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Comment by ffritz | Hacker News Reader

This is correct and to show what that means: Frankfurt to Berlin with a fast ICE: 4 hours, no changes. With regional trains only: 10-14 hours, 3-6 changes.

With a car this trip is 5 hours. No one in their right mind would ever do such a trip with regionals only, it is extremely painful. In addition, the chance that one of the connections will be missed is extremely high.

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You can still try that, but that's not the intention. The target audience are basically commuters. I had a colleague a couple years ago that went around 100km total both ways to work. He briefly considered switching to train but balked at the price of about 200 per month. This despite the fact that gas cost him more, his car commute was longer and he was paying for a parking spot. I guess the logic was he already paid for the car, so he better use it. But at 50 per month, he'd ditch the sunken cost that is the car in a heartbeat.

I’m skeptical given that reducing your colleague’s cost from around 1000€/mo all-in (inc. parking) to 200€/mo wasn’t enough that a further reduction to 50€/mo will tip the scales.

Fair, but I think people are not good in looking at the big picture. The old price was in the ballpark of the costs people notice (gas). But the proof is in the pudding, so we will see.

How do you know it was 1000€? Maybe if it was closer to let’s say 500 and an extra 300 was seemed like a reasonable price to them for the additional convenience.

It’s 400€ or more for fuel alone, plus maintenance, distance-based-depreciation, and parking.

Interesting logic! Even with the sunk cost of car, insurance, etc. it'd still have to be significantly cheaper or quicker for me to use it over a train, on which I can do other things. (I suppose its privacy is something, but not worth as much to me as the freedom to read or close my eyes.)

In the US, I'm about 45 miles from the nearest large city where I worked (many days) fairly briefly. I'd be about $400-500/month for commuter rail, commuter rail parking, and in-city transit passes. But the reality is that I'd be something close to $40/day driving (plus any parking) even given that I owned the car anyway.

I always took the train unless I was doing something in the evening--in which case the train was a poor option in general. (Once you got out of commuting hours there were only a few trains for the rest of the night.)

Sure, but if you miss your connection you can just take the next train. Frankfurt to Berlin might be impossible, but Hamburg to Berlin is manageable (4-5h), if money is tight, as is Hamburg to Sylt (3h) and many other connections in the 200-400 km range.

Assuming there is a next train.

Two weeks ago, the usual "person on the train line" cancelled all traffic for two hours, with the usual cascading effect for connections.

So instead of arriving at 7pm, I ended up reaching home about 10pm. I was 30 km away from home.

I don't think it's meant to let you replace all car trips you could possibly make with a single 50 euro payment per month.

Nobody in their right mind would, yeah. So they just have to pay for the train if they don't want to buy and maintain and fuel a car for such journeys. Myself, I'd never consider going by car between such well-connected cities, I'd have to drive (can't read a book for those 5 hours) and deal with parking and either rent or borrow a car (or buy, I suppose).

I think the game changer of this ticket is to replace the second or third family car. The few occasions that you actually needed more than one car you could now just do with public transport without a lot of hassle.

Question is if the 600€/annum is cheap enough for people to opt for this. But at least many companies are looking into giving the 49€ ticket at a discount - and that is actually desired from the state as the state also gives the company a discount if they do so.

Still great for everyone who just cannot afford a ICE ticket or even a car. And there is a huge in-between area between local connections and long distance. There are a lot of medium distance connections, where the time difference isn't that large and which become suddenly "free" for those ticket owners.

We used to do that as students. There was a ticket that would allow germany wide travel with regional trains on weekends. It’s long, but it was cheap and on trains isn’t too bad.

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