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Comment by JanSt | Hacker News Reader

My wife had a daily 45km rail+2km bus trip to work which was 200€ per month.

That's massive savings for many people who choose not to drive with cars. Her colleagues drive to work with cars for 2 km trips and ask her whether she does not own a car (we do).

Taking the train is a) cheaper b) more relaxed (can read) c) better for the environment d) it's even faster in her case

The €49 ticket could give public transportation a massive boost - worst case is, no additional people use trains and buses but people who can't afford cars or use public transport for enviromental reasons save quite some money.

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I use public transport to go to work. But it's not really convenient. It takes me about 45 minutes to get there. And that's if everything goes well. Half an hour of that is walking (to and from bus stops) and waiting (you should be several minutes early because busses sometimes leave early themselves, but most of the time they are late). So there's not much reading that can be done. Also, try reading while you're waiting in the cold for a bus that keeps on getting more and more delayed because of weather. My personal record so far was nearly an hour with busses promised but then suddenly vanishing from the app.

Compared to this, the corresponding car trip takes about 10 minutes. I never sat in heavy traffic because you can easily circumvent that in a car. However, I have been stuck in a bus sitting in a traffic jam for more than 30 minutes on many occasions. The bus can't change it's course and the bus drivers don't like letting you exit anywhere that isn't a bus stop. But at least you can read while your colleagues have already been home for a while.

Most people overlook that travel to and from stops and waiting for a connecting bus can add up significantly. And then there are all those things that time tables won't tell you.

considering that short journey time, have you thought about biking?

I also bike to work when the weather allows it. The trip by bike takes slightly longer than the one by bus.

There are ways to avoid having buses stuck in traffic. Dedicated lanes for public transport, getting more people to use public transport rather than cars, and so on. So I'd say it's more often than not a choice in planning if it's convenient compared to using cars or not.

(There's also the problem of less developed systems often being less convenient, and because of it not having the funding needed to expand due to low usage)

Dedicated lanes exist in this city, but not every street has them of course. The line in question also services a street that does not have a dedicated lane. And that's where it sometimes gets stuck in traffic. Funnily, it used to be routed via a different street that actually does have dedicated lanes. But back then the bus got stuck in the narrower street connecting those two.

It all depends on circumstances, starting with the country you are in, that often determines the basic level of quality of any kind of public transport.

Then, the real travel time is measured from door-to-door. That includes the traveling to stations/stops and the waiting time for connecting transport. I think this is fairly obvious.

If we want to make the world a better place for people and the environment, the number one priority should be to reduce any need to travel in the first place. But if they must travel, make public transport so good (price/time) that it is the first choice of transport.

That would be the appropriate vision for the future. And it can happen in any country.

The reality is that capitalism and politics prevent public transport from truly shining. It's not even that of a political statement because we know why America doesn't have great public transport overall, especially a lack of long-distance rail lines like 'we' have in Europe. (Car companies lobbying against rail)

In most cases it is unrealistically difficult to beat the convenience and speed of private cars. If you are in a very dense urban environments, maybe. Otherwise, no.

That's why making public transport very cheap or even free does not make everyone let their cars at home.

Actually, in most cases it is unrealistically difficult to beat the convenience of public transport over private cars without MASSIVE infrastructure investments favoring cars.

Being able to get places with cars requires a lot of things: roads, parking, traffic measures (signs, crossings, stoplights, onways, offramps, freeways, more parking at destination, etc etc etc). If you only build for public transport, bikes, and walking, the savings in both space used and money spent become ridiculous.

Basically: the world looks a lot different without every building having a huge car park. In my view: a lot better.

The point is that the infrastructure investments required for public transports would be even higher, taking into account that roads are also required for public transports...

If I want a bus or a train to be right in front of my house any time I need one and I also want that bus/train to drive me exactly where I want to go, obviously the cost will be ridiculously high.

You set unreasonable expectations/ demands on public transport. There will always be some walking / biking to/from bus/tram stops. That has never been a problem.

You are likely trying to compare the USA car-centric suburbs and frankly that choice makes distances larger but that’s life. USA has a tremendous disadvantage due to the car-centric nature.

Yet even that can be changed, it will be costly, but there is no technical issue. It is all about politics. As long as taking a bus is seen as for “poor people” it will be an uphill battle.

I am in Europe and I am replying to a claim that public transport can be made so good that it is people's first choice... and so the point I am making is that this is indeed setting an unrealistic expectation on public transport!

If you need some biking or walking just to reach public transport, then wait, then travel through the network then there is always a level of inconvenience that you may not face if you use individual private transport instead.

Even in Europe most people live is suburbs. Even if they are not car-centric (and they are in most cases) that increases inconvenience and cost of public transport.

> that you may not face if you use individual private transport instead.

Only if you assume that individual private transport can get you door-to-door. Which is a rather unfair comparison. "cars are better because unlike public transport, you can drive up to basically any building and park there" is only true if you build roads and parkings to basically every building.

Streets have to access all buildings due to fire fighting reasons, unless you also plan to rearchitecture the firefighting infrastructure to use pipelines branching from a huge central fire extinction station.

Firefighting vehicle doesn't need parking space

It is obvious that a building requires road access. The issue of emergency services access has already been mentioned but there is also obviously the issue of deliveries, including large items like appliances and furniture.

I did mention the caveat that sometimes private transport (which includes bikes) may be inconvenient. That includes issues with parking space.

I'd argue that making private transport very impractical is not the same as making public transport "so good it becomes the first choice"... it's making private transport bad enough that it becomes more inconvenient than public transport...

Realistically I think people prefer private transport and will use private transport when on balance they consider than driving/cycling has become too inconvenient (traffic is really too bad, no parking as you mention, etc). But if private transport works then public transport cannot be made more convenient for obvious reasons.

I'm not so sure about that. The subsidies that a functioning public transport requires every year are massive as well. I wouldn't be surprised if they exceeded the cost of extra infrastructure (roads, parking etc.) required by private cars.

Public transport would obviously need much less space and would be much more efficient. It’s the car sprawl that is unsustainable in every way.

In a dense city centers? Probably. Everywhere else? I'm not so sure. An average person will is bothered by wait times longer than 10 minutes and wants the stop to be within 5-7 minutes from their door. So, you'd have to run a bus/tram every 10 minutes through a ton of sleepy suburbs, which may not even see a car every 10 minutes. It's just not rational.

I disagree and it’s quite wrong for many European countries, for instance.

The whole idea is that public transport would be preferable in terms of time, comfort and cost. It can be done, there is no technical challenge whatsoever, it’s all politics.

In many cases traffic is so bad that cars are just as bad. But the key thing is to sacrifice / build lanes exclusive to public transport (busses) because those lanes effectively are so much more efficient.

We have a ton of electric busses already, which makes such transport even more ideal.

I am in Europe and at country level public transport will never beat individual transport overall. In specific dense urban environments where cars can be extremely inconvenient (including because all the offices are packed in a few towers all at the same location), yes but again in the general case a bus will never be able to be as convenient as my own vehicle parked right outside my front door.

And yes this is a technical and practicability challenge on top of being prohibitively expensive to run.

Trading some convenience for a much better world in every conceivable metric is just more important.

Every conceivable metric except convenience, then... That sounds like a regression to me.

You know that a ton of people do exactly this: travel to a train station or bus/tram stop and they are fine with it. Lots of people don’t have cars.

You seem to argue in bad faith as I have to point out the obvious to you.

Is this in the US or Europe?

This is in Europe.

"I never sat in heavy traffic because you can easily circumvent that in a car" Having lived in places that actually have heavy traffic (LA) this reads like total bull. Nobody can "easily circumvent" heavy traffic.

You can if the heavy traffic only occurs, e.g., in the center of the city because of ongoing construction. I need to go from A to B. The bus does the trip via C where the traffic jam occurs. By car I can either use route D or E.

We're far away here from the traffic situation in LA or any other real city.

Around my area, what takes about 30 - 45m by car, can take up to 2h in public transports, and one needs to travel both ways.

Naturally I have better ways to spend 4h per day than jumping between connections.

It's obviously not convenient for everyone - but no single measure is.

I'd also cut down on your walking time by taking a bycicle - you could probably save 20 minutes by that alone. My wife also takes a bike ride to the train station (and she packs quite a few bags on the bike).

Nonetheless - yes, there are situations in which cars are still way better.

Unfortunately, it's not possible to bring a bike into a crowded commuter bus and the stretch between home and bus stop can't be efficiently used by bike without commiting several traffic violations. I can, however, do the entire trip by bike (which I often do in summer), using a different route. That takes only slightly longer than the trip via bus.

In the Netherlands and Denmark, it's not unusal to cycle to a bus stop or railway station, lock the bike there, take the bus/train, and walk at the other end.

Or, to own a second bicycle and leave it at the other end.

In London small, folding bicycles serve the same purpose, but they're much more expensive.

Escooters are more practical here. I see these as the future of getting to PT.

Or take it as a benefit: half an hour of walking a day can clear your head like nothing else (not even a bike-ride).

30 minutes mild physical exercise is a terrifying proposal to the average person.

It's also really bad for families. 200 euro per person (even if you only have, say 75 euro for kids) would be 600+ for a car. Not competitive with cars in many scenarios.

> Half an hour of that is walking

You could buy an electric scooter.

Are you in the UK by any chance? Sounds just like my old commute before I started working from home, and my partner’s current one

Is there ample housing near your place of work with enough supply to keep prices affordable?

Polite suggestion: if you can drive in 10 mins you could probably cycle in 20-30 mins depending on details. Although not, I suppose, if 8 of those 10 mins are on high speed autobahn :)

When I lived in Rome I cycled everywhere. I was the 2nd fastest on the road for my 13-14km / 35min commute, but it takes time & effort to get fit. Public transport varied from 50 to 100 mins and private car was typically about 45 mins.

The only faster means were motorbikes & mopeds.

I'm fit (2000-4000km distance per yer, multiple sports). But I would never bike to work/train for longer than 5 minutes. I sweat too much (armpits, feet). And taking spare clothes/shoes, and showering in the office is too much.

It's acceptable to cycle to the office at less than your maximum workout speed.

I find going through all the red lights makes up the difference.

Me and many of my colleagues ride the bike to office when it is sunny. Better than the train. It’s 30km each trip (2h). A shower once in the office seems acceptable, given the mood boost lasting for the whole day.

There are showers and the locker room where I keep a set of clean work clothes at my work. This is normal for a medium to large company, and some small ones have the same utilities. Copenhagen.

In my case car is 25 minutes, subway is 20 minutes, bike is 15 minutes.

> I use public transport to go to work. But it's not really convenient. It takes me about 45 minutes to get there. And that's if everything goes well. Half an hour of that is walking (to and from bus stops) and waiting (you should be several minutes early because busses sometimes leave early themselves, but most of the time they are late).

Can you provide more details about where you are and the distance involved? I don't understand why you wouldn't simply drive 10 minutes.

That's not quite in the interest of the car manufacturers that public transportation is cheaper than cars which is one of the reasons this took so long.

That's why it's even more impressive it took off in Germany which is normally very protective of its car industry.

I'm still surprised by that, but personally a bit disappointed it ended up at 50 bucks, I think it was increased multiple times during the planning and discussions about extending the 9€ ticket. At least it's not 70, which I think was also on the table at some point. Still, a huge win for people who can use it daily for commute, which is unfortunately not me. I had the 9€ one and occasionally took the train into the green for hiking or other events, but didn't even come close to 50€ in fares.

We still have massive subsidies for providing leased new cars, mostly selected from German car manufacturers, to employees (about 3 bn per year [1]).

Few people in the upper middle class and above will use public transport instead of their car, if it's provided by their employer.

The results from the 9€ Ticket also indicate that people aren't using their car that less often. They are just using the ticket to do additional journeys [2].

But I suppose that having this ticket available for longer than 3 months will motivate some households to get rid of/ not purchase a second car. Also, it will probably convince younger adults in metropolitan areas (like me) to not buy a car - or to delay it until it's needed for family reasons.

[1]: https://www.exberliner.com/politics/red-flag-why-we-should-b... [2]: https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/9-euro-...

My take is that in many, if not most, cases people choose based on convenience and practicality unless one option is simply unaffordable.

In Europe in general affordability of public transport is not the problem so I don't expect that decreasing prices will have a big effect on use.

I would disagree. Public transportation isn't cheap either if you're not a student or have a company sponsor, in some cases even more expensive than having a car.

I didn't claim it was 'cheap'. I wrote that people can afford it in the same way people can afford a car and that other concerns are often more important.

It surely is a problem and not everyone lives in the city center or in a nearby street with a public transport stop.

Then there is the whole issue with timetables once one gets a few km away from city center, with only one connection per hour between 7 AM and 8 PM, for anything else there are taxis.

Not every location in Europe is Amsterdam, Berlin, Milan,...

it is a problem, especially if you need a car anyways.

One limitation of the previous price experiment is that it was only a few summer months. Nobody sells their car for 3 months, especially when they include a summer holiday. Let's see what happens when you can count on this existing for years to come.

The germans are generally quite conscious of right and wrong (see e.g. Linux and OSM usage: it's still minorities but it's much more present than in similar countries like NL), maybe very competitive pricing does help in mass transport adoption.

In my opinion it should be somewhere between dirt cheap and free if your income is in the bottom 10% of incomes (and could cost twice as much for the top 50%, which includes me, because it has to be financed somehow anyway), but as an intermediate step, this is not going in the wrong direction.

You don’t need to mention that you are in the top 50% to make your augment stronger. You should probably even actively avoid saying it so that people don’t think you’re relying on selfless reasons, (hey everyone I’m the nice one in the room) to further your point, because others may not feel that way about themselves.l, at least not to random strangers in the bottom 10%.

Anyway, making more money is just a measure of one’s ability more or less (not a causation but a strong correlation). Therefore to the extent that one works harder or provides more value to others and is rewarded for it by increased earning power, they should not be punished for it by an arbitrary tax on their transportation needs.

I think it might make sense to create countries or places where people in the bottom 10% live with minimal conveniences, a place like Thailand when everything is cheap.

In additional to above requiring everyone to pay the same amount creates equality and most likely moves technological innovation ahead that much faster because everyone feels like they are getting value for their money and more likely to spend even more on improvements.

What exactly do you mean like by

“ I think it might make sense to create countries or places where people in the bottom 10% live with minimal conveniences, a place like Thailand when everything is cheap.”

Like a “full service convenience place” for the part of society that doesn’t want to work and outsource that to a cheap third world country and make their population work at low cost for the unemployed of the first world?

Or collectively create a place where “the bottom 10 percent are left at their own abilities” ?

I think you'll have to read a couple of Ayn Rand novels to truly understand what they mean. But I think the gist of it can be reduced to: "I'm very smart and upset that I have to pay taxes. Also, I don't like it when I see homeless people, after all it's their own fault they provide no value and are therefore poor. Can't we just send them to Thailand where I went on holiday recently and the can of Pabst Blue Ribbon that cost a reasonable $19 here in San Francisco only cost $15 at this "bar" some guy took me to to meet his sister. That's very cheap."

Sun Rand would be a bit extreme, but you’re not too far off track.

> In my opinion it should be somewhere between dirt cheap and free if your income is in the bottom 10% of incomes (and could cost twice as much for the top 50%

True, for many people 49€/ month is still too expensive - e.g. low wage, low pension or living on welfare.

In its current form, it's mostly a relief for the middle class living in areas with good public transportation.

I'm definitely happy to pay just 49€ for all over Germany instead of 80€ just for Berlin. I'd be ready to pay more and think it would be fair if the amount was tied to the taxable income, like union memberships are.

>True, for many people 49€/ month is still too expensive

But those people have to have means of transport at least to go to work. Even if they have a shitbox they pay more than that in gas and taxes. It's precisely for those people that this would be more beneficial.

As a bonus, it would reduce the ENORMOUS externalities that come from car usage: pollution, congestion, space for parking, roads, etc.

That sounds logical. Somehow I fear the problem might be in convincing people of these facts.

Case in point: nuclear energy popularity in Germany

It's not that impressive if you consider that the current government in Germany is driving a massive de-industrialization campaign. Destroying the own car industry fits well in the agenda.

They're not destroying it but forcing them to acknowledge the truth about climate.

When is China going to "acknowledge the truth about climate"? When it finished building the hundreds of planned coal power plants? This BS is all a pure geopolitics show with obvious traitors in power of western governments.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China

Isn't that about the fuel and not the vehicle?

If we manufactured diesel out of wood or algae, the same cars would suddenly become very green - in case of algae cultivation for fuel, you can reach carbon negativity (the process net-decreased carbon in atmosphere).

This is likely more green than building battery electric vehicles with large capacity. Batteries are great but cars don't need more than 100km of charge. Longer trips should be on bio-diesel or bio-gas.

The process cannot be carbon negative unless you sequester the algae somehow. All the carbon the algae captures while growing will be released when they decompose.

Hmm could be that the way is co2->algea->hydrocarbon->H2 and carbon as a byproduct.

Still I dont think its Carbon negativ because they rather make hydrocarbons out of it and the production uses energy plus. Only wanted to state the possibility of Carbon negativ as real.

It works out carbon negative because pieces of algae fall down to the ocean floor and remain there, as a side effect of algae cultivation. It's a significant number.

You are right about biodiesel. Most energydense crops that we grow are used for meat production and generates a shitlod of greenhouse gases on the way. Less meat consumption would mean more crops could be used for biodiesel

and bio diesel production is worse for the climate than fossil diesel, because of the amount of agricultural work that needs to be done

Hmm ok. Do you have sources for that? Their is a certain amount of energy that is needed to process the crop to diesel and also for production. But is it that bad? Even if those energys are provided by biodiesel and renewables?

Plus in the context of climate change we'll probably need every square-foot of farm field to actually produce food and not fulfill the wet dreams of every Porsche 911 driver which can be very efficiently dealt with by e-mobility.

Its not about „wet dreams of a porsche driver“

Its about the transition phase between now and a full electric vehicle fleet.

Combustion engine will exist in the next 20-40 years.

I am not an expert or sth. If you have links or could expand a bit more on why fossil fuel would be preferable, that would be nice. Thanks

The truth about the climate is that whatever Germany does, it does not really make a difference, but also that what they have done (rolling out renewables) did not even work (high CO2 footprint, dependency on gas, coal and electricity imports).

You're parroting populist statements of political parties who actively destroyed the chance Germany had to transform their energy system and industry towards green energy. And now the same people are claiming that they were right from the beginning.

The "truth" is that the Energiewende was a wise decision from early 2000s for Germany making a case that it'd be possible to transform an industry nation to renewables and possibly export technology to other countries since we all frantically should figure out ways to reduce our carbon emissions.

Germany would be at ~80% electricity from renewables by now if the Merkel government in 2013 wouldn't have stopped it: Renewables were heavily subsidized by the German electricity customers and was so successful around 2012 that electricity prices skyrocketed; instead of finding other ways to further boost the building of more renewables while lowering electricity prices for the customers, they just stopped it. And when Merkel also irrationally decided quit nuclear energy after Fukushima even earlier (2022) and Russia quit delivering cheap gas, we're now in this pity situation in which we have to burn coal like its 1920.

So don't claim it "did not even work" because they didn't really try.

The truth is that it's not possible to to push renewable electricity generation up to arbitrary levels by just continuing to build more and more of them, especially with the mix that Germany ended up going with, because not only are they intermittent but every solar panel produces electrity at basically the same time and stops producing at basically the same time and the same with wind. This means that eventually, extra renewable generation mostly just cannabalizes the existing renewable generation by producing at the same time as them and forcing it to shut down in order not to overwhelm the grid rather than replacing non-renewable generation. This causes a rapid explosion in cost, and those costs ultimately have to be paid for by the public somehow whether that's via high energy bills or increased taxes. Germany's renewable energy mix was particularly bad in this regard because they had a lot of solar which is cheap on paper but isn't useful that far north in the winter when energy demand is at its highest.

No from my understanding that's the old thinking with power plants like nuclear and coal that cannot be easily switched on and off.

Peaks in renewable generation would go into electrolysis to produce hydrogen which can "save" the surplus energy the same way we're heaping up natural gas to be used in times when the sun is not shining and when in addition there's no wind. Plus there are industrial processes that cannot (yet) be based on electric energy and need to run based on hydrogen or derivatives.

In addition we can save surplus renewable energy locally, regionally and in neighbor countries (e.g. Norway with its pumped hydroelectric energy storage).

This has been backed by several studies but was critically dependent on scaling up renewables massively. With the latter we failed, for political reasons.

So energy storage and hydrogen producing is worth for both nuclear/coal and renewable

This is the pathological blaming of foreign influence on the failure of an ideology to deliver on its promises. It would have worked, if only. First of all, you do not know that. Secondly, it did in fact not work. Your solution did not take into account whatever factor made it fail, so it failed.

Ha, in Germany the people who use the word "ideology" are almost always chief ideologists themselves.

I'm not even blaming "foreign influence". We have good data that car manufacturers, energy and chemical companies didn't want to risk their profitable fossil-based business models and thus lobbied the according governments.

> It would have worked, if only. First of all, you do not know that.

Well, as I said, it worked that well that electricity prices skyrocketed and Germany set a world record in renewable electricity production in ~2012. We had >200k employees in a (IIRC) world leading solar industry. Nowadays you can only buy Chinese solar products while the German solar industry is dead.

> Secondly, it did in fact not work. Your solution did not take into account whatever factor made it fail, so it failed.

That kind of argument opens up a can of worms where everything is legit. Just because people don't "like" some project would legitimize harming the country they've sworn to protect. Why oh why is my first association the lies about Brexit.

> I'm not even blaming "foreign influence".

It's an analogy. Foreign in this case means "foreign to your ideology", if you will.

> We have good data that car manufacturers, energy and chemical companies didn't want to risk their profitable fossil-based business models and thus lobbied the according governments.

Again, "foreign influence". We're talking about electricity. Car manufacturers and chemical companies don't care whether their electricity comes out of a coal plant or a windmill. They care about price. Production capacity of renewables may be impressive on paper and therefore cheap in theory, but it's not available on demand. That requires (hitherto non-existent) buffering solutions that completely change the economics. So, you did not provide a comprehensive solution that takes these factors into account, therefore you failed. Rather than learn from your mistake and tackle the harder parts of the problem, you blame others. This is how I know I'm dealing with an ideology.

> Nowadays you can only buy Chinese solar products while the German solar industry is dead.

I don't see how that's relevant. If you can't produce solar panels more efficiently than the Chinese, then you should just buy them from the Chinese if you need them.

Unfortunately, they made a really dumb mistake: getting rid of nuclear power in favor of shitty coal. Doesn't exactly make them look eco-friendly.

They did not get rid of nuclear in favor of shitty coal. That’s fake news.

They planned to be at about 80% of primary energy to be based on renewables which got boycotted by Merkel government AND they expected to bridge the residual needs with cheap Russian gas which got rendered impossible in the current situation. Now the only option is shitty coal.

BTW: Nuclear energy is damn expensive (for the tax payer), the nuclear waste problem is still not solved and in France (>70% nuclear) we just started to see the huge problems with fission when climate change results in a drought.

In reality Germany just last year reached the highest number of cars ever: 48.54 million cars. Now with roughly 84 million people.

The car Minister has been trying to slow down the introduction of the ticket and increase the price while trying to look like he’s working towards the ticket. This 49€ ticket is basically a permanent continuation of last summer’s 9€ ticket, which existed for 3 months.

Some German car manufacturers invest in fleet management probably foreseeing the future in which people won’t own their cars. Car sharing can be the future and the answer.

I don't think that people use cars because it's cheaper. Owning and using a car in Germany is pretty expensive and public transport probably was already cheaper for the vast majority of use cases.

In my country the road system has been massively subsidised in detriment of the rail system. Tens of lines that have been ongoing since the 1860s have been disabled even while they had users and were turning a profit.

Trains are constantly delayed or suppressed, lines are overcrowded in rush hours. At the same time traffic is ATROCIOUS in the two main cities where almost 2/3rds of the population lives. Then people say "why would I ever take the train if I can help it? It's almost as expensive and I cannot rely on it to go to work"...

So we waste billions on sub-par methods of transport which are (1) less efficient (2) less comfortable (3) take up ungodly amounts of space in 6-lane roads and huge parking. Sad state of things.

I don't know anyone who would prefer to suffer through 2 hours of gridlock every day to go to work, rather than cruising on a train reading a book or scrolling in their phone or just napping. The demand is there! Just the supply isn't...

How can it be better for the environment if your electricity is generated by coal ?

Energy efficiency. Even a diesel train is going to be better than a personal automobile.

Trains are quite inefficient and disorganized

Cool, if you live near a rail line in a major city. Not everyone has that luxury. Im standing about 300km from the nearest passenger rail setvice. It is 0530, -25c, and i am about to drive 18km to work (government/military). Trains or even busses are a distant concept here.

are you in Germany? in Europe?

Germany is only slightly larger than a circle with radius 300 km.

yea I figured they are probably in the US or something which means their contribution to the discourse was essentially "bad public transport is bad"

IMO, it's the other way around. I'd rather have the luxury of a 18km drive to work than my current 70km train trip + 8 minute bus to work. Which means 90 minutes morning commute, 90 minutes evening commute.

Yeah, apples to oranges.

At one point, I had a 90-minute one-way some-days commute. Even though that included an only few minute drive to the train station, that wasn't really sustainable long-term. It's just a big chunk out of your day even if driving was mostly a worse option.

I'm pretty sure there isn't a single point in Germany that is 300km from any passenger rail station. Of course rail doesn't go to small villages, but most medium-size cities have reasonable rail connections here.

it indeed is hardly possible. See: https://www.openrailwaymap.org/

That is an amazing resource!! Thanks for sharing!

It truely is. I found it years ago and have used the data in various projects since then. :)

Which browser are you using? Shows a blank page for me.

Firefox, Android.

I just realized (from this site) how minimal railway system is in Greece and South Italy.

In Greece the railway might be minimal but at the same time it is very deadly.

Context: a train crash last week killing 57 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempi_train_crash

Our governments (Italy) just build infrastructure in the north, then do a pikachu face when there aren't big companies anywhere else.

I'd say that's just like the UK except the infrastructure is all in the south, but the UK government is currently in denial about any of their own actions having gone wrong at all at any point, so no Pikachu face.

Ok, you better have a car then?

Whats the point of this comment? You're obviously an extreme outlier. Are you implying the 49€ ticket is bad because it isn't an improvement for every single citizen?

To illustrate that there are many people in this world who do not have many transportation options. People should not make blanket statements about how people should opt for "green" or more safe options when there are lots of people out there for whom there are no such alternatives. Trains are great, but only where they are available. The transportation revolution has to accommodate everyone, not just those in conveniently dense cities.

I think the world should look closer at how Switzerland operates trains even for very small cities

> Im standing about 300km from the nearest passenger rail setvice

Well in germany if you stand in the center of it you're literally 300km away from almost every single train station of the country.

Trains work for dense countries, if you live in the middle of nowhere in Northern canada or some shit you're obviously not the target

If you choose to live in a remote place, you'll also have to bear the costs.

>> If you choose to live in a remote place

Lol. I'm one of a very small group that doesn't have such choices. When you are in the military you literally do not choose where you live. If you get posted to a remote location, you now live in a remote location. If you get posted to a "small" town of 20,000 people that doesn't have train or bus services... you better have a car. And if it is below -30c regularly, and you have to get to work even on those days when the power fails, that car better be gas and not diesel.

If you're in the military, no public transport will ever be right, precisely because it's public.

But:

1) Mass transport isn't necessarily public. If there's a base with one town nearby where even just 20 of the people working on that base live, that's a good reason for a private bus.

2) Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good-enough. The military is even more of an edge case than emergency vehicles, and yet nobody seriously thinks normal people should get sirens and flashing lights on their commute to get past red lights. You get to keep whatever you need to do your job, because obviously you do.

Fortunately, the German population is 77.6% urban, so most people benefit.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/984679/urban-and-rural-p...

The ticket also covers (local/regional) buses (which are more common in the rural areas of germany) so you don't even have to be near a train station.

But rural areas are usually better traversed by car because buses take longer (more stops, more detours, maybe not going where you want to).

Cool, if you have a road. Not everyone has that luxury. I used to live on an island where it was 12km to work and no bridge, just a ferry which wouldn't run during typhoons. Cars or bridges were taken as a huge unnecessary expense and no serious construction plans entertained.

If you choose to go live on an island isn't that kind of the point?

I was in Berlin once as a tourist and I was surprised how bad is the planning of buses.

They stop and wait in the station until their time arrives (in the middle of the route), with 20 people on them, wasting everyone's time. That's just incredibly dumb planning. I get that the point is to be more "reliable" and "on time" but what's the point of being accurate if you're so slow?! At some points Google maps suggested we walk half an hour instead of taking the bus because the bus was slower.

It takes some really funny priorities to reach this point. I haven't seen anything similar anywhere else, a bus stopping and waiting with people inside. And it wasn't something rare, it seemed to happen pretty frequently.

It seemed like they are artificially padding the accuracy metric by actively slowing the buses. Their schedule is far slower than their average pace, and then they slow down everything. You get that the worst case timing is now your average timing but "accuracy" increased. That's Goodhart law in full effect.

> They stop and wait in the station until their time arrives.

So you're suggesting… they shouldn't follow a schedule?

The bus only ever needs to wait when there are no people getting on/off the bus at multiple stops in a row (e.g. at night-time), so then those stops will be skipped. As a consequence, the bus will be a few minutes ahead of time and so at some point the driver will stop and wait to make sure the bus is still following the schedule.

Sometimes the bus also needs to stop because drivers take their mandatory break. This usually happens at the end of the line, though, before they return or go on under a different line number.

In any case: I have yet to see a public transport system as good as Berlin's. Yes, it might still take you a while to get from A to B (it is a big city after all) but which other major city in the world offers reliable 24/7 public transport with great coverage and is not completely overloaded all the time? The only thing I dislike is the price for single tickets which is between 3.00€ and 3.80€ depending on the zone. (That used to be a kebap!) IMO they should finally put an end of all the free-riding (by both Berliners and tourists alike) and introduce electronic ticket checks at every stop.

Of course they shouldn't follow a strict schedule. You either value the time or the accuracy. If you're slowing everyone down to the worst case timing, you're wasting everyone's time just to be "on schedule". The schedules were clearly artificially longer than needed, because buses were frequently waiting in stations. I'm not talking about night buses, this happened during the day and frequently.

It was very obvious to me as an outsider that the planning is wrong. When the buses are frequently waiting minutes in stations with 20 people on them, it's watching hours of human hours wasted for an artificial accuracy. Accuracy is useless, the purpose is to have good average case end to end timing. Never have I had Google maps suggesting half an hour walks in European cities with pubic transport over public transport. Just shows how bad is the management of timing. They are waiting so frequently you might as well just walk.

Maybe it's just a cultural thing. You value how much the ticket costs and whether the timing is accurate. I value my personal time.

> Of course they shouldn't follow a strict schedule.

> Maybe it's just a cultural thing. You value how much the ticket costs and whether the timing is accurate. I value my personal time.

What an interesting clash of cultures. I don't fully understand your point though, if you can't be sure the bus arrives at 10:23 h, you have to come earlier to the station and wait, no?

There's usually an app that tells you in real time when the bus will arrive, including possible congestion. When it's minutes away it's never early so it's not a problem. The bus is almost never early from the scheduled time because it's usually the minimum time. So the bus might be late, but at least it's not standing idly while you're already in it, intentionally wasting everyone's time.

There's also a stop button to make sure the bus doesn't waste everyone's time stopping in stations nobody wants. Which is pretty pointless if we're now wasting the time earned by standing idle.

If I want accuracy, it's my responsibility to go ahead of time and pad my margins. Not the buses' job. It seems selfish to me to waste everyone's time for people who need accuracy, it's their responsibility to waste their own time getting better margins.

So you think if a train driver happens to show up 30minutes earlier at the train station, a long distance train should just depart earlier, leaving all the passengers and people with connections stranded?

Your comments are fascinating. Completely nonsense, but fascinating.

Do you have reading comprehension problems? It's not about when the driver arrives, it's about not standing intentionally with passengers wasting their time by design, in the middle of the road. I feel like I'm getting downvoted by people with reading comprehension level of bots.

It's better to have an optimistic schedule that sometimes gets late than a pessimistic schedule that always wastes everyone's time making pubic transport extremely slow in all circumstances.

It's not about the driver. It's about the passengers. It's about not stopping idly during your route with people on the bus. Buses aren't trains, they usually don't need to stop at all stations and the difference between stopping in all stations and not doing it is huge.

If your train schedule is so bad that a train, which has no traffic at all, can come 30 minutes early from schedule, then it could always do that and you're planning something wrong.

> Do you have reading comprehension problems?

No, I don't.

> it's about not standing intentionally with passengers wasting their time by design

If you've ever taken a train, you could know that they might arrive on the track even hours before their departure, and passengers who are early are often welcome board and get settled.

Now we have people inside that are just waiting instead of travelling… Exactly the situation you have been describing.

> I feel like I'm getting downvoted by people with reading comprehension level of bots.

No. The problem lies with the writer, not the readers.

> can come 30 minutes early from schedule

I'm curious to know where this number is coming. For city transport we are talking about 2-3 minutes.

> So the bus might be late, but at least it's not standing idly while you're already in it, intentionally wasting everyone's time.

Padding actually makes those timings reliable.

There's usually an app that tells you in real time when the bus will arrive

there is now, but that wasn't always the case. taking advantage of that requires a big change for everyone. for decades people expected busses and trains to be on a schedule, and the worst thing for everyone was leaving ahead of schedule. that simply must never happen.

and even with an app, it's completely useless to know that the next bus is in 25 minutes when i transfer from another bus that arrived on time. only a schedule that makes sure that the timing of the busses is suitable for a transfer can avoid that. or the second bus simply has to wait for the first bus to arrive. a schedule is easier.

what if, hear me out, instead of not following schedule, so that people have no idea when to go to the station and making transport unreliable, ther'll be more busses, so that each will wait less on each station, so people would get both reliability and speed. like in Zurich or other big swiss cities...

I mean, yes? It must be infuriating to see a bus artificially stopping just to get the exact schedule. Of course the starting from the first station it should leave on time, but on intermediate stations I find it pretty ok to be a couple of minutes off.

Great. So now you miss the bus when you arrive at the stop on time and have to wait for the next one. (Matters less when the next one arrives a couple of minutes later of course.) Route planning in congested cities is a complex problem and following a schedule as close as possible is one of the ways to ensure you can do any kind of route planning involving a change of line.

Would buses be arriving 20 minutes earlier otherwise? I'd very much rather arrive at the station a little earlier than knowing I could already be at my destination if it weren't for these artificial punctuality stops.

No, you just turn up 20 minutes earlier and take the previous bus instead.

> So you're suggesting… they shouldn't follow a schedule?

This is the Göteborg way. Want to take a tram and go there 5 minutes earlier? Ah, there was no traffic and you see the tram already leaving anyway. Now enjoy waiting 20 minutes for the next in freezing temperature and strong winds.

> and introduce electronic ticket checks at every stop

Copenhagen does this on bus. Basically every stop suddenly takes 2x as long at the very least.

Copenhagen (well, Denmark) has two NFC card (Rejsekort) readers at the front of every bus, with more at other doors on busier routes (ending A or C). People with commuter passes can vaguely wave them towards the driver as they board, or generally not bother.

If you want to be infuriated by how slow things can be, try a bus in Malmö.

Malmö (I assume Skåne) has a 2D-barcode-based system, where everyone has to validate their ticket on the barcode reader when they board a bus. This is about as reliable as you'd expect, including the usual fiddling with brightness settings etc. They used to have an NFC card system, but for some reason discontinued it.

[But I think the GP meant a system with ticket barriers on the metro/trains, like London, Paris, Rome and Madrid.]

> Copenhagen (well, Denmark) has two NFC card (Rejsekort) readers at the front of every bus, with more at other doors on busier routes

As an occasional visitor with a day pass, the experience is just the driver yelling at me, and me having to take my gloves out, get the thing and show it to the driver.

> They used to have an NFC card system, but for some reason discontinued it.

Because app is cheaper and they can gather data to sell it or just their own tracking.

Last time I was in malmö, I remember being on a large square trying to get a bus to go to our hotel. And there were like 15 different lanes named with unsorted letters, and by the time we'd found the lane we'd miss the bus. Repeat this like 4 times.

> Now enjoy waiting 20 minutes for the next in freezing temperature and strong winds.

Exactly. Berlin is certainly not Göteborg but its long and nasty winters are notorious nonetheless.

London has two types of schedule for buses and metro trains.

On the most frequest services, the timetable says something like "every 6-8 minutes". Otherwise, it gives the exact time. With the former, the bus isn't going to wait if it's 'early', and waiting 1 minute vs. 5 isn't going to make much difference to your journey.

Since even the most frequent services aren't so frequent overnight, you often see a mix.

London bus 14, for example: https://tfl.gov.uk/bus/timetable/14/?fromId=490011285E2&dire...

Incidentally, at times I noticed the same slow pace of Berlin transport.

Do you mean at every station? Or only at the start of the route?

It's probably okay to drive pedal-to-the-metal on major routes, where it's 5-10 minutes between each bus. In all other cases, however, your potential gain is a couple of minutes, and the person connecting from another bus or simply hopping on in the middle of the route might end up wasting an hour waiting for the next one, even if they were perfectly on time. I'm from a city which is a lot like Berlin, now living in a region where only point A departure times are guaranteed, and it's beyond frustrating.

This rarely happens and it's the right thing to do. Missing the bus because it arrived earlier is a no-no, specially when they're sporadic.

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