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Comment by alecco | Hacker News Reader

Populism. This will make the country consume more energy. There's a crisis and the solution is saving as much energy as possible. And help companies not go bankrupt. But that doesn't sell...

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If people use the train instead of their cars, it will save energy by a lot. Trains are the most efficient form of transportation, cars the least efficient.

Bicycles are the most efficient form of transportation if we’re talking energy use, but yes, trains beat out cars by a lot. :)

Absolutetly not since the fuel (human food) is horribly CO2 intensive to produce.

You’re still going to eat no matter how you travel though! That’s non-negotiable regardless of mode.

(Also, e-bikes exist too, if you’re really worried that people exercising might eat a little bit more.)

The more fitness you gain, the more effective you are in your energy utilization. Sportive people need less energy! Hard, but true.

It’ll move energy use from highly inefficient personal vehicles burning gasoline to highly efficient trains using mostly renewable electricity, during the summer where more than enough electricity is available.

Still plenty of diesel run train engines in Germany.

Also coal is still being burnt. So I don't think it is mostly renewable.

In both of these cases, the energy per person-kilometer of transportation is orders of magnitudes lower than with an ICE car. So the energy usage would still go down

I think that the Deutsche Bahn runs 100% on clean energy.

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftwerk_Datteln

40% ~ 400MW of this coal plant go directly to DB. They argue that it’s only used for freight and not for public transport but meh - a useless differentiation IMO.

If this was really about saving energy, they wouldn't also simultaneously lower gas taxes during the same period as well.

As is common in coalition governments, the 9-Euro-Ticket is a pet project of the greens to save energy and save people money, while the gas taxes are a pet project of the neoliberals to save people money :)

Indeed…

A lot of regional lines are already at max capacity in terms of rolling stock and track capacity. This will incentivise less car use for journeys where direct connections are available.

It will also give access to public transport to those in extreme poverty who have no other means of mobility, whom Germany has been prosecuting as criminals and putting in jail when their fines add up enough. Speeding and parking offenses are civil offenses. Public transport without a ticket? Felony.

When is there not a crisis? If you're running a train anyway, the marginal cost of attaching a couple more cars for the extra demand seems pretty small.

Not even that. Most lines are already at maximum capacity, and the number of cars is usually dependent on the shortest platform on the line already.

We take this so seriously, any stop, even unplanned, where the doors might open aside from absolute emergencies must be on a platform of sufficient length.

>Not even that. Most lines are already at maximum capacity, and the number of cars is usually dependent on the shortest platform on the line already.

Here in the UK we run trains that are longer than platforms quite frequently. I'm talking about 9 car trains stopping at 2 car platforms here as well, not 9 car trains where the front and rear doors of the first and last carriage don't open.

In the UK it's quite normal, I think, for them to tell people who want to get off at stop X that they have to be in carriages Y-Z because the platform isn't long enough for them to open the doors of other carriages. There seems to be a Wikipedia page on the general topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_door_operation ("Selective Door Operation enables trains to call at a station where the platform is shorter than the train.")

It's my understanding that the capacity of the UK train network is mostly limited by the granularity of the signalling.

That's one of the situations where the UK seems like a halfway-honorary US state, in a "Hold my damn beer--you're all right!" sort of way.

Sources for claims? Genuinely curious.

It will consume more energy, when they need more trains or train cars. Excluding the energy needed for devices and in the restaurant on board.

edit: clearified a sentence.

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