Yeah, free is not a great idea.
They should charge fees and subsidize poor people instead.
Money to improve quality has to come from somewhere.
People rarely choose to use train because it is free.
They should charge fees and subsidize poor people instead.
Money to improve quality has to come from somewhere.
People rarely choose to use train because it is free.
I don't know if you just don't have perspective, or if your comment is a joke and I just didn't get it.
You can get there faster because everyone else is taking the train. Hopefully one day the train will be the fastest way for you too.
"When it comes to punctuality, Dutch railways are in the top three of the world, right behind only Japan and Switzerland. The Dutch railways, also known as NS, have seen an average of one million train commuters every day with 92.6 % of trains arriving on time, an incredible stat for the Dutch railways. If you are from the Netherlands, you probably can’t make the excuse of the train being late anymore. With this level of punctuality, Dutch railways are continually looking for innovative technological ideas to keep its spot in the top three."
Hello from Amsterdam! I've lived in five countries, including the Netherlands for the last five+ years.
Your statement is so false to the fact that I have no trouble calling it a deliberate lie.
First link I found:
https://analyticsindiamag.com/why-92-6-dutch-trains-arrive-t...
"When it comes to punctuality, Dutch railways are in the top three of the world, right behind only Japan and Switzerland. The Dutch railways, also known as NS, have seen an average of one million train commuters every day with 92.6 % of trains arriving on time, an incredible stat for the Dutch railways. If you are from the Netherlands, you probably can’t make the excuse of the train being late anymore. With this level of punctuality, Dutch railways are continually looking for innovative technological ideas to keep its spot in the top three."
All of this is well-known. I think the reddit term for "telling lies to push car ownership" is "carbrain".
You should be ashamed of yourself. Really. Do you have nothing better to do than go out and tell the most transparent lies on the Internet?
You're missing the point: even a "top three" railway kinda sucks compare to point-to-point car usage.
Secondly, I complain about NS a lot about delays and about not being able to sit. I am not going to argue that it isn't a problem that has to be improved. During rush hour (and plenty of times, outside) it is sometimes impossible to find a seat. But, horrible unreliable? that is not how I would call it.
Along with that, don't forget that our train system is extremely busy. For example, the trains that go from Amsterdam Zuid to Schiphol is the 7th busiest station in the country and it has only 4 lines, all of them which are almost constantly in use. The moment anything goes wrong, that has a domino effect on all other trains.
Personally, I own a car and I use it quite a lot. But I also use public transport quite a lot. For point to point travel outside of cities a car is a no brainer, if you stay within the cities, it is probably not worth it to have a car.
Finally I want to point out that our train system has problems, it has delays quite often, there aren't enough seats, and it is expensive. These are all things that we really have to improve. But It is nowhere near as bad as you make it out to be.
I think what gets missed is the market signal or imperative to respond to that signal. But then, I'll make the uninformed assertion that private rail companies aren't that good at that anyway, and/or the industry doesn't lend itself well to that.
And if rail was "free" I'd definitely use it more. It's not necessarily about the money, although that matters, it's the freedom to "just go" (ignoring there'd probably still need to be a booking system due to high demand)
You cannot have 10 companies competing on the same stretch of rail, which leads to weird attempts to bring the 'market' into play. I'm thinking of the UK in particular.