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Comment by patall | Hacker News Reader

While I like the idea and will probably try it out in January, I think this article takes it bit too easy. The price of the cheapest ticket maybe €22, but by that measure, I was also able to do the same journey for €14.25 with Deutsche Bahn this year. They are mostly cheaper but not that much as the those tickets are for particular trains which are also cheaper on DB. And other admenities like Wifi will also finally come to ICE this year, there are already family zones. Besides maybe the seat gurantee, the other features sound more like gimmiks to me, nice on the first look but not really world changing. I like the croudfunding aspect though.

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Exactly.

"A €22 ($23.50) one-way ticket is less than a quarter of DB’s €115.90 ($123) standard fare." is a bit misleading, given that DB's Standard fare is far from their cheapest. I have a BahnCard 25 (so a 25% discount), and always use Saver fares instead of Standard - meaning I have to take a particular train at a particular time... like with Locomore. A "Standard" DB fare, for those who don't know, means you can take any train(s) at any time on the date for your destination, and for some that flexibility is hugely valuable.

I am travelling between Christmas and New Year this year, and even though it is along Locomore's single serviced line, the price will actually be the same. Since Locomore only stops once a day in my city at an ungodly hour of the morning, it's not so convenient. So I'm going with DB in the evening.

Now, I am glad the city I live in and the one I visit my friends in are both on Locomore's line, as I am looking forward to trying it out, but as with you, I'll probably only try it out later, at a time when DB's fares aren't looking competitive. It really depends on how far you're going, what times are acceptable, and what discounts are available. Locomore's prices are roughly doubled during the festive period while DB has a mix of regular and high priced stuff.

All that said, seeing some actual competition in this area is great.

> DB's Standard fare is far from their cheapest. I have a BahnCard 25 (so a 25% discount)

Well the price of the bahncard should be added to the price you pay per trip, so the question is, how much is that card? Then people can figure out for themselves how often they'd commute and whether they'd save anything.

And still, 25% off of €116 vs. €22 doesn't sound too appealing.

Not criticizing the rest of your post, e.g. I agree that competition is good and available discounts should surely be included in comparisons!

Bahncard 25 is 60€ (so it pays itself as long as you take 2-3 long-distance trips a year)

We're talking 25% off a Saver fare, which can often be well under half the price of a Standard fare. Because Locomore has only one train for one line, virtually all Locomore customers are going to be long distance DB customers as well, for all their other travel needs. Hence, a huge portion are going to have a BahnCard of some kind already.

My BahnCard 25 maintains that discount for the local trams and buses in my city, so that's icing on the cake. For ~€60 a year, it's a no-brainer. The only people I know here without one are people who really do only take a train once or twice a year.

All in all, Locomore seems competitive. But that's all, it doesn't seem like much of a market disruptor yet. Of course, with their expansion plans already in the works, I am excited to see what comes next. It's going to be an uphill battle but I'm glad someone has taken it on.

I travel DB long-distance twice weekly for commutes. The 116€ "standard fare" is actually the maximum fare. It only gets cheaper if you buy in advance, buy saver tickets, or get a BahnCard.

I have a BahnCard 50 (50% discount on flexible fares). It paid for itself in about three weeks. It cost 255€ and I've never had to pay more than 47€ for a flexible ticket, even last-minute on high-speed lines.

The cheapest DB ticket may be as cheap as Locomore, but Locomore's maximum fare is half as much as DB's (~75 EUR).

Yeah, but the trains are half as good and half as fast.

Taking one hour longer on 5 hours trip (for the DB) does not equal "half as fast."

As to "half as good" — that's debatable, isn't it? For some, they may be nearly as good.

I dunno what "trains are half as good" is supposed to mean, but on the line from Berlin south we often have those old run down ICE 2, that really could use a makeover...

The article is misleading the price of travel via DB, but OTOH price of DB is rather complex (its variable, and there are also options for discounts).

It is important to note the price of travel by train in Germany varies a lot depending on variables. You can order your ticket months in advance and get a specific seat (in the ICE) at a specific fare (ie. a trainseat at a specific time & date). This allows for massive discounts. However you're inflexible in your schedule and spot. Consider the following hypothetical examples:

1) You order 3 months in advance and can get a discount of 75%. 2) You order 3 weeks in advance and can get a discount of only 25%-50%. 3) You want to order 2 days in advance and can't even get on the train anymore since its full (ICE). You think you can travel by ICE and buy your ticket on the spot and can't since its full. Grumbled you buy a ticket -at full price- for the RE/IC and have to swap trains all the time which also stop more often.

Note that right now its mid december so it is going to be difficult to book cheap for end of december.

Since Germany is a large country you'll practically end up travel by ICE if you travel through the country. For example, the full price of a one way ticket from Ruhr area to Berlin is ~115 EUR.

So, it is interesting how much time in advance one has to order with Locomore. Apparently one can only order online and not via DB sale points. But how does the ticket work then? Does one have to print it out or can it be shown on a smartphone?

I don't know how pricing works in other countries apart from The Netherlands. IC in The Netherlands have free WiFi, but it requires one to log in with a web browser. No cryptography is used in the connection either.

The article mentions the following:

> and a journey on a recycled (dare I say vintage) train that runs entirely on sustainably sourced green electricity.

I'd like to know which sustainably sourced green electricity. Because nuclear energy is also considered 'green' these days. Not sure if that is true in Germany.

> Europe’s railways have already seen substantial deregulation and privatization—often, as in Britain, with highly negative results.

Yeah, there's a national system akin to Oyster card in The Netherlands. Easy to log in and out and once they swapped from Mifare, more secure. Yet if you swap train of a different company (and they're more rampant here than in Germany, apparently) you need to log out and in. If you don't, you are considered free riding and get a fine of 35 EUR plus the fare price. If this ever happens to you in The Netherlands know that you can appeal a fine once a year by phone or the website. So you can get your money back.

> Because nuclear energy is also considered 'green' these days.

The Greens party, Greenpeace and other organizations certainly disagree in Germany and as a consequence nuclear power is considered one of the dirtiest forms of energy. The geographical proximity to Chernobyl certainly helps.

Economic liberals certainly have criticised the increased push for abandoning nuclear power after Fukushima but in the mainstream narrative coal and gas is cleaner than nuclear.

> I'd like to know which sustainably sourced green electricity.

They use dirty energy and buy some sort of "certificates" that are supposed to guarantee that somewhere, sometime, some sort of green electricity has been produced.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Energy_Certificate_(...

It's the same in Germany and many believe it to be a scam.

It's not a "scam". Electricity is fungible, there's no such thing as "dirty" electrons. Everything feeds into the same grid, and the math works out. Germany buys a ton of hydroelectric power from Norway, and generates its own wind and solar. What more do you want, exactly?

Could you please -- by way of the principle of charity -- assume that readers here know what electricity is?

1) It does not help the German people if green energy is generated in Norway or someone puts up a solar panel in the Sahara if they get to breathe emissions from coal power plants.

2) Any overly complex scheme is likely to be gamed. Any German household can order "Öko-Strom". I don't believe for a second that enough real "Öko-Strom" is available to fulfil that demand in a legitimate manner.

I don't think it is scammed in a way you suggest in (2). However, there is indeed the issue that buying green energy doesn't necessarily change anything. Existing green energy will simply be sold as green rather than normal energy. That's why you have several utilities (e.g., Greenpeace's own) that guarantee to build new green plants in line with their own demand

In (1) you assume that people buy green energy mainly or to a large extent to reduce the emissions they personally suffer from. Have you considered that a big reason for many people to buy green energy might just be to provide incentives for green energy production in order to combat emissions globally without regard for whether they personally benefit from it? If everyone consumes energy "covered" by certificates, this increases viability of producing green energy.

In (2) you say that the scheme is likely to be gamed. Can you elaborate on how that would look like? Does this "Occam's razor" necessarily mean that only simple laws are effective?

Also in (2) you claim that there is not enough real green energy available to satisfy the demand. This is obviously true but this means that the demand creates an incentive for companies to produce green energy wherever possible.

Overall what this system really provides is an option for consumers to optionally subsidize green energy producing companies and so far I have not really heard of any concrete case in which this system has been gamed. Do you know any?

I don't feel like discussing this any further after the usual stupid down-voting and rationalizations.

Go and continue to believe that the world is just, no gaming of the system occurs, as clueless and highly paid A12-A16 civil servants [1] have told you in school.

[1] German teachers are paid well in return for their indoctrination.

So, basically you believe that people are gaming the system but you have no examples of how this happens or which companies might be doing this?

Well, if the down-voters are unable to operate Google-search (as expected), here is one of the first links:

http://www.energieverbraucher.de/de/gruener-strom__377/

So now after 3 layers of us trying to coax you into giving us a little bit more concrete detail on your argument, you link an article in German which a lot of people here cannot read?

Anyway, the article's argument is that the certificates for renewable energy are created in e.g. Norway and Switzerland where it is easy to produce cheap hydropower which cannot be transported to Germany. Meanwhile the Norwegian and Swiss do not buy energy with certificates because they "know" that their energy is clean.

This is indeed true and a valid argument. However Norway and Switzerland produce only a finite amount of these certificates. If demand for certified green energy does not exceed this supply then this is simply a sign that not enough people are willing to pay extra for certified green energy which is regrettable but not a fault of this system.

Many teachers here on HN who think they are programmers while they're only "Lehramt".

I'm not surprised by the low quality of discussion.

It's not as dubious as you may think. Unless they are actively running their own power plants they have to source the energy from somewhere and they're naturally limited by whatever suppliers feed into the grid. As long as they offset the energy they consume with renewable energy being produced, they're net neutral.

That's quite a big if. Okay, under the assumption that the energy industry is always honest and never games the system, we have true green energy.

I don't understand why people here try to explain very basic things that just don't work out in the real world as they would in a 9th grade math textbook.

I was arguing based on the assumption that they are indeed doing what you described. RECs would be regulated and "not being honest" in that case would constitute actual fraud.

If it's just a public promise, sure, I wouldn't trust them either, but even then German consumer protection laws would at least require them to either keep that promise or drop that claim (and pay a fine for anti-competitive practices).

> I don't understand why people here try to explain very basic things that just don't work out in the real world as they would in a 9th grade math textbook.

Then please explain to us, what they taught you in 9th grade. Also, why are you hiding behind a throwaway if you are so sure of your points?

They taught me that there's an extraneous comma in your first sentence.

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