Germany's 'Deutschlandticket' helps environment – study | Hacker News Reader

Germany's 'Deutschlandticket' helps environment – study

dw.com

77 pointsrustoo43 comments

It probably helps tourism too. Foreigners in Japan can get a rail pass at a huge discount. I might not have left Tokyo if not for it. It would be fun to pop around the country, from Munich to Stuttgart (for Oktoberfest and Volksfest?), then onto Frankfurt and Nuremburg. It looks like it pays for itself after 2 trips.

The Japan Rail Pass has gotten a price hike recently and now it feels like you have to keep chasing trains a lot to make it worthwhile. The regional passes are a bit better, but still require more moving around than I'm comfortable with for a vacation.

The Deutschlandticket is only valid for up to Reginald lines and not on faster trains like IC and ICE. It's already worth it money wise for the first trip already, but only using local connections adds at least an hour per trip between those cities, plus a bunch of layovers.

It doesn't. The ticket is available as a monthly subscription only, you can't just go and buy one.

Which would help tourism if tourists could buy it, but the app asked for some Id and double-checking the web asks for an European address (UK is also listed)

Yeah, as in "you can just go and buy one." It looks like they made it intentionally hard to acquire the ticket: government issued identification required, no way to purchase it ad hoc, subscription only; it's German bureaucratic hell. It's as if they want it to fail.

The political reasoning was that it's for commuters only. Tourism is not a big thing on federal level, so they don't want to subsidize tickets for tourists. Tourist areas sometimes have special tourist tickets for their guests.

As a tourist though you want the least burden without getting ripped off. Just ask for my payment details and charge me whatever is fair for my trips.

I don't want to become an expert on buying the optimal set of tickets from multiple regions.

That's your perspective. The federal government is not interested. Tourist regions are interested, but of course they usually do not cooperate with others, so every one invents their own thing. So you end up what Germans call a ticket jungle.

They made me spend more money, which I wouldn't mind since I don't contribute to any of the subsidies public transport may have, but you can simply charge more, or consider it an investment since tourists bring new money in daily.

Having the ticket would help a lot navigating around without fear of having the wrong ticket or making dealing with delays or cancellation even more frustrating.

You only need some official document (ID card, passport, whatever) that matches the name and birthday. If you are a tourist, you must have a passport or ID card close by anyhow.

Right, that's a requirement at ticket inspections. At least in theory, in practice in 99% it's not going to be checked.

For buying it, ID might be required at some sellers, but typically it's not.

There is no "the app". There are 100s of sellers, and each of them has different processes. Some sell smart cards at the ticket windows, most have apps, and some have both. Only the price and the basic rules of validity are nationwide. Some offer extra regional perks.

You can just cancel the subscription at any moment. I had American friends doing that.

Americans can't buy the ticket. EU citizens only.

Source? I seriosly doubt that. Yes, it's difficult to find a suitable seller, but it's neither forbidden nor impossible.

I only have anecdata and I don't feel like googling until I find something that confirms the real life experience.

It's probably not impossible, but it's also not as simple a transaction as it could be. It is a difficult affair, at least bordering on impossible unless you're a EU citizen with a SEPA bank account.

Citizenship is definitely not relevant. Owning a SEPA account is a precondition at most sellers, even a German SEPA account at some, although the latter has been decided unlawful by courts before.

However, another comment somewhere mentions a seller that accepts Paypal. I'm sure I have heard about others accepting credit card. They are rare, but they exist. It doesn't matter where in Germany you buy the ticket, it's always valid everywhere. Buying the smart card version at some weird place might be practically infeasible and sometimes they are not issued on the spot but after a delivery time. But for buying the app version you "just" have to do your homework. Quick, easy, and convenient, no. Possible, yes.

It's a subscription requiring a German bank account in most cases. In theory any SEPA account should work, but it's a well-known problem that sellers break the law and accept only domestic accounts.

However, reportedly a small number of apps allow paying by credit card. And some are more flexible regarding cancelling the subscription than others.

I just stayed with the app that I used for my old monthly ticket (mobil.nrw) and it allows paying with Paypal.

App stores are not global. I remember someone saying a certain D-Ticket app not being available in their country. I vaguely remember you can switch the country, but it's a hassle and can cause problems with other apps you have. Another barrier to keep in mind besides the payment method.

Mine's even paid for by the company, and on top of that we get a great discounted bike program: https://www.jobrad.org/

Over 40 years old, lived in basically all the countries, never had a driver's licence!

Somewhat curious, how long is the list of "basically all the countries" really?

Maybe GP means country as in “Bundesland”, like how British people call their regions “countries“

Might not be what you meant, but German uses the same word for "state (federal subdivision)" and "country", known as "Land". In contrast, "Staat" refers chiefly to the administrative apparatus (implicitly of some country).

Ehh yeah actually the list of countries isn't that long, and I mean living as in at least a few months (but most are at least a few years) in own apartment etc. Includes Indonesia (used to speak Bahasa as a kid), South Africa, Poland, Czechia, USA, England, Germany, Switzerland, and probably some others along the way. I suppose the actually-long list is cities; in Germany I've lived in 6 cities, and it's quite a few cities for some of the other countries.

My main point though is that, while I get there are places where you absolutely need a car, a lot of people (particularly in car-cultured countries) are surprised to hear you can get by just fine without one in many cases.

Pre-pandemic some cities/kantons here in Switzerland wanted to make public transportation free (we’re still recovering from running trains and transport essentially empty for a couple of years).

However the Swiss constitution says that people have to be charged a “reasonable” fee for public transportation. It was probably meant to make it so they can’t be overcharged. But it’s been also interpreted that there has to be a minimum charge - thus no free transport.

Some previous discussion:

Germany's 49-euro ticket resulted in significant shift from road to rail

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41819481

> but some are saying it should be cheaper.

That made me chuckle

I know it's not the same thing but many in the south of England are paying £3,000-8,000/yr just to commute into London LOL

Nothing new under the sun.

"A study funded by the German government ..." bla bla bla

I mean, the Deutschlandticket is finance by taxes, so it is no surprise, that a study financed by the government, that is responsible for the taxes, reveals only good things.

Parts of the government would like to get rid of it, we are a nation of car companies after all.

Not true, when this study was financed.

I have nothing against the Deutschlandticket, like it too. But I do not like bad studies.

>But I do not like bad studies.

Can you share your link to the study & data? I'd like to determine if it is a "bad study" myself. I looked at the links in the article and it doesn't seem to have the study.

Sure. As there is only one "study" Deutschewelle relates to. https://mcc-berlin-ariadne.shinyapps.io/dticket-tracker/ Highly biased. Telling you this is actually the job of DW, not me.

Thanks! Curious to dig into it over the weekend.

How is it “highly biased”?

The government decided to introduce Deutschlandticket to, among other things, reduce CO2 emissions. The government financed a study to quantify the effect. I don't really see a conflict of interests here, or how it compromises the integrity of the study.

The conflict is the potential waste of tax money, if it does not work as advertised.

I don't know what conspiracy you try to construct here, but it doesn't make sense. The new government would love to have a study which says that it didn't help, so they can cut it. They'd still want to cut it and it already got more expensive.

Also, this is a Meta-analysis. Here it is: https://ariadneprojekt.de/media/2025/04/Ariadne-Report_Deuts...

Try reading that before you start spreading such constructs.

Not sure why you are going ad hominem with "conspiracy", "constructs" or "try reading that", literally saying I am stupid. Besides that, the new government you are talking about isn't in charge yet. Earliest May.

That's exactly why you need the study, to measure the effects, understand whether it works as expected, and make an informed decision on whether to prolong the program.

The study was published by the Ariadne Project[0]. They also publish studies that actually criticize other subsidiaries by the government [1]

Our research system in Germany is mostly publically funded, btw. Not sure who else would fund an independent study. It is actually a meta study, that states it's methodology and also mentiones contradictory results.

[0] https://ariadneprojekt.de/news-de/deutschlandticket-verkehrs...

[1] https://ariadneprojekt.de/en/press-releases/a-reward-of-seve...

I can't find the study anywhere.

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