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Comment by patall | Hacker News Reader

What is complex about the B/C border? That Hönow is B? Because else, it is literary the federal state border. A/B is the S-Bahn-Ring. Sure, three zones are not super simple and where zone C ends is somewhat arbitrary. But aside from that, it's the most logical and simple solution possible.

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Generally, I agree, it isn't very complicated to understand. But, it's very easy to forget to buy a C ticket if you're used to hopping on the U-bahn with your monthly AB ticket.

The announcement mentions you do need it when announcing the stop. By then it is prob too late, though.

If you use the bvg app it tells you which ticket you need for any destination, but non-locals might not know that.

> The announcement mentions you do need it when announcing the stop. By then it is prob too late, though.

Not on all lines. If I remember correctly, I have only heard it on the new announcements for the BER airport. And, they actually tell you on time so you have a chance to buy an extension ticket.

It is pretty good, but on time here means to leave the wagon to buy a ticket and take the next train (unless you buy it on the app).

>If you use the bvg app it tells you which ticket you need for any destination, but non-locals might not know that.

I don't know the BVG app, but if you're not regularly in some city installing an app, finding out how it works, adding your payment info is a huge hassle.

We need a single app for all German transit, that is well designed. Instead of hundreds or thousands of apps for every city and village.

What I also really liked is the chargeable chip cards in Taiwan. You could enter and exit anywhere.

Your card is charged with exactly the distance traveled.

No thinking needed. Short distances are always cheap. E.g. if you travel from zone B-C but start just one stop before B ends, you wouldn't pay for the whole of B. You just pay what you use, which is fair.

That would be great, I agree.

An airport being outside of city limits has its historical reason (the Allies have agreed that the entire area of Berlin could only be served by airlines operated by one of the four occupational forces, so East Germany simply built an airport just beyond city limits so that they could serve Berlin with its domestic airline). But an airport being just outside of the "regular" fare zone is something that's unfortunately not unusual.

It's also high noise and air pollution, so you'd want it to be far from the city.

That said, look up Tempelhofer Flughafen, which was right in the city center of Berlin and served passengers until 2008. Now it is just a huge empty field where people do sports and barbecue.

I don't think an airport being outside of the city limits is that unusual, either.

E.g. the "new" Munich airport, all Paris airports (though you could argue that it's Paris which has unusually small city limits), Glasgow, London Gatwick, Stansted and Luton, San Francisco, …

Do you mean that the airport is outside of Germany? Or what else is "federal state border"? And what is a S-Bahn ring anyways?

I visit Germany often and yet this makes no sense to me. Don't assume it's so simple for everyone.

Germany is federation of 16 or so states

The airport is located in Schönefeld, a municipality in Brandenburg, just outside of Berlin, which is also a state.

S-Bahn ring, usually called ring for short, refers to a prominent circular route around the city center of Berlin.

Berlin is one of the 16 federal states of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Federal in the American sense is a bit of a false friend for Germans: It means basically the same, but Americans use it to signify the unity of the states, while Germans talk about the states of the Union. So if we say federal borders we actually mean state borders and would otherwise say national or country borders.

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