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Comment by throwaway85858 | Hacker News Reader

Some people are being a bit negative here, but the 49 euro ticket has been a game changer in terms of how I think about public transport. I can choose to be totally spontaneous like take the metro, then local light rail to then take a train to another city and take the metro there then hop on another train to another city, hop off visit a beer garden, hop back on going this time somewhere completely random... any or even every day of the month and all for 49 euros! It's insane.

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> I can choose to be totally spontaneous like take the metro, then local light rail to then take a train to another city and take the metro there then hop on another train to another city, hop off visit a beer garden, hop back on going this time somewhere completely random

This is exactly the kind of thing that made me want to build this.

I think a valid criticism is that it would still be good value at, say, 99 euros, or whatever. At some point it is a case of windfall effect: Of course people prefer cheaper and even better, free, but everything does have a cost that will be paid one way or another.

I think that your example is a good one for this: It is taking advantage of subsidies for 'luxury' by someone who can obviously afford to pay for his leisure activities.

And that's fine as long as there is nothing else left to spend public money on.

It is fine as long as you have or can make enough trains, busses and people who staff them. Those are finite resources. Since the external costs of car traffic are so high, even free public transport would probably make sense from the societal perspective.

This particular country is probably way oversufficient in all these. Oil they need to import.

Not only oil, also short on people to drive all those trains and busses (people who accept low wages, of course).

Wages are quite good especially for the low skills/paid training

Bus drivers are not paid very well in Germany. Especially those who work for relatively small private companies.

I meant that driving trains doesn't require oil, while people driving cars does. Hence your country is bleeding capital every time somebody drives.

The whole train infrastructure is very self sufficient in Germany and they indeed export trains and tracks and all associated technology all over the place too, hence the term "oversufficient".

I think it's actually brilliant. People aren't going to leisure trip at commuting hours, so it allows to keep a schedule outside of busy hours when you are normally way under capacity.

That is one perspective. Another is that it creates wider value than it costs by freeing up travel options for more people.

I don't know what the right balance is, but I do know it's not necessarily as simple as asking if all transport costs are met at the point of travel.

Does it really free up more travel options? Is public transport so expensive in Germany?

Even if it does provide more travel options, does that provide more value than it costs? I think that this is straightforward to answer.

I ask the same questions every time the topic pops up because all the praises in the comment tend to boils down to "it's good because it's cheaper". Sure everyone likes cheaper but that is not really a convincing argument.

I'm not sure it's primarily about cheaper than fixed. Because it fixes travel costs, your opportunity to go do something else increases. Some people will travel more and some less.

> I think a valid criticism is that it would still be good value at, say, 99 euros, or whatever

At 99€ it would have massively lower user numbers. It's already to a large degree a commuter ticket at 49€ - at 99€ alternative tickets would be the better choice for many.

My understanding is that this ticket allows national travel.

In any case, the point is that it is not clear to me what actual need this fulfills.

But only regional trains. To me the biggest advantage is not having to worry about what tickets to buy in foreign cities.

To give people an idea what regional trains means:

On regional trains you can travel Germany from north to south in less than 14 hours with 5 changes as opposed 8 hours with 2 changes for 125 EUR one-way on long-distance trains.

With the 49 EUR/month ticket you can hop off the train anytime you are tired of the journey. Can't do that with the 125 EUR one-time, one-way long-distance train ticket.

I totally see young and elderly people do this on regional trains.

I think a low price is good.

People being able to move around easily would bring commerce to more areas. If 50 euros gets more people moving around and shopping at various places compared to 100 euro cutting that down by a lot.

Note that it's only up to regional transparts, which means that if you can technically travel across Germany with it, it's gonna be much slower than a car. In most cases you are still going to take an Inter City Express which is not included. But now you can go from your small city next to Berlin to your grandpa's next to Hamburg and only have to worry about the ICE. The trip would last roughly as long as it would with the car end to end, and cost you less (way less if you then completely renounce owning a car)

Having looked at the connections as they are, i think there are a handful of optimizations that could be made to the schedule and routes available that would reduce the ICE time advantage, like for example Berlin to Leipzig doesn't have a direct regional train.

The total cost to the tax payer is around 3 Billion euros, which as a subsidy is pretty cheap in comparison to the 3-5 Billion euros of subsidies for company cars.

Or, 3 billion euros is a huge amount of money for something that is not needed... (company cars are neither here nor there, irrelevant)

I'd like to read arguments beyond "great, tickets are cheaper!".

I'm not sure on the current data but during the 9 euro ticket trial over last summer 10% of daily commuters shifted from cars to public transport, 17% overall shifted to public transport and 1.8 million tons of CO2 were saved. The company car subsidy on the other hand is definitely NOT climate friendly.

https://www.vdv.de/bilanz-9-euro-ticket.aspx

The way you tell it I get a bit of a post-scarcity Culture (Iain Banks') vibe, just go wherever whenever you want

My first excursion with the 49 euro ticket felt like the whole of Germany was now an extension to the Berliner S-Bahn.

Or just take a car? People earning HN salaries should be able to afford one. Make it electric if you need to.

Germany is small and densely populated. We might be proud of no speed limits on the Autobahn but in reality we waste our lives in traffic jams.

But why would you want a car? they make no sense... they're slower than a bike or public transport in a city, slower than a train between cities and you have to pay huge amounts to keep them. Maybe they make sense if you live in a village but when you live in a big city in Germany it's a bad proposition.

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