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> But they’ll stop choosing the train, and over 20 years you’ll find that everyone has moved to private vehicles or alternate transportation methods. This is a
by delichon 11mo ago
> But they’ll stop choosing the train, and over 20 years you’ll find that everyone has moved to private vehicles or alternate transportation methods.
This is a country with a $2.68 per gallon gas tax, compared to $0.51 on average in the US (€0.60 v. €0.11 per liter). This is partly justified as nudging people to use less carbon intensive transport. That nudge works a lot less well when the lower carbon alternative is painfully worse than your car.
https://brilliantmaps.com/gas-petrol-taxes-us-ca-eu/ https://brilliantmaps.com/gas-petrol-taxes-us-ca-eu/
- leviliebvin 11mo agoCar ownership is pretty expensive. But holistically speaking it's not more expensive than the Deutschland Ticket, because it gives you access to cheaper housing options that you wouldn't be able to live in if you depended solely on public transport.
- delichon 11mo agoCan confirm for the US too. I live in a rural county with zero public transport, but when I tell city friends what the lot cost and the property tax on it, they have to hold back tears.
- bombcar 11mo agoThere's a way to combine those, and some countries have it done well (I believe this includes Germany) - you have a rail network that is good enough that you have small stops on feeder lines in rural areas; if you want to be rural you can be a mile from a train that gets you to a moderate-sized city where you can get the fast train.
- seba_dos1 11mo agoYou should rather compare with rural friends with access to public transport.
- jack_tripper 11mo ago>This is a country with a $2.68 per gallon gas tax, compared to $0.51 in the US. Irrelevant comparison since US is a widely different animal to most European countries. It might be expensive compared to the US, but Germany is still one of the countries with the most affordable income-to-cost ratios for car ownership in the Eurozone, so car commuting is incredibly common, especially for those not living in densely populated metro areas.
- systemtest 11mo agoFrom what I can see online, two-thirds of Germans use a car to commute to work.
- jack_tripper 11mo agoWell yes, not difficult to see why. Germany is quite big and quite sprawled, and given how expensive home ownership is in big metro areas people choose commute longer in exchange for affordable housing. And also the government gives you tax rebates for your fuel expenses the further you have to commute for work which is a double edged sword.
- dmix 11mo agoSo you’d pay roughly $40 in tax to fill a sedan in Germany vs $7 in America at 15 gallons?
- naian 11mo agoNot sure about Germany but in Spain tax on petrol is 44%. At current prices for petrol (1.3€/l) you need to pay around 78€ to fill a sedan (assuming 60 litre deposit) of which 34.3€ will go to the government.