago
    If you would even attempt it to make it net zero you would get truly ungodly amounts of pushback, I don't think you understand how bad it would be. Truly, for those used to a privilege, fairness is an attack. Furthermore: you have a state of affairs where you are pretty much forced to own and drive a car to e.g. get to work or move around. You make it reflect its true cost making it impossible to afford for anyone except the rich. What now?
- addandsubtract 2y ago
  A more fitting complaint about cats would be the Pendlerpauschale, which is paid out to people driving to and from work in their car. It's a much larger sum than the €3b spent on the train ticket subsidy.
heraldgeezer 2y ago
Yes, lets subsidize the aviation and car industry more instead!! Face it, trains is the better option here. Bike and walk is best of course but troublesome long distance.
moffkalast 2y ago
Well it's not just a carbon credit, it also provides subsidized public transport to everyone, reduces congestion, improves city air and likely cuts road deaths. Arguably tax dollars extremely well spent.
- tourmalinetaco 2y ago
  Except that due to this cheaper ticket congestion on trains is horrible and since the infrastructure is poorly maintained it’s quite common to be late by 1-2 hours while being packed in a sardine tin.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    That's a matter of train infrastructure and frequency keeping up with demand. There's a big lag there. You don't just buy 100 new trains overnight. It's a symptom of ramping up. Not of high usage. I live in Barcelona and here the metro comes every 2-3 minutes. Even during the night it might be 7 minutes. This helps so much with congestion but also trip planning: no need to check train times before you go. Id imagine busy routes in Germany could do similar. The big benefit of this is also not needing a car. Not having to worry about maintenance, write-off, finding parking and the cost thereof, summer and winter tyres, damage, no-claim bonus, travelling while having drunk, going back from a different place than you arrived. It's so incredibly more convenient than having a car. All at a flat rate of 21€ here.I hope never having to need one again.
    - intellix 2y ago
      €21.35 for a T-Usual card which allows unlimited travel on all public transport for 30 days, yet you still have people in here kicking and screaming to use their car and roads
      - wkat4242 2y ago
        Yeah this is true but it's a minority. And some people come from outside the city where it's more understandable. I think Ada Colau did really great pedestrianising streets like Consell de Cent, unfortunately Collboni doesn't seem to care as much.
throawayonthe 2y ago
[dead]
oxfordmale 2y ago
This analysis is too simple. Roads need to be maintained, road accidents are a burden on the national health service and air pollution has a long term negative impact on people's health
epolanski 2y ago
Why do you need to price them? Also, there are countries out there where the average tax payer subsidizes car drivers a lot too.
risyachka 2y ago
Who said rail industry should be profitable in the first place? I would fully support if part of my taxes would subsidize rail industry and I get cheaper prices. Imo good use of tax dollars.
dyauspitr 2y ago
Maybe but it’s also subsidizing travel for people, possibly increasing revenue for tourist spots and restaurants, it could keep people from buying a new ICE vehicle etc. It seems like one of those things that has a lot of benefits outside the immediate situation.
postpawl 2y ago
Focusing on the cost-per-tonne for carbon reduction misses the broader value of railways. They're not just about reducing emission! They facilitate daily commutes, expand job opportunities, and help drive the economy. It’s a subsidy for businesses too.
- dreadlordbone 2y ago
  Doesn't having a car do this too?
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Cars destroy walkability, cyclability, ability for kids to freely play outside, enable sprawl (hence more energy consumption hence more carbon emissions). There’s no free lunch with using more surface area, which cars greatly expand people’s ability to consume.
    - dreadlordbone 2y ago
      That's a goalpost moved from my response.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        The poster you responded to wrote: > They're not just about reducing emission! Cars increasing emissions seems to be a relevant disqualifier.
    - nsokolsky 2y ago
      True to a degree but cars also make parenting easier: you get bigger houses, bigger backyards, don't have lug your kids around on public transit, deal with the weather, don't need to worry about rail worker strikes, etc. All America's missing is laws that allow kids to walk to school and adding more sidewalks to enable this, but this is changing over time (see Utah's free range parenting law).
      - 2y ago
andrepd 2y ago
How much does it cost to keep up the motor roads in Germany? Likewise, how much do the externalities of it (like pollution, and massive numbers of deaths and injuries) cost? Without it this comparison is meaningless.
rzwitserloot 2y ago
The sheer amount of additional benefit means this is a gallingly reductive view of it all. The subsidy for maintaining car infrastructure is causing _more_ co2 per euro invested, how's that fit into these calculations? This is so useless, it sounds like propaganda.
ch0wn 2y ago
Show me an effective carbon abatement method well under $100.
clukic 2y ago
You're not pricing in the primary impact of the subsidy - the value of the travel itself. Those tickets subsidize travel and reduce carbon emissions.
ClumsyPilot 2y ago
Disturbingly, your link includes Carbon capture and storage from a fossil power plant, which has never been demonstrated practically and is basically a scam at this point, pushed by oil companies. Second, you are conflating subsidy with cost. If everyone switches to electric trucks, cost is enormous, but subsidy is zero because private sector pays for it themselves. For electrics freight trains, cost could be lower, but the government has to pay for it. However, everyone with a grasp of physics knows that freight train is more efficient, so focusing on subsidy is stupid
thelastgallon 2y ago
It saves the commuters the cost of buying a car, insurance, gas and maintenance. it saves building new roads and lifecycle costs of maintaining a road. Trains allow dense developments with a little bit of walking. Walking is healthy, a bit of exercise saves a ton on healthcare costs. Density makes everything cheaper. Carbon emissions are just a bonus.
Crunchified 2y ago
A big externality is time-savings, and can be calculated.
abdullahkhalids 2y ago
The cost of carbon capture is not equal to the value it provides to humanity. In fact, not emitting CO2 that you could have, is even more valuable than CO2 you remove later from the atmosphere.
thrance 2y ago
Roads, highways and gas are massively subsidized, much more per kilometer travelled than rail. I think if you factor in spared road maintenance alone, from travellers using the train instead of their cars, you might see the operation is actually saving public money.
nerdbert 2y ago
I suspect that's peanuts compared to all the subsidies and unaccounted externalities for car use.
simonhorlick 2y ago
Germany actually subsidises fossil fuels to the tune of €20bn/year, so in that context €3bn doesn't sound so bad. Some of the latest estimates of the true cost per ton of carbon put it around $1000 USD, so in purely economic terms it's still a win.
anigbrowl 2y ago
Don't forget to factor in the reduced costs of road maintenance, accidents, non-CO2 pollution, and traffic delays.
ic_fly2 2y ago
You make a very valid point. I’d ignore unpriced other externalities, that is a large rabbit hole. (Do people increase consumption of other goods thanks to the savings of this ticket…) I’d rather look at the project, subsidies again and the cost and realise that at this scale there are few individual projects. So this is a very large knob to dial down the emissions. Secondly, the subsidies go into the German economy. The rail system is very domestic economy heavy, so at a time where the German economy is going into a recession, spending 3bn to subsidise transport and reduce people’s cost of living and pay for German workers and investments is not such a terrible idea. So while the price tag is high, the money isn’t turned into trees or buried like in pure abatement projects and at this scale it is a nice leaver to pull.
Asmod4n 2y ago
We are paying 70bn€ annually for roads. And gain 25 in taxes for it.
gmerc 2y ago
- Air Pollution and related deaths / morbidities - Road tear and wear - Congestion related loss of business and time - Can actually work on train or rest Many of these can be calculated and measured. Rail doesn’t significantly pollute more or deprecate faster on the infrastructure side empty or full.
SECProto 2y ago
Funding road repairs, construction, and expansion from general tax revenues is similarly subsidizing a different mode of transit, and it's likely a much higher value than the 3b€ you mention (and likely more than overall railway sector subsidizing, tho I'm not familiar with Germany's budget). Also recognizing that other positive externalities exist, but pricing them at $0, seems silly.
- Happily2020 2y ago
  Not to mention subsidised parking spaces. Free and even paid street parking is highly subsidised by the city and by other tax payers. There's also the environmental cost of not having that land be a park or nature and instead have it contribute to being an urban heat island with all its asphalt.
  - looofooo0 2y ago
    Healthcare cost also decline, and people become less sick because you have to walk some amount to get to the train.
    - piyuv 2y ago
      The air quality improving should also be a factor.
    - shankr 2y ago
      Although you fall sick more often in winter when using public transportation.
      - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
        Is that a rigorous statistical analysis or just your impression?
        shankr 2y ago
        It was instrumental in spreading COVID[1]. Also found to be the case with other airborne diseases[2] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8552583/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8552583/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6280530/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6280530/
solatic 2y ago
I'm not sure you've fully accounted for the full carbon reduction here, which is not just the replacement of cars from the road but also the transition to a car-free lifestyle. It gets people out of their cars because it's cheaper than petrol. When train tickets (in other countries) cost more than the cost of petrol for the journey, commuters who already sank the cost of buying a car + insurance ask why they should bother paying a premium for the train ticket when the cost of petrol will be cheaper. Only after people transition to taking the train in the morning, do they then start to ask questions like "do I get value out of paying for insurance on a car I don't drive?" and start to make decisions like selling their cars. In this case the carbon reduction is not only the carbon reduction of the trips that would have been taken by train, but the carbon reduction from the use of the car altogether, and future car maintenance and replacement.
CalRobert 2y ago
Fewer people in cars means fewer road deaths, safer streets for walking and cycling, quieter cities, less nimby obstructionism due to parking complaints, and less inhaled tyre participates, among other benefits.
baxtr 2y ago
Additionally the ticket has not only shifted traffic but also led to an increase of trips in total.
locallost 2y ago
It's head and shoulders above all the subsidies to the car industry that just increase emissions. In terms of value it can't even be compared, one is positive and the other negative. E.g. during the original 9 Euro Ticket, the government also reduced taxes on gas to fight inflation, and this cost as much as the subsidies for the 9 Euro Ticket. The gas tax reduction's costs were 3 billion, and the 9 Euro Ticket costs were 2.5 billion. So I would call it exceptional value when compared to other things.
sooheon 2y ago
You're right, subsidies aren't enough. They should tax carbon, road use, and car ownership also.
panda-giddiness 2y ago
Germany spends some 70 billion euros maintaining the road system, only about a third of which is offset by taxes on drivers [1]. If we accept that investments in roads reduce carbon emissions by 0 million tonnes per year, then that works out to NaN € per tonne -- much worse than other carbon abatement methods! Naturally there might be other positive externalities to owning a car, but I don't own a car and therefore wouldn't be privy to them. Instead I rely almost exclusively on Germany's public transport for my daily commutes, which I find perfectly satisfactory for this purpose and significantly more convenient than parking and maintaining a car. --- [1] https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/oekonomie/autos-und-co.-decken-kostenbedarf-des-strassenverkehrs-kaum-13376725ly_Report/Key_Figures/2023/2023-12-federal-budget.html https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/oekonomie/au...
- cinntaile 2y ago
  A third can't be right. 15 billion from petrol and 18.2 billion from diesel alone make up almost half of that. 48.76 million vehicles times €100 (back of the envelope calculation) for vehicle tax puts that number above half. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Government/Taxes/Excise-Duties/energy-curent-1.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Government/Taxes/Excise-Du... https://www.statista.com/statistics/810662/passenger-cars-stock-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/810662/passenger-cars-st... https://www.zoll.de/DE/Unternehmen/Kraftfahrzeugsteuer/Steuerhoehe/steuerhoehe_node.html https://www.zoll.de/DE/Unternehmen/Kraftfahrzeugsteuer/Steue...
  - panda-giddiness 2y ago
    From the article (sorry for the bad link before; fixed below [1]): > The revenue from taxes and levies on road traffic amounts to around 50 billion euros annually. Around half of this is earmarked by law via the mineral oil tax, i.e. around 25 billion euros. This means that just over a third (36%) of the earmarked revenue from road traffic covers the costs of roads and other facilities such as parking lots and the like. It is therefore clear that the public sector is heavily subsidizing road traffic. My understanding is that these two forms of taxes add to more than 50%, but then almost half of those taxes must be reinvested elsewhere by law (i.e., not into roads), hence the 1/3 figure. But even if you ignore this reallocation of taxes, you still have a deficit of around 20 billion euros. --- [1] https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/oekonomie/autos-und-co.-decken-kostenbedarf-des-strassenverkehrs-kaum-13376725 https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/oekonomie/au...
looofooo0 2y ago
Health care cost decline as people walk more compared to car transit!
jona-f 2y ago
This is so wrong, I don't even know where to begin, my head is spinning. Luckily HN came to the rescue for once. But sadly this is the kind of reasoning that actually works in politics and finance.
vaylian 2y ago
> That really isn't good value - most carbon abatement methods cost well under $100 per tonne. That assumes that there is still sufficient potential for additional use of these cheaper carbon abatement methods. The tricky part about fighting climate change is that we have to make change in many different places. Each partial solution has only a limited capacity for deployment.
deleted 2y ago
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chipdart 2y ago
> Providing these €49 tickets requires an annual subsidy of around €3bn, on top of already substantial subsidies for the rail industry. I'm perplexed by the way you omitted the fact that these subsidies cover bus services, both local and regional (it's in the article's leading sentence). From there you proceeded to use that cherry-picking to single out a specific type of service while also cherry-picking the tradeoffs.
znpy 2y ago
$ 3bn is a fairly small price to pay when you consider that you get less co2 ON TOP of more people using public transport
littlestymaar 2y ago
> That really isn't good value - most carbon abatement methods cost well under $100 per tonne. You spelled “counterfeit carbon credit” wrong. There's no carbon sequestration technology that can fix carbon at industrial scale at that cost yet (and maybe never).
the_gipsy 2y ago
Many "other externalities" are priceless: Many poor people cannot afford a car.
izacus 2y ago
Until 2024 the budget for German Autobahn company ("subsidy") was at 6.2bn EUR for comparison. And this is JUST the roads. No other subsidies and incentives given to car manufacturing and car transport.
Scarblac 2y ago
But the roads and cars are used less, which means they require less maintenance. CO2 emission isn't the only pollution caused by cars either. People get cheaper transport options available to them. All those other wins for society should be counted too, there may not even be a cost left to count towards CO2 reduction. But most importantly, taking 3 billion in taxes and handing them out as subsidised pricing to some of the people isnt really a cost (to society as a whole), it's an income redistribution.
rmbyrro 2y ago
Not everything has to be priced. Some things can be desired and pursued, even if they don't make sense monetarily.
7bit 2y ago
If we look past carbon emission, we can see that the value is much bigger. You mention that the rail industry is already substantially subsidized. What you did not mention is that the automotive industry is as well. Roads are paid by state and republic. Car purchases are often subsidized via a flat return by the republic (which primarily benefits the rich). Petrol is also subsidized. Now all these automotive subsidiaries benefit only the people who own cars, and much more the wealthy ones. In Germany, only 43 million private households own a car. That's just roughly 50 %. But if you get people to choose public transport over your auto, then this benefits everyone. Better air quality, less noise pollution, less streets and more space for pedestrians. Anecdotally, a close neighbourhood removed some parking spots in favour of space for local cafes and public benches with plants. Removing just two parking spots give enough places for 10 people to sit together and enjoy a sunny Sunday -- which otherwise would be dead space occupied by the cars of two or even one household.
briandear 2y ago
How many tons of CO2 are in 1 degree of global temperature? This idea that removing “a lot” is somehow “helping” just seems hand-wavy to me. If the goal is “reduce temperatures,” then what precisely is the goal number? And then, how much CO2 equals that? And how much is the cost per degree to reduce and what is the cost per degree to not reduce? There is a lot of “modeling” but has anyone actually proven “reducing 8000 tons of carbon reduces temperatures by n degrees?” And is it beneficial to lower temperatures? Are there benefits to higher temperatures that haven’t been quantified? Just seems like the plan is “spend whatever it takes forever” — when whatever it takes isn’t even quantifiable. Basically investing without ever knowing the return on the investment.
cromka 2y ago
The cost of the road deaths is also significant and I think it's safe to say it dropped as people switched to using rail.
chomskyole 2y ago
If you recognise that there are other positive impacts that you haven't allowed for, then why stating that your incomplete assessment shows that it isn't good value? Does that show bias?
RobinL 2y ago
In the short run, the trains are running anyway, so you might as well fill them up. This is something that particularly frustates me in the case of buses the UK. They're ridiculously expensive (well, except for the temporary current £2 scheme), and empty. There seems to be a political consensus that we should have them, so it would make far more sense for them to be free in all instances, except when demand is so high they're full (e.g. rush hour)
manmal 2y ago
One other positive externality could be this: The health effects of tire abrasion in cars are not clear yet, not least because tire manufacturers don’t disclose their ingredients. For all we know these fine particulates could be as bad as PFAS.
eru 2y ago
Thanks for doing the math!
deleted 2y ago
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ZeroGravitas 2y ago
"social cost of driving" and "vehicle mile travelled" are two key phrases that will lead you to research on various costs of car travel e.g. > The air pollution-related damage attributable to driving, therefore, can be estimated at $10.7 billion to $41.6 billion per year – an average of between $93 and $360 per U.S. household per year.
m1n7 2y ago
did carbon dioxide write this?
graemep 2y ago
They are certainly very big. Rail is extremely safe so you reduce deaths and injuries from accidents. You reduce other types of pollution. You make towns and cities a lot pleasanter. You save individuals a lot of money.
PaulHoule 2y ago
It’s arguable that $100 per ton is a real carbon price. It translates to about $1 a gallon tax on gasoline which is (a) not enough to change people’s behavior (at its peak gas was almost $2 more than it is now and I drove just the same) but (b) people in 2024 will complain bitterly about it anyway. That is, polities are hypersensitized to that sort of imposed solution right now: for a long time people in the US accepted fluctuations in the gas price because it was seen as a market price so we only had riots whenever a black person was shot by the cops; in “normal” countries (including France and Egypt) you have riots when the price of petroleum goes up because it is seen as being controlled by the state. I think the US has gotten more “normal” post COVID-19 and with GHG controls on the horizon. $1 a gallon is not quite going to make EVs beat gas but it certainly happens at a price below $500 a tonne. Favorable CCS from industrial sources is quoted around $100 a tonne but that is (c) from a plant that runs 24-7 (e.g. if your natural gas plant runs 20% of the time the capital cost of CCS is multiplied 5x at least disregarding that the plant might not run well when it is starting up and shutting down) and (d) has few realizations. The biggest positive externality of rail is suppressed traffic congestion, it is a big quality of life thing if you can avoid sitting in a traffic jam. (Reminds me of posters I saw in Germany that said Zukunft onhe Stau) I find rail tourism to be luxurious compared to motortourism in that one gets to the center of town and doesn’t need to stress about parking, traffic and all that. Contrast that to the fight to refuel your rental car at the airport.
- klabb3 2y ago
  Not disagreeing but it’s important to point out that the US is a different beast because of the car and roadway dependency. In Europe a large part of the population lives in places easily reachable without a car. But in the US EVs are completely central to reducing CO2 from transportation, unless you’d rather rebuild the entire country. In Europe you can make meaningful changes by simply improving, expanding, investing in existing infrastructure. Most people I know who have a car in EU region are not fully dependent, but enjoy more convenience due to overcrowded or unreliable public transit, grocery stores being further away etc. Those problems are orders of magnitude easier to solve than “let’s build rail through a giant web of sparse suburbs”.
  - 2y ago
piombisallow 2y ago
I do recognise that "X" may have other positive externalities, but I don't know how to price any of them. Modern policy in a nutshell.
deleted 2y ago
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konschubert 2y ago
Having such a very heavy subsidy also makes transit very dependent on the current political climate.
valval 2y ago
I love being made to forcibly pay for poor people’s transport.
lm28469 2y ago
Not having to have to own a car is a phenomenal increase in quality of life and disposable income for the average joe though

szundi 2y ago

Secret plan of car driving politicians to decrease the traffic for themselves

Arn_Thor 2y ago

When you say “carbon abatement” do you mean carbon credits/cleanup or other ways of emitting less of it in the first place?

V__ 2y ago

> already substantial subsidies for the rail industry Though to be fair, there are also substantial subsidies for the whole road network.

theendisney4 2y ago
Roads are much more efficient with fewer cars.
- kachapopopow 2y ago
  The weather would like to have a word with you.
- bmoxb 2y ago
  By what metric?
- lispm 2y ago
  A German study from 2021 says road traffic created 70 billion euros costs per year. Of that 45 billion had to be paid from general taxes.
- msandford 2y ago
  This was phrased poorly if I understand the meaning. "If there is limited use, roads are more efficient than rail" That's probably true as roads tend to cost less per mile than rail and you don't have transfer problems. When heavily utilized the opposite is true: rail is more efficient than roads.
  - theendisney4 2y ago
    I dont know how things are in germany but in the netherlands a lot more people own cars which slows down traffic. All over the world they keep rebuilding congestion points only for traffic to increase. If making public transport cheaper attracts more travelers there will be fewer cars on the road. The money spend on public transport will aso make car travel more efficiënt. Roads will last longer. Fewer upgrades are needed. Cars will last longer. etc It is hard to picture how many cars it takes to move a train full of people. > 7.6 percent fewer kilometres travelled by car. > German cars were recorded to have travelled 582.4 billion kilometers.
- taberiand 2y ago
  That's why motorists should always vote for more public transport, instead of increasing road lanes - road per user is improved if you reduce the number of other cars
jdietrich 2y ago
Road vehicles are heavily taxed in European countries. I don't have the figures for Germany, but the UK spends £12bn per year on roads, while it collects £25bn in road fuel duty and £7bn in vehicle excise duty. https://www.statista.com/statistics/298675/united-kingdom-uk-public-sector-expenditure-transport-by-category/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/298675/united-kingdom-uk... https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/fuel-duties/ https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/... https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/vehicle-excise-duty/ https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/...
- V__ 2y ago
  Vehicle, gas and similar taxes are about €50bn in Germany. The cost of the road system is about €70bn. [1] https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/oekonomie/autos-und-co.-decken-kostenbedarf-des-strassenverkehrs-kaum-13376725 https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/oekonomie/au...
- taffer 2y ago
  According to a study by the HTW Berlin, Germany collects €50 billion in road taxes and duties, but spends €30 billion on road maintenance and €30 billion on traffic police and road accident victims. Add to this an estimated €10-30 billion in environmental damage due to air and noise pollution.
- threeseed 2y ago
  There are also deaths caused by road accidents and health issues caused by pollution. Those have real economic impacts which aren’t being reflected in the true cost of cars.
  - okr 2y ago
    [flagged]

2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago

> Providing these €49 tickets requires an annual subsidy of around €3bn and how was this number actually calculated?

jdietrich 2y ago
https://urban-mobility-observatory.transport.ec.europa.eu/news-events/news/germanys-eu49-public-transport-ticket-remains-its-price-remains-uncertain-after-2024-2023-11-23_en https://urban-mobility-observatory.transport.ec.europa.eu/ne...
- 2-3-7-43-1807 2y ago
  just around 2 billion
  - iggldiggl 2y ago
    Where are you reading that? The 2 billion (2.3 billions exactly) figure was for 2023 and only covered the period from the ticket's introduction in May through to December, i.e. only two thirds of a fully year.

ccppurcell 2y ago

I find the word subsidy to be a possible weasel word here. I don't know all the details but a railway system has certain costs (fuel, personnel, water, upkeep, the trains themselves and so on) and takes in a certain amount of revenue (fares and subsidies, also food etc). It might be true that the government increased the subsidy in order to support the cheaper tickets. But that's not the same as "requires". Perhaps I'm splitting hairs but there's a strong danger of comparing apples and oranges if these things aren't spelled out imo.

Swizec 2y ago
Here’s another way to think about it: Germany invested N billion into shifting behavior to rail. How many billions in subsidies has OpenAI gotten to build us a chatbot?
- vkreso 2y ago
  You mean another example of apples and oranges? Is software and transportation really a good example?
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I'm not aware of any subsidies openAi has received. Did I miss something or is this one of the situations we're we are making up new definitions for words?
  - aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    > I'm not aware of any subsidies openAi has received. It is rumored that the military (and perhaps three-letter agencies) has/have special contracts with OpenAI. This can definitely be called a subsidy.
    - punchmesan 2y ago
      A contract isn't a subsidy... A subsidy would be giving them dollars without any particular strings attached except perhaps to use those funds to develop the product. If the contract is to provide money in exchange for services, that's called a transaction.

arcticbull 2y ago

What’s the subsidy to road and oil companies right now? Might be nice to just shift it over.

londons_explore 2y ago

> requires an annual subsidy of around €3bn I suspect the key is to find ways to run railways cheaper. It has been a long time since railways were under severe cost competition encouraging people to look for efficiencies. I think the main one would be to find a way for railways to operate with no staff. Just like a typical road operates most of the time with no staff. That means you need to redesign everything that currently uses people to not need people. Sure - there would still be occasional maintenance - but nobody always on duty driving trains (automated), nobody selling tickets (online), nobody cleaning stuff (automated cleaning of trains inside and out) etc.

luckylion 2y ago
I doubt that moves the needle a lot unless you're making _everything_ fully automatic, i.e. including the infrastructure creation & maintenance and streamline that extremely well. If you take a ride from Hamburg to Berlin with the ICE, there's maybe 8 staff on board, 200-300 passengers, it takes ~2 hours and the average ticket price is 77€ according to some travel app. Even if you get rid of all 8 of them, the price per ticket isn't going to be lowered significantly.
- Paradigma11 2y ago
  Why would there be 8 staff on board? Isn't there typically one train driver and one attendant?
  - luckylion 2y ago
    I don't know. They have the restaurant car on some trains so that's another 2-3 people, and I really have no idea about their operation so I added some buffer. I wouldn't expect there to be more than 8 on a train unless it's some special event.
  - macbr 2y ago
    For some high speed routes there’s a limit on how many carriages one attendant can supervise (maybe to ensure timely evacuation?) so a 12 carriage ICE train needs 3 attendants to fully operate.

ericd 2y ago

The only carbon capture/sequestration method I’m aware of without significant tradeoffs outside of price is direct air capture, and last I saw, that clocked in at $600-1200/ton (Climeworks). So maybe not such a terrible deal?

DoreenMichele 2y ago
Wetlands do a better job of carbon sequestration than trees. Globally, we've lost 85 percent of our wetlands since the 1700s. Maybe we should restore them.
hedora 2y ago
The startups in this space were targeting $100/ton before the recent inflation hit. It turns out if you divide the $/ton by 100, you get $/gallon of gas equivalent. Burning a gallon of gas emits 20 lbs of CO2 (most of the weight is in the oxygen), and a ton is 2000 lbs. Anyway, at $6-12 dollars per gallon of gasoline, direct air capture is clearly much worse than just not burning oil. At $1-2, it’s less than the current gasoline taxes in the US.

_cenw 2y ago

The system simply doesn't have more capacity right now. Germany neglected or even removed their rail infrastructure, especially for the past 25 or so years, after privatization. These "subsidies" are a course correction. These investments also make it a real pain to use the system right now, because a lot of lines are closing months at a time and the alternatives are already overloaded. I'd rather have a car for the next 5-10 years too - and I live very central with many connections. Here's a map of disruptions for reference: https://www.zuginfo.nrw/map.html#!P|HimSearch!histId|1!histKey|H600365 https://www.zuginfo.nrw/map.html#!P|HimSearch!histId|1!histK...

tourmalinetaco 2y ago
Me and my wife are certainly considering getting a car. Cars are a pain in cities, but it would save literally hundreds of hours over the course of even a single year due to just how poor the infra is.
Arn_Thor 2y ago
Everybody say it with me: “privatization of natural monopolies is dumb and wasteful!”
jamil7 2y ago
For people less familiar. Germany privatised its national rail company in the 90s but the federal government is the only shareholder. It’s a weird model that doesn’t make much sense. DB is a monopoly so the rules of competition don’t apply (and don’t work with railways anyway) it’s led to perverse cost cutting incentives and fat bonus programs for C level employees. Combine that with a conservative government’s austerity politics since the GFC and the whole system is at breaking point at the moment. Reforms and work is happening but the amount of work is staggering and means frequent line closures. DB estimates its trains to be running reliably in 2070.
- Pamar 2y ago
  Expat in Germany since 2014. (Also, I do not own a car). I can confirm that Dbahn service was not so great from the start, and became noticeably worse after COVID. I live in Rostock. 2 weeks ago I landed in Hamburg at 2:30pm and tried to return home by train. Distance is 185 km, and I arrived home at 10:00pm Reasons: works on the line that forced us to go to Lubeck first, then take two more regional trains to reach Rostock. On top of that, one train from Lubeck to the next stop was so full that a hundred passenger could not get in (me included). The next train was canceled. Finally we got a (packed) train at around 8pm. All "fine" except that this is the third time in the last 12 months that the same line undergoes maintenance forcing you to move to Lubeck first and adding 1 hour to your trip. Rostock-Berlin: similar story. For three times in the last year there were some problems between Oranienburg and Berlin, forcing you to either travel around it with a 1 hour detour or to disembark in Oraniemburg and move to S-Bahn (sort like BART). In other words: railways are overstressed and failing repeatedly causing massive delays; Oraniemburg is 40km from Berlin Central Station. I find it unconceivable that you have to repair the same short segment thrice in 12 months.

barrkel 2y ago

Cars also have a huge subsidy in the form of roads

Ferret7446 2y ago
There are generally taxes (e.g., car or gas taxes) that cover the costs. I don't know about Germany's situation, but it is not impossible to make that net zero.
- eigenspace 2y ago
  Not even close to net zero in Germany. Do you have any examples of countries where car and gas taxes do actually cover the cost of roads?
- threeseed 2y ago
  In Australia, petrol tax raises ~18bn. Cost of road infrastructure is ~36bn.
  - ben-schaaf 2y ago
    And these comparisons often exclude externalities like carbon emissions, pollution from tires and brakes, road accident costs, noise pollution and the cost of suburban sprawl.
- andrepd 2y ago
  If you would even attempt it to make it net zero you would get truly ungodly amounts of pushback, I don't think you understand how bad it would be. Truly, for those used to a privilege, fairness is an attack. Furthermore: you have a state of affairs where you are pretty much forced to own and drive a car to e.g. get to work or move around. You make it reflect its true cost making it impossible to afford for anyone except the rich. What now?
addandsubtract 2y ago
A more fitting complaint about cats would be the Pendlerpauschale, which is paid out to people driving to and from work in their car. It's a much larger sum than the €3b spent on the train ticket subsidy.

heraldgeezer 2y ago

Yes, lets subsidize the aviation and car industry more instead!! Face it, trains is the better option here. Bike and walk is best of course but troublesome long distance.

moffkalast 2y ago

Well it's not just a carbon credit, it also provides subsidized public transport to everyone, reduces congestion, improves city air and likely cuts road deaths. Arguably tax dollars extremely well spent.

tourmalinetaco 2y ago
Except that due to this cheaper ticket congestion on trains is horrible and since the infrastructure is poorly maintained it’s quite common to be late by 1-2 hours while being packed in a sardine tin.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  That's a matter of train infrastructure and frequency keeping up with demand. There's a big lag there. You don't just buy 100 new trains overnight. It's a symptom of ramping up. Not of high usage. I live in Barcelona and here the metro comes every 2-3 minutes. Even during the night it might be 7 minutes. This helps so much with congestion but also trip planning: no need to check train times before you go. Id imagine busy routes in Germany could do similar. The big benefit of this is also not needing a car. Not having to worry about maintenance, write-off, finding parking and the cost thereof, summer and winter tyres, damage, no-claim bonus, travelling while having drunk, going back from a different place than you arrived. It's so incredibly more convenient than having a car. All at a flat rate of 21€ here.I hope never having to need one again.
  - intellix 2y ago
    €21.35 for a T-Usual card which allows unlimited travel on all public transport for 30 days, yet you still have people in here kicking and screaming to use their car and roads
    - wkat4242 2y ago
      Yeah this is true but it's a minority. And some people come from outside the city where it's more understandable. I think Ada Colau did really great pedestrianising streets like Consell de Cent, unfortunately Collboni doesn't seem to care as much.

throawayonthe 2y ago

[dead]

oxfordmale 2y ago

This analysis is too simple. Roads need to be maintained, road accidents are a burden on the national health service and air pollution has a long term negative impact on people's health

epolanski 2y ago

Why do you need to price them? Also, there are countries out there where the average tax payer subsidizes car drivers a lot too.

risyachka 2y ago

Who said rail industry should be profitable in the first place? I would fully support if part of my taxes would subsidize rail industry and I get cheaper prices. Imo good use of tax dollars.

dyauspitr 2y ago

Maybe but it’s also subsidizing travel for people, possibly increasing revenue for tourist spots and restaurants, it could keep people from buying a new ICE vehicle etc. It seems like one of those things that has a lot of benefits outside the immediate situation.

postpawl 2y ago

Focusing on the cost-per-tonne for carbon reduction misses the broader value of railways. They're not just about reducing emission! They facilitate daily commutes, expand job opportunities, and help drive the economy. It’s a subsidy for businesses too.

dreadlordbone 2y ago
Doesn't having a car do this too?
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Cars destroy walkability, cyclability, ability for kids to freely play outside, enable sprawl (hence more energy consumption hence more carbon emissions). There’s no free lunch with using more surface area, which cars greatly expand people’s ability to consume.
  - dreadlordbone 2y ago
    That's a goalpost moved from my response.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      The poster you responded to wrote: > They're not just about reducing emission! Cars increasing emissions seems to be a relevant disqualifier.
  - nsokolsky 2y ago
    True to a degree but cars also make parenting easier: you get bigger houses, bigger backyards, don't have lug your kids around on public transit, deal with the weather, don't need to worry about rail worker strikes, etc. All America's missing is laws that allow kids to walk to school and adding more sidewalks to enable this, but this is changing over time (see Utah's free range parenting law).
    - 2y ago

andrepd 2y ago

How much does it cost to keep up the motor roads in Germany? Likewise, how much do the externalities of it (like pollution, and massive numbers of deaths and injuries) cost? Without it this comparison is meaningless.

rzwitserloot 2y ago

The sheer amount of additional benefit means this is a gallingly reductive view of it all. The subsidy for maintaining car infrastructure is causing _more_ co2 per euro invested, how's that fit into these calculations? This is so useless, it sounds like propaganda.

ch0wn 2y ago

Show me an effective carbon abatement method well under $100.

clukic 2y ago

You're not pricing in the primary impact of the subsidy - the value of the travel itself. Those tickets subsidize travel and reduce carbon emissions.

ClumsyPilot 2y ago

Disturbingly, your link includes Carbon capture and storage from a fossil power plant, which has never been demonstrated practically and is basically a scam at this point, pushed by oil companies. Second, you are conflating subsidy with cost. If everyone switches to electric trucks, cost is enormous, but subsidy is zero because private sector pays for it themselves. For electrics freight trains, cost could be lower, but the government has to pay for it. However, everyone with a grasp of physics knows that freight train is more efficient, so focusing on subsidy is stupid

thelastgallon 2y ago

It saves the commuters the cost of buying a car, insurance, gas and maintenance. it saves building new roads and lifecycle costs of maintaining a road. Trains allow dense developments with a little bit of walking. Walking is healthy, a bit of exercise saves a ton on healthcare costs. Density makes everything cheaper. Carbon emissions are just a bonus.

Crunchified 2y ago

A big externality is time-savings, and can be calculated.

abdullahkhalids 2y ago

The cost of carbon capture is not equal to the value it provides to humanity. In fact, not emitting CO2 that you could have, is even more valuable than CO2 you remove later from the atmosphere.

thrance 2y ago

Roads, highways and gas are massively subsidized, much more per kilometer travelled than rail. I think if you factor in spared road maintenance alone, from travellers using the train instead of their cars, you might see the operation is actually saving public money.

nerdbert 2y ago

I suspect that's peanuts compared to all the subsidies and unaccounted externalities for car use.

simonhorlick 2y ago

Germany actually subsidises fossil fuels to the tune of €20bn/year, so in that context €3bn doesn't sound so bad. Some of the latest estimates of the true cost per ton of carbon put it around $1000 USD, so in purely economic terms it's still a win.

anigbrowl 2y ago

Don't forget to factor in the reduced costs of road maintenance, accidents, non-CO2 pollution, and traffic delays.

ic_fly2 2y ago

You make a very valid point. I’d ignore unpriced other externalities, that is a large rabbit hole. (Do people increase consumption of other goods thanks to the savings of this ticket…) I’d rather look at the project, subsidies again and the cost and realise that at this scale there are few individual projects. So this is a very large knob to dial down the emissions. Secondly, the subsidies go into the German economy. The rail system is very domestic economy heavy, so at a time where the German economy is going into a recession, spending 3bn to subsidise transport and reduce people’s cost of living and pay for German workers and investments is not such a terrible idea. So while the price tag is high, the money isn’t turned into trees or buried like in pure abatement projects and at this scale it is a nice leaver to pull.

Asmod4n 2y ago

We are paying 70bn€ annually for roads. And gain 25 in taxes for it.

gmerc 2y ago

- Air Pollution and related deaths / morbidities - Road tear and wear - Congestion related loss of business and time - Can actually work on train or rest Many of these can be calculated and measured. Rail doesn’t significantly pollute more or deprecate faster on the infrastructure side empty or full.

SECProto 2y ago

Funding road repairs, construction, and expansion from general tax revenues is similarly subsidizing a different mode of transit, and it's likely a much higher value than the 3b€ you mention (and likely more than overall railway sector subsidizing, tho I'm not familiar with Germany's budget). Also recognizing that other positive externalities exist, but pricing them at $0, seems silly.

Happily2020 2y ago
Not to mention subsidised parking spaces. Free and even paid street parking is highly subsidised by the city and by other tax payers. There's also the environmental cost of not having that land be a park or nature and instead have it contribute to being an urban heat island with all its asphalt.
- looofooo0 2y ago
  Healthcare cost also decline, and people become less sick because you have to walk some amount to get to the train.
  - piyuv 2y ago
    The air quality improving should also be a factor.
  - shankr 2y ago
    Although you fall sick more often in winter when using public transportation.
    - ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
      Is that a rigorous statistical analysis or just your impression?
      - shankr 2y ago
        It was instrumental in spreading COVID[1]. Also found to be the case with other airborne diseases[2] [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8552583/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8552583/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6280530/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6280530/

solatic 2y ago

I'm not sure you've fully accounted for the full carbon reduction here, which is not just the replacement of cars from the road but also the transition to a car-free lifestyle. It gets people out of their cars because it's cheaper than petrol. When train tickets (in other countries) cost more than the cost of petrol for the journey, commuters who already sank the cost of buying a car + insurance ask why they should bother paying a premium for the train ticket when the cost of petrol will be cheaper. Only after people transition to taking the train in the morning, do they then start to ask questions like "do I get value out of paying for insurance on a car I don't drive?" and start to make decisions like selling their cars. In this case the carbon reduction is not only the carbon reduction of the trips that would have been taken by train, but the carbon reduction from the use of the car altogether, and future car maintenance and replacement.

CalRobert 2y ago

Fewer people in cars means fewer road deaths, safer streets for walking and cycling, quieter cities, less nimby obstructionism due to parking complaints, and less inhaled tyre participates, among other benefits.

baxtr 2y ago

Additionally the ticket has not only shifted traffic but also led to an increase of trips in total.

locallost 2y ago

It's head and shoulders above all the subsidies to the car industry that just increase emissions. In terms of value it can't even be compared, one is positive and the other negative. E.g. during the original 9 Euro Ticket, the government also reduced taxes on gas to fight inflation, and this cost as much as the subsidies for the 9 Euro Ticket. The gas tax reduction's costs were 3 billion, and the 9 Euro Ticket costs were 2.5 billion. So I would call it exceptional value when compared to other things.

sooheon 2y ago

You're right, subsidies aren't enough. They should tax carbon, road use, and car ownership also.

panda-giddiness 2y ago

Germany spends some 70 billion euros maintaining the road system, only about a third of which is offset by taxes on drivers [1]. If we accept that investments in roads reduce carbon emissions by 0 million tonnes per year, then that works out to NaN € per tonne -- much worse than other carbon abatement methods! Naturally there might be other positive externalities to owning a car, but I don't own a car and therefore wouldn't be privy to them. Instead I rely almost exclusively on Germany's public transport for my daily commutes, which I find perfectly satisfactory for this purpose and significantly more convenient than parking and maintaining a car. --- [1] https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/oekonomie/autos-und-co.-decken-kostenbedarf-des-strassenverkehrs-kaum-13376725ly_Report/Key_Figures/2023/2023-12-federal-budget.html https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/oekonomie/au...

cinntaile 2y ago
A third can't be right. 15 billion from petrol and 18.2 billion from diesel alone make up almost half of that. 48.76 million vehicles times €100 (back of the envelope calculation) for vehicle tax puts that number above half. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Government/Taxes/Excise-Duties/energy-curent-1.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Government/Taxes/Excise-Du... https://www.statista.com/statistics/810662/passenger-cars-stock-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/810662/passenger-cars-st... https://www.zoll.de/DE/Unternehmen/Kraftfahrzeugsteuer/Steuerhoehe/steuerhoehe_node.html https://www.zoll.de/DE/Unternehmen/Kraftfahrzeugsteuer/Steue...
- panda-giddiness 2y ago
  From the article (sorry for the bad link before; fixed below [1]): > The revenue from taxes and levies on road traffic amounts to around 50 billion euros annually. Around half of this is earmarked by law via the mineral oil tax, i.e. around 25 billion euros. This means that just over a third (36%) of the earmarked revenue from road traffic covers the costs of roads and other facilities such as parking lots and the like. It is therefore clear that the public sector is heavily subsidizing road traffic. My understanding is that these two forms of taxes add to more than 50%, but then almost half of those taxes must be reinvested elsewhere by law (i.e., not into roads), hence the 1/3 figure. But even if you ignore this reallocation of taxes, you still have a deficit of around 20 billion euros. --- [1] https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/oekonomie/autos-und-co.-decken-kostenbedarf-des-strassenverkehrs-kaum-13376725 https://www.forschung-und-wissen.de/nachrichten/oekonomie/au...

looofooo0 2y ago

Health care cost decline as people walk more compared to car transit!

jona-f 2y ago

This is so wrong, I don't even know where to begin, my head is spinning. Luckily HN came to the rescue for once. But sadly this is the kind of reasoning that actually works in politics and finance.

vaylian 2y ago

> That really isn't good value - most carbon abatement methods cost well under $100 per tonne. That assumes that there is still sufficient potential for additional use of these cheaper carbon abatement methods. The tricky part about fighting climate change is that we have to make change in many different places. Each partial solution has only a limited capacity for deployment.

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chipdart 2y ago

> Providing these €49 tickets requires an annual subsidy of around €3bn, on top of already substantial subsidies for the rail industry. I'm perplexed by the way you omitted the fact that these subsidies cover bus services, both local and regional (it's in the article's leading sentence). From there you proceeded to use that cherry-picking to single out a specific type of service while also cherry-picking the tradeoffs.

znpy 2y ago

$ 3bn is a fairly small price to pay when you consider that you get less co2 ON TOP of more people using public transport

littlestymaar 2y ago

> That really isn't good value - most carbon abatement methods cost well under $100 per tonne. You spelled “counterfeit carbon credit” wrong. There's no carbon sequestration technology that can fix carbon at industrial scale at that cost yet (and maybe never).

the_gipsy 2y ago

Many "other externalities" are priceless: Many poor people cannot afford a car.

izacus 2y ago

Until 2024 the budget for German Autobahn company ("subsidy") was at 6.2bn EUR for comparison. And this is JUST the roads. No other subsidies and incentives given to car manufacturing and car transport.

Scarblac 2y ago

But the roads and cars are used less, which means they require less maintenance. CO2 emission isn't the only pollution caused by cars either. People get cheaper transport options available to them. All those other wins for society should be counted too, there may not even be a cost left to count towards CO2 reduction. But most importantly, taking 3 billion in taxes and handing them out as subsidised pricing to some of the people isnt really a cost (to society as a whole), it's an income redistribution.

rmbyrro 2y ago

Not everything has to be priced. Some things can be desired and pursued, even if they don't make sense monetarily.

7bit 2y ago

If we look past carbon emission, we can see that the value is much bigger. You mention that the rail industry is already substantially subsidized. What you did not mention is that the automotive industry is as well. Roads are paid by state and republic. Car purchases are often subsidized via a flat return by the republic (which primarily benefits the rich). Petrol is also subsidized. Now all these automotive subsidiaries benefit only the people who own cars, and much more the wealthy ones. In Germany, only 43 million private households own a car. That's just roughly 50 %. But if you get people to choose public transport over your auto, then this benefits everyone. Better air quality, less noise pollution, less streets and more space for pedestrians. Anecdotally, a close neighbourhood removed some parking spots in favour of space for local cafes and public benches with plants. Removing just two parking spots give enough places for 10 people to sit together and enjoy a sunny Sunday -- which otherwise would be dead space occupied by the cars of two or even one household.

briandear 2y ago

How many tons of CO2 are in 1 degree of global temperature? This idea that removing “a lot” is somehow “helping” just seems hand-wavy to me. If the goal is “reduce temperatures,” then what precisely is the goal number? And then, how much CO2 equals that? And how much is the cost per degree to reduce and what is the cost per degree to not reduce? There is a lot of “modeling” but has anyone actually proven “reducing 8000 tons of carbon reduces temperatures by n degrees?” And is it beneficial to lower temperatures? Are there benefits to higher temperatures that haven’t been quantified? Just seems like the plan is “spend whatever it takes forever” — when whatever it takes isn’t even quantifiable. Basically investing without ever knowing the return on the investment.

cromka 2y ago

The cost of the road deaths is also significant and I think it's safe to say it dropped as people switched to using rail.

chomskyole 2y ago

If you recognise that there are other positive impacts that you haven't allowed for, then why stating that your incomplete assessment shows that it isn't good value? Does that show bias?

RobinL 2y ago

In the short run, the trains are running anyway, so you might as well fill them up. This is something that particularly frustates me in the case of buses the UK. They're ridiculously expensive (well, except for the temporary current £2 scheme), and empty. There seems to be a political consensus that we should have them, so it would make far more sense for them to be free in all instances, except when demand is so high they're full (e.g. rush hour)

manmal 2y ago

One other positive externality could be this: The health effects of tire abrasion in cars are not clear yet, not least because tire manufacturers don’t disclose their ingredients. For all we know these fine particulates could be as bad as PFAS.

eru 2y ago

Thanks for doing the math!

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ZeroGravitas 2y ago

"social cost of driving" and "vehicle mile travelled" are two key phrases that will lead you to research on various costs of car travel e.g. > The air pollution-related damage attributable to driving, therefore, can be estimated at $10.7 billion to $41.6 billion per year – an average of between $93 and $360 per U.S. household per year.

m1n7 2y ago

did carbon dioxide write this?

graemep 2y ago

They are certainly very big. Rail is extremely safe so you reduce deaths and injuries from accidents. You reduce other types of pollution. You make towns and cities a lot pleasanter. You save individuals a lot of money.

PaulHoule 2y ago

It’s arguable that $100 per ton is a real carbon price. It translates to about $1 a gallon tax on gasoline which is (a) not enough to change people’s behavior (at its peak gas was almost $2 more than it is now and I drove just the same) but (b) people in 2024 will complain bitterly about it anyway. That is, polities are hypersensitized to that sort of imposed solution right now: for a long time people in the US accepted fluctuations in the gas price because it was seen as a market price so we only had riots whenever a black person was shot by the cops; in “normal” countries (including France and Egypt) you have riots when the price of petroleum goes up because it is seen as being controlled by the state. I think the US has gotten more “normal” post COVID-19 and with GHG controls on the horizon. $1 a gallon is not quite going to make EVs beat gas but it certainly happens at a price below $500 a tonne. Favorable CCS from industrial sources is quoted around $100 a tonne but that is (c) from a plant that runs 24-7 (e.g. if your natural gas plant runs 20% of the time the capital cost of CCS is multiplied 5x at least disregarding that the plant might not run well when it is starting up and shutting down) and (d) has few realizations. The biggest positive externality of rail is suppressed traffic congestion, it is a big quality of life thing if you can avoid sitting in a traffic jam. (Reminds me of posters I saw in Germany that said Zukunft onhe Stau) I find rail tourism to be luxurious compared to motortourism in that one gets to the center of town and doesn’t need to stress about parking, traffic and all that. Contrast that to the fight to refuel your rental car at the airport.

klabb3 2y ago
Not disagreeing but it’s important to point out that the US is a different beast because of the car and roadway dependency. In Europe a large part of the population lives in places easily reachable without a car. But in the US EVs are completely central to reducing CO2 from transportation, unless you’d rather rebuild the entire country. In Europe you can make meaningful changes by simply improving, expanding, investing in existing infrastructure. Most people I know who have a car in EU region are not fully dependent, but enjoy more convenience due to overcrowded or unreliable public transit, grocery stores being further away etc. Those problems are orders of magnitude easier to solve than “let’s build rail through a giant web of sparse suburbs”.
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piombisallow 2y ago

I do recognise that "X" may have other positive externalities, but I don't know how to price any of them. Modern policy in a nutshell.

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konschubert 2y ago

Having such a very heavy subsidy also makes transit very dependent on the current political climate.

valval 2y ago

I love being made to forcibly pay for poor people’s transport.

lm28469 2y ago

Not having to have to own a car is a phenomenal increase in quality of life and disposable income for the average joe though