[HN Gopher] Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket ___________________________________________________________________ Millions snap up new Germany-wide public transit ticket Author : marban Score : 199 points Date : 2023-05-01 09:59 UTC (13 hours ago) (HTM) web link (apnews.com) (TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com) | lispm wrote: | Nice features here in Hamburg: | | Subscription tickets for Hamburg which cost more than 49EUR are | now automatically reduced to 49EUR and are changed to a | Deutschlandticket. | | Employer subsidized Deutschlandtickets can be reduced upto 50% | for the employee. | | Kids from low-income families get the Deutschlandticket for free. | | Students can upgrade their public transport ticket for monthly 18 | Euros... | | School children pay 19 Euros monthly for the Deutschlandticket. | | :-) | ipaddr wrote: | No senior discounts? How are older people viewed in Germany? | yarg wrote: | At that price point, does it even matter? | wheels wrote: | I've been confused in the last couple of threads related to | this topic how responses like yours exist. Trying to be | constructive, I'm going to float a theory: you live in | Silicon Valley and that doesn't seem like much money? | | For a German pensioner, in many cases, this would represent | more than 5% of post-rent living costs. For my girlfriend, | a manager of a team of 16 people (in non-tech in Germany) | it's more than 5% of her post-taxes, post-rent income. | | EUR49/month _is not_ trivial for a lot of working or | retired Germans. GDP per capita in Germany is EUR46k /year, | and after taxes and insurance (and rent! and that _more | than half of Germans that make less than that_ ), | EUR49/month is not a pittance. | | These tickets are generally aimed at working class Germans, | which often make 10-20% of a normal Silicon Valley salary. | yarg wrote: | > I'm going to float a theory: you live in Silicon Valley | and that doesn't seem like much money? | | I'm a suicidal burn out trying to drag my mind back from | oblivion, I sure as shit am not on silicon valley money. | | Also: | | > Please respond to the strongest plausible | interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one | that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. | | Your argument's a straw man, regardless of the fact that | you're "trying to be constructive". | | (And to be honest, the way you prefaced that statement | had the feeling of "no offence, but...", it's a poor | rhetorical practice.) | | Germany has a long history of charging things at damned | near administrative costs, 5% on transport just isn't a | lot of money. | | And also, 5% of "post-rent living costs"? | | What's the percentage of overall income? Half of that? So | low that your argument holds very little water. | lispm wrote: | The tickets for seniors were more expensive than 49EUR. They | all have been reduced to 49EUR. | | People with low-income (incl. seniors with low income) have a | reduced price. | apnew wrote: | When I was in HH, I loved the monthly pass offered by my | employer (65EUR/month); the ability to travel longer distances | over S-Bahn and taking +1 with you was killer/super-smart | feature IMO. Miss those in states sorely. | | I wish most, if not all, of the world adopts the german style | public transport system. | bitL wrote: | While in Germany last summer, I used the 9 EUR ticket and | regional trains to go from Frankfurt to Bavarian Alps. The trains | were packed, one could not move there and it felt more like being | in India than in Germany. I am wondering if that's going to be a | norm in the future. | konschubert wrote: | No, not going to be the norm. Because | | a) 49 >> 9 | | b) the 9 Euro ticket was a one-time novelty | ragebol wrote: | And Frankfurt -> Alps is not regional transport, but inter- | city at least. So faster option would have been ICE and going | 250km/h. More expensive though, for sure. And a seat | reservation for a few euros. | bitL wrote: | 150 EUR vs 9 EUR and one still had to use slow regional | trains once reaching Ulm so it was not that much different | time-wise to justify much higher cost. Regional Express | trains I used from Frankfurt to Ulm are also pretty fast | (not ICE level, but not much time lost either). | bitL wrote: | 49 >> 9 but 49 << monthly ticket at any regional | transportation company so one could assume most people will | own it and trains will be packed again. | golol wrote: | It is a good thing if people actually fill up the trains and | get value out of them. While empty trains are comfortable, they | are an inefficiency. The 9EUR ticket showed that people would | really like to be more mobile 'if they could afford it. Making | this possible creates value for society. | willio58 wrote: | As an American I am increasingly jealous of European countries | and their public transport (among other things _cough_ health | care _cough_ gun control). | | It feels like the only way we will ever get there as a country is | one state at a time, and even then you see projects like | California's high-speed rail that's massively over-budget and | overdue. At least the blue states seem to _get_ it, meanwhile | those who live in red or purple states will just be left behind | as always because of how intensely politics has carved a divide | between people and led to so many unfounded lies being propagated | to their citizens. | | All that to say, good on Germany. Now U.S., get your shit | together. | ThunderSizzle wrote: | And here I am wondering how I-5 in CA or I-75 in Atlanta having | more lanes in one direction than most states have going in both | directions even in their busiest of areas is blue states | getting it or red states not getting it. | | Also, tying in gun control or enforced Medicare-for-all is a | good way of convincing people who are on the edge of public | transit to not support you politically if they are a package | deal, which right now it appears to be. | asdff wrote: | This is a little bit hyperbole. I-5 through LA county is | mostly 4-ish lanes and even chokes down to 2 lanes wide in | boyle heights by downtown LA. Its just as wide much of podunk | I-75 that serves Toledo, Ohio, with a population of 270k that | declines by the year. If anything given the population | density, the freeways in socal are underbuilt compared to | cities out east from there who seem to have just as sprawling | interchanges and number of lanes despite what is sometimes an | order of magnitude difference in population. | water554 wrote: | I'm not jealous about gun control. Because if somebody breaks | into my house, I can protect my family myself instead of | calling 911 and waiting for them to never show up. Have fun | waiting for the police, I hope nothing bad ever happens to you. | asdff wrote: | I doubt you'd have the drop in this sort of situation if it | were to play out, not to mention you just guaranteed the | situation will progress violently. | willio58 wrote: | https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/do- | guns-m... | | https://www.rand.org/research/gun- | policy/analysis/essays/199... | | To be honest, I don't really care if you have a pistol or a | shotgun even. I don't want assault rifles to be easily | accessible by people who want to murder children, LTBTQ | people, or whoever else is deemed each week to deserve a mass | murder. | | I say ban all guns, or at least the guns that are designed to | murder mass amounts of people. | ThunderSizzle wrote: | Evil will always exist. You can't take evil out of | humanity. Many places thought they could and never | succeeded (e.g. communism thought they could somehow | overrule mankind's tendency towards greed) | | Removing guns from good people will only ensure good people | will be attacked by evil people, whether inside or outside | of your desired utopia. | Xeoncross wrote: | As soon as we give up our over-sized personal income and pay | more taxes we'll be able to have more public infrastructure. | | The issue seems to be people don't like the idea of only | keeping 50% (or less) of their income + making 50% less to | begin with. Most people that work at big tech get their big | salaries because the companies profit in data-mining ways that | would be more regulated in Europe. | danhor wrote: | While the US is investing less in transit than other | countries, the projects themselves are silly expensive | compared to other countries. For how little transit is used | in the US, it's amazing how much (relative) funding there is. | | To get the US towards building much more transit (and other | infrastructure) there are many hurdles, but one of the main | ones is building useful things for non-obscene amounts of | money. | Xeoncross wrote: | yeah, that goes back to us paying people more than other | countries. People in the US make a killing managing | projects, working in the office, etc... not to mention the | huge amounts the C-Suite as salary and bonuses for their | leadership on these projects. | danhor wrote: | At least according to some, this isn't the (only) cause: | https://pedestrianobservations.files.wordpress.com/2023/0 | 4/t... People get paid similar to other countries, but | the whole structure is much less productive. There are | also many other issues. | willio58 wrote: | I totally agree, I say TAX ME MORE. | | The thing is though, it's not even most higher-salaried tech | workers that we need to tax heavier. We need to tax the rich. | When I say the rich I don't mean people making 300k/yr. I | mean people making a million or more per year. We need to | massively increase the marginal tax rate at around $3 million | to around 90%. This was how it was as recently as the 80's, | and repealing those taxes has led to an increase in wealth | inequality this country has never seen. | narcindin wrote: | When blue states show me a viable public transportation network | for a reasonable cost I will support them in my red state. | | Consider the CA high speed rail a PoC for the nation. Would you | endorse copying that model? Is Chicago increasing its | ridership/coverage (honest question). | willio58 wrote: | Honestly, I couldn't tell you. I think the U.S. so far has | failed horribly on this front. My note about blue states was | simply that they are the only ones pushing for public | transport like this. But will we ever see CA high-speed rail | that's cheap and useful? I'm not sure. | | It's obvious that the real cost of things like highspeed rail | come from environmental regulation and cost of land purchases | from existing land owners. European & Asian countries have | obviously figured out a way to streamline this process. They | have more lax environmental restrictions and acquire land | either through force or by never allowing people to purchase | land outright (in the case of China I believe). I don't know | if we want to go that far, but at a certain point we have to | do something because riding around on congested aging | highways everywhere is not the answer. | generationP wrote: | "Pushing for" is not a strategy. What I'm seeing in various | blue US cities here is public transport falling into disuse | in 2020, turning into a homeless encampment (often with the | concomitant violence and theft) in 2021, and still not | recovering in 2023. Philadelphia's SEPTA is still (2022) at | half the 2019 ridership. It doesn't help that some lines | got almost cancelled in 2020 (reduced to just a few trains | per day), which likely caused a bunch of people to buy cars | and not look back. | snvzz wrote: | Public, thus paid by everybody through taxes. | | Yet, for some reason, it can only be taken advantage of by people | who can afford to pay the ticket. | | Nevermind the fact having the ticket system in the first place | does cost money. | nologic01 wrote: | Rare piece of good news. Not so much the particulars (projects | might fail for any number of reasons) but the indication that | there is appetite for systemic change. | zenlot wrote: | Welcome to UK, where 40-55mins trains from neighbouring cities to | London costs 50-110PS for a return journey and 6k+ for a yearly | ticket. We apologize for a delay in your journey, this is due to | staff shortage. | pjmlp wrote: | We also have our share of delays. | | It is so bad, that there are excuse generator websites with | what the DB usually uses, or people that collect them. | | http://privatundfun.siteboard.org/t78f2005-Ausreden-Katalog-... | bleep_bloop wrote: | Controversial opinion: Public transport should be publicly owned. | lakomen wrote: | Well, the problem is, especially in Germany. If someone is a | "Beamter" which can't be fired, has low income, there's no | motivation to make a good job. | | It took me 3 months to get a Bescheinigung uber | Daueraufenthalt" . | | In theory, yes, transportation as well as communication should | be owned by the public and available for free. A state that has | 100 billion for buying weapons can afford that too. | | Buy Germany has deteriorated into a corrupt state and it still | has a system endemic Nazi problem. | Escapado wrote: | I won't dispute that there is corruption and that there are | still Nazis and right wing forces around - especially if you | look in certain german states. | | But if I am completely honest lots of government agencies and | the people working there are entirely complacent with the | state of bureaucracy because they don't feel like they can or | need to change this sorry state of affairs. I had to wait | more than two months to get an appointment to be able to | formally leave the christian church to avoid paying church | tax. When I went there the woman took my ID, started typing | all my credentials into some interface of some government | software for 10 minutes and then I could go. I don't even | remember saying or hearing anything but "Hello", "ID Please" | and "Bye". | | Why can I not do that online with my ID? Why did she have to | type in all my information and not get that from some other | government body? Why is she even typing it at all of it's all | on the ID and that could be scanned as they are entirely | standardized. What did I wait for two months for? | | When I talk to people who work for the government they tell | me it's just the process and they simply don't question it. | Sometimes some complain but there is little or nothing to be | gained. And I think herein lies a bigger part of the problem. | The structure does not reward or incentivise improvement. | | And so I would argue the problem is not one of being publicly | or privately owned but about the structures that provide | incentive to offer good service. And if there is none - | regardless of the ownership model - then most likely it will | fall flat. When you have privately owned monopolies you see a | similar effect - they don't need to improve affairs, they | just need to stay in power. | beebeepka wrote: | > I had to wait more than two months to get an appointment | to be able to formally leave the christian church to avoid | paying church tax. | | Learning something new every day. How does it work. When | and how does one get signed up for this lovely tax | eska wrote: | You automatically get signed up for it if your parents | were in the church and paid tax. You have to pay a fee to | get out of it and keep your paper document forever in | case the government forgets you don't owe that tax for 20 | years past | lispm wrote: | The church does not want you to leave, so they want to make | it difficult. The government also has no interest to make | that easier. | | It has very little to do with bureaucracy. It's about | supporting the large churches. | | In some regions there is a lot of additional (social) | pressure to prevent people from leaving the church. | helge9210 wrote: | > Why can I not do that online with my ID? > Why is she | even typing it at all | | Social function of work. If you do it yourself, what will | she do? | | If you come up with a solution freeing hundreds of people | doing some monkey jobs some in Germany will consider this | evil, since people are losing their means of earning | salary. This is more difficult with the officials, since | they have guaranteed employment. | | [Edit: typo] | nforgerit wrote: | German speaking here. Keeping people busy with bullsh*t | jobs just for the sake of keeping them busy is not a good | investment, not financially nor for the sanity of the | people themselves. | | In fact, in Germany you can see that it leads to | government paralysis everywhere. In contrast, they should | free "Staatsbeamte" from those stupid jobs and encourage | them to start thinking themselves instead of blindly | executing top-down commands. No jobs lost, but talent | attracted. This eventually leads to operational | excellence. The current state of affairs is overly | defensive and reactionary. | helge9210 wrote: | I live and work in Germany for almost two years now. | | I witnessed at least two panic attacks caused by the | implementation of your suggestion to "encourage them to | start thinking themselves instead of blindly executing | top-down commands". | meghan_rain wrote: | elaborate? | [deleted] | atq2119 wrote: | By this point, there can't be too many "Beamte" left in | Germany's railway and public transit systems. After all, | nobody there has received that status since the 90s. | ivan_gammel wrote: | Ownership is no more than a collection of rights on what to do | with the owned asset that is recognized by society. Regulate | more and there won't be much difference between private and | public property, so ownership is less relevant than financial | and incentive framework around public transportation system. | dahwolf wrote: | Probably, although people would read too much into the word | "owned" in that case. It's still going to be operated and | supplied by private companies. | odiroot wrote: | How is it controversial? It many countries this a normal thing. | Even in strongly capitalist UK a good few municipalities own | their bus system. | cromka wrote: | [flagged] | rnk wrote: | Haha - at the same time many libertarians / conservatives | want there to be no infrastructure owned by the public! | Another way we are at war with ourselves in the good old | semi-public private USA. | Demonto wrote: | How is your comment connected to publicly owned local | transport? | tfourb wrote: | Because public transport _is_ owned by the public (or | publicly owned entities) in many places outside the US. In | Europe, it is the norm, not the exception, as is the case | in many other places that have some sort of socialism | /social democratic history. | konschubert wrote: | It's also owned by the public in most places of the US? | How do you think the MTA or BART is financed? | kelnos wrote: | Huh? How is the idea that public transit should be publicly | owned Americentric? A stereotypical/caricatured Americentric | take on that would be to privatize everything. | neximo64 wrote: | Because its publicly owned in most places publicly (Japan, | China, Europe , Australia, Russia, India, South East Asia, | Africa... It seemingly is only the US & Canada where it | isn't | | So bringing it up is very American since the comment | doesn't work anywhere else. | werlrndkis wrote: | [dead] | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | They were at one point, but capitalism said everything needs to | make a profit. | PicassoCTs wrote: | The pyramid scheme grinds to an halt, if it does not. | Everything goto join the MLM scheme, or those running the | whole affair get a existential crisis. | HPsquared wrote: | Central banking and social security are the MLM schemes. | Free markets, if we had them, would rebalance that kind of | thing. | govolckurself wrote: | [dead] | 411111111111111 wrote: | Sure, but completely unrestricted _free markets_ would | also reintroduce slavery etc. to the modern world. | | Free markets are great at reducing inefficiencies in a | world in which no participant decides to coordinate with | other participants for profit. which obviously doesn't | work, just like communism doesnt work at societal scales. | wunderland wrote: | Not controversial in the handful of countries where public | transportation is efficient and ubiquitous. Americans are fed | constant propaganda about how publicly owned anything isn't | possible, sold to them by the very people whose profits rely on | this being true. | tfourb wrote: | It technically is in many places around Germany: The national | railway infrastructure is owned by a government-owned entity, | as is the main railway company. Many municipal public transport | systems are also owned directly by the municipalities | themselves, although there are also some semi-privatized | systems and the national railway company also owns shares of | municipal public transport systems in many major cities. | | Still, public ownership itself is not really sufficient to | guarantee great public transport. In Germany, prevailing | opinion is that public transport should break even or cost the | public purse as little as possible. The effect is that many | communities especially in rural and urban marginalized places | are underserved by public transport and many smaller cities | have been disconnected from the railway grid. | | In my view public transport should be both owned by the public | and viewed as a true public good: similarly to basic education, | healthcare, electricity and clean water, every citizen should | have access to a decent level of service, no matter how cost | efficient it would be. | wheels wrote: | My inclination to agree that public transit should mostly be | a nationalized utility. But some experience in rural areas | leads me to a counterargument that I don't have a good answer | for: | | Should people that live in urban spaces massively subsidize | people that choose to live in rural areas for no economically | useful reason? Like, some tech bros decide they don't want | neighbors and want to live 20 km from everything. Should the | city folk subsidize their preferences? Maybe it should be | recouped in local taxes? Should that be covered by | agricultural tax breaks? | | Mostly I think public transit should be a public service. But | I don't think it's a given that rich people's preferences | should be subsidized just because they want to live in remote | or suburban areas. | okr wrote: | I agree. And to finance it, everyone should serve a year of | their life for public services like that. So it does not look | like, that we want public goods, but someone else but not me | has to do the work. The tax burden is already so high. | aleph_minus_one wrote: | > And to finance it, everyone should serve a year of their | life for public services like that. | | To people who argue like this, I often argued in the past | that if I were to contribute on an open source project for | one year instead, this would do a lot more good for the | public welfare. | okr wrote: | As far as i can see it, we need muscle power, that is not | well paid, as it does not scale well. Less software. | Software is just fine. | throwaway60607 wrote: | I am a person, not your muscle. | konschubert wrote: | > everyone should serve a year of their life | | Why not just spend a year's worth of taxes on it? | | Much more efficient than training a million teenagers to | drive the bus every year... | qwytw wrote: | > The tax burden is already so high | | It will only get higher if we try to intentionally decrease | worker productivity by forcing them to 'serve a year of | their life for public services'. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | _> It will only get higher if we try to intentionally | decrease worker productivity by forcing them to 'serve a | year of their life for public services'._ | | That's blatantly false. It works in Austria quite well. | The healthcare and social service systems would not be | able to function without the mandatory and voluntary | unpaid 9 months work of the 17 - 19 year olds before they | hit off for university. | | What worker productivity do you think society is loosing | out on here? We're talking about 17-19 year olds, not | experienced workers who need to be pulled away from their | well paying jobs. | | The labor they provide and experience they earn in the | social system is far more valuable to society than the | taxes they would pay doing some minimum wage part time | job waiting tables in a restaurant or flipping burgers at | McDs instead. | jakub_g wrote: | Do you have some links / google keywords about the | teenagers working in healthcare/social services in | Austria? | panick21_ wrote: | If you are interested in the Swiss system: | | https://www.ch.ch/en/safety-and-justice/military-service- | and... | | If you want to see open positions for the system you can | see here (not in English): | | https://www.ezivi.admin.ch/ivy/faces/instances/eZIVI/Publ | ikB... | | You can search for different keywords to find open | positions. For me personally I worked in: | | - Hospital as a Programmer (they made position for me) | | - In another hospital as Technician (hanging up stuff, | changing light-bulls, assessing damage, configuring doors | and so on) | | - Old people home, I worked for in technical service, | including garden work. | | - Old people home, I also worked as a cleaner, mostly | windows, floors and so on. | | In the hospital you can also work as a bed mover for | example. You can work directly in old people care and | things. | | In general there are 100s of position, some position are | even going with international aid organization to other | countries. A friend of mine did his in archeology | departments digging up old stuff. Another friends simply | did farm work with a mountain farmer, that's the easiest | to get (he in fact simply was to lazy to get a job so | they assigned him to a farmer). | eska wrote: | It seems like you do not realize that the 30 year olds | who don't flip burgers and make more than minimum age | were once those 19 year olds whose career you've delayed | by 1 year. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | It's the system the democratic voters have voted to keep. | eska wrote: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum | | Is this even something people voted on directly or is it | just one point among many in each party's total stance to | vote for? | buran77 wrote: | > The healthcare and social service systems would not be | able to function without the mandatory and voluntary | unpaid 9 months work of the 17 - 19 year olds before they | hit off for university. | | Interesting take. Is there any supporting official | position on this or just personal opinion? | | If true I find it very scary that a country's health and | social services systems would crumble were it not for the | 3 months per year the teenagers of the country | contribute. How do these systems handle the rest of the 9 | months every year when the teenagers are unavailable on | account of being in school. Why would a healthy society | operate at the very limit of crashing down because the | natality dropped or parents/teenagers start refusing to | provide this service? | | Now I've dealt with _a lot_ of trainees in my life. All | university graduates, including with PhDs. They all take | weeks to months full time on the job until they 're ready | to do anything productive in the simplest of jobs. I | can't imagine teenagers being or becoming anywhere near | productive enough in 3 months per year (with 9 month | breaks) to support a country's healthcare system from | collapsing. And that's not even touching on the topic | that you're forcing children to give up what's probably | the last carefree time of their lives to do a job they | may not want and are definitely not prepared to do. | konschubert wrote: | That's a false dichotomy. | | It's not: Do we get a million teenagers or not? | | There is a third option: | | Let those teenagers join the workforce, use the revenue | from the increased societal productivity to hire more | professional workers in the health care system. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | _> Is there any supporting official position on this or | just personal opinion?_ | | The government figures and claims are supporting this | opinion. In fact, it's been the government's opinion, not | mine. I'm just quoting it. | | _> If true I find it very scary that a country's health | and social service systems would crumble were it not for | the 3 months per year the teenagers of the country | contribut_ | | 9 months not 3, and yes, that's socialized care for you | and an aging population when you have too many people in | need of care, and too little contributions into the | system since the economy has stagnated post 2008 and | taxes are already high enough and no more money can be | obtained this way. And it's not just healthcare work, but | all social services like kindergartens, retirement homes, | refugees homes, etc. that make use of 9 months of teenage | labor. | | _> I can 't imagine teenagers being or becoming anywhere | near productive enough in 3 months per year_ | | You don't need too long training to be qualified to drive | an ambulance or perform CPR. At least not here. Teenagers | are quite smart and quick learners if you treat them | well. | | _> you're forcing children to give up what's probably | the last carefree time of their lives to do a job they | may not want and are definitely not prepared to do._ | | The military service is forced nation-wide (a system kept | through democratic vote), while doing social public civil | work is the alternative choice if you feel the military | is not for you. | | And the children get paid for it, and for many it's the | camaraderie and opportunity to meet other young people | from other parts of the country/city and make life long | friends or meet future spouses while learning useful | social and life skills and feeling a sense of self worth | for contributing to society, especially in the context of | the west having a loneliness and depression epidemic | among teens. It's also an opportunity for silver spoon | kids of privilege families to get to interact with the | lower classes of society and soo how others live, through | this kind of work. | | You're making it sounds like they're prisoners for life, | but they're still free to go binge drinking and care free | sex in the south of Spain after. | panick21_ wrote: | > You don't need too long training to be qualified to | drive an ambulance or perform CPR. At least not here. | Teenagers are quite smart and quick learners if you treat | them well. | | What? I did civil service in Switzerland and while there | are some jobs that require CPR courses to be done before | hand, in non is it actually expected that you need it | regularly. And for absolutely sure will they not let 18 | year old drive ambulances, that's utterly insane. | | Can you show me prove that in Austria they let 18 year | old civil service people drive ambulances? Because I know | for a fact this is not happening in Switzerland. | buran77 wrote: | > The government figures and claims are supporting this | opinion. In fact, it's been the government's opinion, not | mine. I'm just quoting it. | | I believe you but since you're passing this on then | you/they must also have more than some words in support. | When critical systems would collapse were it not for | teenagers being asked to work a job it calls into | question both the competence of the leadership to lead | and of the people to choose them. There's a reason most | countries don't do this beyond basic apprenticeships on | limited scale. What happens if this year teenagers start | looking more towards the military following events like | the war in Ukraine, do those civil services come tumbling | down? You and the government make this sound like a | country being driven at the edge of collapse. | | > You don't need too long training to be qualified to | drive an ambulance or perform CPR. | | Right? Who could be more qualified to operate a critical | emergency vehicle or bring someone back to life than a | person who until yesterday wasn't allowed even to vote. | What a thing to say... | | > The military service is forced nation-wide | | Mandatory military conscription is an act of desperation | in the face of potential national annihilation. Most | countries abolished it and even the ones who kept it | start at 18. Is the Austrian civil service conscription | an equally desperate move? Or an attempt to raise a | "working generation" from as young an age as possible | while giving those kids the alternatives "this or the | military"? | | > and for many it's the camaraderie and opportunity to | meet other young people from other parts of the | country/city and make life long friends or meet future | spouses. | | Sure, except literally not because they'd get the very | same by going to school or university. They don't need to | be forced into a job they don't want because the country | will fail otherwise unless it's the only way they'd do | it. The only incontestable reason is because it's | mandatory, everything else is rationalizing and looking | for a silver lining. | qwytw wrote: | > Mandatory military conscription is an act of | desperation in the face of potential national | annihilation | | Most neutral European countries like Switzerland, Norway, | Sweden, Finland and Austria have maintained it to one | degree or another. I don't think it's generally viewed as | 'an act of desperation' by most people in those countries | or even that unpopular. | buran77 wrote: | Agreed but but that's exactly the point. Sweden and | Finland have Russia even pushing them out of neutrality | and towards NATO. Switzerland is a big repository of | mostly illegal fortunes from all over the world and has | to stay neutral to maintain this status, so it makes | sense to extend its own defensive capabilities as much as | it can. In Norway it's debatable, the obligativity is not | enforced. You also have Greece where the conflict with | Turkey drives mandatory conscription. | | For these countries mandatory military service is very | much an act of desperation. Maybe the word doesn't ring | the right note in people's heads but it's accurate. If | avoiding scenarios like in Ukraine doesn't call for | desperate decisions I don't know what does. | | But discussing the popularity is moot. The people of | those countries understand the _necessity_ driven by | external factors. They chose neutrality, not their | neighbors, so they have to compromise somewhere out of | practical need and the desperation of the alternative. | This being said you can only assess the popularity of | something when it becomes a free choice rather than | obligation. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | _> you can only assess the popularity of something when | it becomes a free choice rather than obligation._ | | Democratic elections and referendums have assessed this | and the majority of the population has voted in favor of | this system. For better or worse, that's democracy for | ya'. | buran77 wrote: | Not sure it's so simple. Most of the voting population is | past the age where this affects them and people (I must | admit I fall in that trap quite often) have the mentality | that "it was done to me and look how well I turned out, | so I'll do it to them". The _only_ way to see if people | want it is to give them the choice _when the time comes_. | | > the population has voted | | But as you said earlier, it's the same population and | elected leaders who let critical systems and services | degrade to the point where they would stop working | without forcing children to work. Even agreeing this | doesn't put the people in a bad light decision-wise, in | this position it's no longer a choice but a necessity. | Hence my incessant question whether the government's | statement that "services will fail without child work" is | supported by some study or it's just a scare tactic to | get people to vote a certain way. | | Yes, democracy is about getting the people's vote of | confidence. How you earn that confidence is outside the | democratic process and could be as simple as "feed them | BS". | panick21_ wrote: | I can only say from the Swiss perspective, critical | system and service are not degraded and the system would | work perfectly fine without a few 10000 civil service | works. And I don't think this is true for Austria either. | | > Yes, democracy is about getting the people's vote of | confidence. How you earn that confidence is outside the | democratic process and could be as simple as "feed them | BS". | | In Switzerland getting people vote is about much more | then confidence as we vote regularly on actual issues, | not just on people or parties. And because its | Concordance system all parties share a certain amount of | confidence form the population. | | The political discussion about mandatory military | services are certainly happening and have been for a very | long time. Generally, in a conservative society you need | to have a really convincing reason to change something, | and in Switzerland at least nobody has come up with a | great alternative that convinces many people so the | system stays as it it. | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | _> I believe you but since you're passing this on then | you/they must also have more than some words in support._ | | I am not supporting this, I only said it's how it works | here. | | _> Right? Who could be more qualified to operate a | critical emergency vehicle or bring someone back to life | than a person who until yesterday wasn't allowed even to | vote._ | | And yet at their age they seem qualified enough for the | US to send them to war in the Middle East or give them | access to TOP-SECRET military intelligence[1] before | they're even allowed to drink beer. You're needlessly | discrediting youths for a cheap shot at an argument. | Those people who barely got to vote, as you call them, | are functioning members of society, who were vetted | beforehand and given 3+ months of full time training and | supervision by licensed and more experienced personnel | before they get to perform CPR. Also, CPR isn't that | difficult or risky, especially when you don't live in a | society of ambulance chasing lawyers where everyone sues | everyone for the slightest inconvenience. | | _> What a thing to say..._ | | I'm not saying this, the facts are. Austrian healthcare | and social system, with all its flaws, does a far better | job serving the majority of the population, especially | the poor and the vulnerable, than the American one does. | But let's not get into that right now. | | _> Sure, except literally not because they'd get the | very same by going to school or university._ | | They go to school and university anyway except with | social work there's no grades or exams you need to study | for making the time served there less stressful and more | focused on the social and practical experience. Plus it's | a more diverse setting than university where you mostly | meet people with shared domains and interests as you. | | _> Mandatory military conscription is an act of | desperation in the face of potential national | annihilation._ | | You're false again. I don't support mandatory | conscription but it's how neutral non-NATO EU nations get | to defend their neutrality and provide a detergent | against aggressors. The military also has plenty of uses | even in peace times, such as natural disasters and what | not. | | [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/27/politics/jack- | teixeira-de... | buran77 wrote: | > I am not supporting this | | Ugh, "in support" of the veracity of the statement. _You_ | wrote that "the healthcare and social service systems | would not be able to function" without the work of | teenagers. I just wanted to know if you have any solid | evidence of this. I will assume not, suspect that this is | the usual political bamboozle people fall for when an | explanation is needed, and move on. | | > And yet at their age they seem qualified enough for the | US | | I'm not sure why you'd bring this into the discussion. | It's devoid of value as far as whataboutism goes but | indeed, I agree that it's very wrong in that case too. | How about this: some of the US also considers child | marriage and subsequent sexual relations, or hard | agricultural work legal starting the age of 12. Hitching | your wagon to the "others do it too" argument can | backfire. | | I'm sure those teenagers are functioning members of | society but their function isn't to be forced into adult | jobs at that age. If they want to pursue a career in this | have them watch and learn, like any other teenager is | expected in school or university. | | > I'm not saying this, the facts are. | | Just follow what I'm quoting. You are saying that "You | don't need too long training to be qualified to drive an | ambulance or perform CPR". You're being dismissive of an | entire profession as "a child can do it with a bit of | training". It's not helping your argument. You actually | need more than a bit of experience before driving any car | safely, let alone an emergency vehicle in a critical | situation. A teenager shouldn't be pushed in this kind of | job. They have 40-50 years to do exactly that once | they're just a bit older. | | > Austrian healthcare and social system [...] does a far | better job [...] than the American one does. | | That's great. And again I have to say, how does this | comparison help? When is it ever useful to compare to | someone not doing a good job? This just says you can do | worse. Focus on how to do better. | | > You're false again. | | And yet you go on to confirm that it's how they defend | against aggressors, an indisputably desperate situation. | That's _exactly_ what desperation means, doing something | to prevent /mitigate one of the worst situations a | country can be in. | | Now I sense that you made some assumptions about me, | given the repeated US references. I'm European, my | opinion about what the US is doing on internal social | aspects, or external military/political aspects could be | better. And I lived and worked in Austria for years many | eons ago. I hope that helps you put in context what I | said. Let me boil it down: let children be children; at | the edge of adulthood let them choose where they go and | guide them, don't force them, unless there is a desperate | situation; use your critical thinking and don't believe | (or worse, promote) the vagaries your government sells | you when they want something their way. | | Anyway, enlightening talk. | [deleted] | ChuckNorris89 wrote: | _> You 're being dismissive of an entire profession as "a | child can do it with a bit of training". It's not helping | your argument. _ | | Nobody is being dismissive of anything. I'm just showing | you proof that 17 year olds can also be professionals in | that field because what is a professional, but someone | who received professional levels of training and got | certified. Guess what? So are those 17-19 year old boys | and girls to the same standards of much older people. | | In fact you're the one being dismissive and ageist | because you think young people can't be trained to do a | job just because of their age. | | _> A teenager shouldn 't be pushed in this kind of job._ | | And yet they seem to be doing it just fine. And they are | not pushed, they can choose for which service they | volunteer. They can work in kindergartens, but many | choose emergency services because of the practical life | skills learned there, camaraderie, and other personal | reasons. | | _> don 't force them, unless there is a desperate | situation; use your critical thinking and don't believe | (or worse, promote) the vagaries your government sells | you when they want something their way._ | | Nobody is forcing them, and it's not my government as I'm | not Austrian, and the government doesn't benefit from | this as the kids don't do work for the government but | they provide work for their own citizens, neighbors, etc. | | It seems strange to outsiders like you and me, but this | is the path that the Austrian society has democratically | chosen for its kids and it seems to be working for them. | Why judge someone else because they're different? School | kids in Japan also clean their classrooms instead of | janitors. | tfourb wrote: | Germany used to have a very similar system to Austria's | up until a few years ago. Same deal: do military service | or "civil service" instead for 9 months. It was in theory | compulsory for all male 18 year olds, but getting | disqualified on medical grounds was fairly easy. Still, | most young men chose to do it and they were an essential | part of Germany's health care system and many other | social services (and also eco-conservation). | | The system was abolished because compulsory military | service was not a great fit for the kind of army the | politicians wanted anymore and cost a lot of money. The | health care and social sector has faced some struggles as | a result. While some of the vacancies have been filled by | a new voluntary service scheme, overall it has | contributed to a lack of service workers and it has | increased costs. | | I have done civil service and must say it was a fantastic | time. Basically anyone I know who did it looks back at | the civil service fondly, as it is much like university | in terms of the social opportunities, but you get some | money on the side. Military service on the other hand was | reportedly much more of mixed bag (as you'd expect, I | guess). | this_user wrote: | > We're talking about 17-19 year olds, not experienced | workers who need to be pulled away from their well paying | jobs. | | But these people are starting university one year later, | which means they graduate a year later, which means these | badly needed, highly qualified workers become available | to the job market a year later, because they have to | spend their time doing some menial job that most of them | have no interest in doing. We used to have this nonsense | in Germany. Most of the people I know were just goofing | off, were drunk or high on the job, or were deliberately | destroying equipment, because nobody wanted to be there. | areyousure wrote: | > It works in Austria quite well. The healthcare and | social service systems would not be able to function | without the mandatory and voluntary unpaid 9 months work | of the 17 - 19 year olds before they hit off for | university. | | In case anyone is curious, this appears to refer to the | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zivildienst_in_Austria | which is an alternative to conscription in the Austrian | Armed Forces. Conscription applies to men (but not | women), and this alternative civil service option is | chosen by ~40% of these young men. | panick21_ wrote: | I have done social service instead of military in | Switzerland where we have the same system. In fact we | have to do 1.5 years of before we are 30. I worked in at | least 5 (old people homes and hospitals) different | positions. In not a single one of them is it true to say | the system couldn't function if not for the civil service | workers. | | Simply paying normal people to do that work would be | perfectly reasonable. | | > is far more valuable to society than the taxes they | would pay doing some minimum wage part time job waiting | tables | | Yeah but most people don't actually work minimum wage | jobs. Me as a Software Developer spend 6 month cleaning | windows. While this was reasonable fun and low stress not | sure my window cleaning experience has this great benefit | for society. | | > not experienced workers who need to be pulled away from | their well paying jobs | | You start your job one year later and therefore spend 1 | year less doing it before retirement, not sure how this | is difficult to figure out. | hannob wrote: | It's not really controversial in Germany, and largely the case. | | The problems lie elsewhere. IMHO there are two major problems | with public transport in Germany. One is underfunding, which | causes a lack of reliability, and plenty of lines that are | overused. The second is complexity. Each local transport | association has its own ticketing system, and they really like | to make them complicated. The 49 euro ticket is a step in the | right direction here, as it is one ticket for most | (unfortunately with a few exceptions...) local public | transport. | redprince wrote: | > It's not really controversial in Germany, and largely the | case. | | Well... sort of, but the incentives are broken. Simplified | version of what has happened so far: In 1994 the Deutsche | Bundesbahn was fused with the eastern Reichbahn and converted | into the Deutsche Bahn AG. The German state is the owner of | this company but the corporation is run as it were publicly | traded. Getting it onto the stock market at least in part was | a goal but the last attempt was scrapped after the 2007 | financial crisis. | | The results of privatization were quite destructive though. | In an attempt to make the Deutsche Bahn AG more profitable, | cost cutting measures were implemented. The led to a sharp | decline of rail transport service in rural areas. Furthermore | expensive railway switches on main lines were dramatically | reduced in numbers, hampering the ability to route traffic | around disturbances on a track. The rest of the | infrastructure is less maintained and more likely to be run | until it wears out. People have accused the Deutsche Bahn AG | that they are skimping on maintenance as a cost saving | measure, because new construction to replace broken | infrastructure will be paid by the state, but maintenance is | not and thus cutting into the profits. | | The DB AG has been mismanaged for at least 30 years and it | shows. If I had one wish, I'd really would like to see the DB | AG aspiring to the punctuality and general quality of service | offered by the Swiss Federal Railways. | cbmuser wrote: | Japanese railway is all privatized and easily beats | everything they have in Switzerland. | | It's not a matter of private vs. public. | panick21_ wrote: | Japanese railway don't easily beat everything in | Switzerland. If you look at rural service Swiss service | is often just as good or better and more punctual. | | Japanese punctuality numbers are inflated because their | high punctuality of their high speed trains that run on | dedicated separated infrastructure. In fact, large reason | that punctuality in Switzerland suffers is because | international trains that mess up the schedule (looking | at you Germany). | | And unlike Japan Switzerland is also world leading in | using railway cargo transport, that also has to share the | same infrastructure. | | But in general, its not just about public and private, | that a simplified vision. Its something for politicians | to talk about rather then talking about the actual | details of the system. | | While Japan is privately operated, its certainty still | under public control. | | In fact in Switzerland there are quite a few railway | companies for both cargo and people using the same | infrastructure. Some of them are semi-private or owned by | local governments or a mix of other organizations. The | Semi-Private Post office runs its own trains for example. | cbmuser wrote: | > One is underfunding, which causes a lack of reliability, | and plenty of lines that are overused. > The 49 euro ticket | is a step in the right direction here, ... | | Errm, you do see the contradiction here, no? | | The 49 Euro ticket is actually heavily subsidized which means | more tax payer money is wasted that could be invested into | the infrastructure of public transport. | Demonto wrote: | It's just stupidity. | | It should have no issue at all to align German wide but they | never did it. | | The Munich MVG for example is doing an experiment were you | can pay by an app from some us company were you just start | and stop your journey with a button and the app gives you the | best price. | | They could have instead just created some German wide | software company sponsored by all the local public transport | agencies and just do it themselves. | | It's ridiculousl that modern problems are often not technical | problems:-( | tfourb wrote: | The issue is not the lack of technical expertise. The | structure of the German public transport system is very | localized, due to its historical growth. local networks are | often owned by the municipalities that they are serving, | the actual busses are sometimes provided by private | companies on contract, the national railway carrier has | contracts with state governments and certain local entities | for specific services, national, state and local | governments are subsidizing various services, etc. | | I completely agree that it is a mess, but it is not really | easy to solve with so many stakeholders and so many | (sometimes conflicting but valid) different priorities at | stake. | cbmuser wrote: | > They could have instead just created some German wide | software company sponsored by all the local public | transport agencies and just do it themselves. | | But that already works with the >>DB Navigator<< app by | Deutsche Bahn. | | You can buy tickets for many local public transport | companies. No need to download a custom app. | rippercushions wrote: | It's hard to overemphasize just how fucked up public | transport ticketing in Germany is. As a simple example, | you're a tourist in Cologne for a few days, what's the best | ticket if you're planning to travel around the city and take | a day trip to the nearby city of Wuppertal (but across the | Verkehrsbund boundary, alas) to ride the famous monorail? | thanatos519 wrote: | Even more: Public transport is a public good which should be | funded by fossil fuel taxes and provided to users without cost. | cbmuser wrote: | > Even more: Public transport is a public good which should | be funded by fossil fuel taxes and provided to users without | cost. | | A lot of public transport runs on fossil fuels. Especially, | since Germany was so >>smart<< to shutdown all nuclear | reactors so that coal has become the most important source of | electricity again. | BasedGroyper99 wrote: | Why is it a public good? It only benefits the individuals who | are travelling. If I take the train to visit my sister, I | don't see how that is in the public's interest. | NoZebra120vClip wrote: | Public transit gets the workers to where they need to go to | serve you at your Starbucks, your Target, your luxury | hotels, you name it. | | Public transit gets consumers to the mall and other | shopping areas where they can circulate their hard-earned | cash in a capitalist economic system. | | Public transit gets individual cars off the road, increases | safety of those roads, and makes everybody's transportation | more efficient. | kelnos wrote: | Most public goods don't benefit everyone equally; that's | never the case, and that's fine. | | My house has never been on fire (knock on wood), but I'm | perfectly happy that my taxes pay for a fire department. I | don't often use the park up the street that's currently | undergoing a massive renovation/rebuild, but I'm happy that | my taxes are paying for the renovation. I don't drive on | every single road in the city, but I'm glad my tax dollars | make it possible for people to get around even in places | where I don't need to go. I don't have kids (and don't plan | to), but I'm happy that the taxes I pay go toward educating | the kids who live here. | | Many public transit agencies are run at a loss; I'm | absolutely fine with my tax dollars making up the | difference. From there it's just a matter of degree: is it | fully funded by taxes, or still partially funded by fare | revenue? I'd be fine with the former, too. | hannob wrote: | If you take the train and not the car, you cause a lot less | externalities. | BasedGroyper99 wrote: | It may be the case that I cause a lot less externalities, | but I don't think that affects the definition of a public | good. If I visited my friend by using a motorcycle, I'd | cause less externalities too, but I don't think | motorcycles are public goods. Same with scooters, e-bikes | and normal bikes. | werlrndkis wrote: | [dead] | yazaddaruvala wrote: | > but I don't think that affects the definition of a | public good | | You happen to be misconstruing the two definitions of | "public good": | | > a commodity or service that is provided without profit | to all members of a society, either by the government or | a private individual or organization. | | > the benefit or well-being of the public. | | As such, something can be a "public good" without being | "a benefit". | | [0] https://www.google.com/search?q=public+goods&si=AMnBZ | oHHbOut... | BasedGroyper99 wrote: | I don't think I'm misconstruing these two definitions, | because I didn't talk about the definitions you just | brought up. I also think it is quite clear that I'm | talking about what the government should or shouldn't | provide, not what some specific government currently is | providing. | wunderland wrote: | Why should we all pay for roads and bridges? I don't have a | car. Why should the government pay for hospitals? I'm not | sick. | Hasnep wrote: | By that logic, why is anything a public good? If I drink | water from a public water fountain why is that in the | public's interest? | BasedGroyper99 wrote: | > If I drink water from a public water fountain why is | that in the public's interest? | | If there were no fountain, then many people would get | water bottles and that's too big of a hassle. | | Defining a public good is quite hard, and any definition | will most likely other controversial terms like | "reasonably" or "foreseeable" in them. However, I think a | public good is something that can be shared by many | people in reasonable amounts, and that cannot reasonably | be attained by the average individual. It is usually | characterized by its scale. | | So for example, you can't build your own park, but you | can use the public park without blasting your music on | max volume. | kelnos wrote: | > _If there were no fountain, then many people would get | water bottles and that 's too big of a hassle._ | | Right, and if there was no public transit, then many more | people would need to buy and drive cars, and that's not | great for the public's interest either. | ben_w wrote: | Public parks you don't sit in are still public goods; | public litter bins are still public goods even if you never | have anything to put into them; public roads are still a | public good even if you don't own a vehicle. | | Likewise, if you want them to be, so is public transport. | | Though, here's a question: I don't think I've ever seen | planes classified as public transport -- is that just my | observations being weird, or is that a true distinction? | And if genuine, why? | dsfyu404ed wrote: | [dead] | rippercushions wrote: | People usually distinguish between local and long- | distance travel, nobody is arguing that bullet trains | should be free and planes fall into the same category. | | The fact that long-distance highways tend to be free | speaks more to politics than logic, and there are a few | notable exceptions (eg Japan) where all expressways are | tolled. | panick21_ wrote: | Highways are also tolled in Italy and I think France, its | not that exceptional. | | And in Switzerland for example you just pay a really high | gas tax that funds the highway, plus you have to pay a | one time fee and get a sticker, otherwise you are not | allowed to drive on the highway. | kibwen wrote: | _> I don 't think I've ever seen planes classified as | public transport_ | | In remote parts of the world, planes absolutely should be | classified as public transport. Remote towns in Alaska, | for example, are essentially inaccessible without bush | planes. | | However, planes are expensive to operate on a per- | passenger basis, and in most places there are cheaper | ways to facilitate helping people move around, especially | since most trips from most people are short-distance. | BasedGroyper99 wrote: | >public parks, public litter bins, public roads These | examples are permanent things, that only need to be | maintained, and it's easier to just let the government | handle them instead of letting the individual pay or | having a subscription model or something alike. Also: all | the public goods you mentioned cannot be managed by any | single individual, that's why they are in the public | hand, but it only goes so far as your activity is in | "public range". You can't pave your own roads, you can't | carry a trash can with you wherever you go and you can't | play football in your house. That's why the government | gives you roads, parks and trash cans. But: it is not | allowed to put your house trash into a public bin. Or | have a barbecue in the public park, or block the roads | for a protest. | | I think using the train is more like using the car. I can | agree that the tracks are a public good, but actually | using the train is clearly different from that. Just like | the government provides me roads, but not with rides. | | > I don't think I've ever seen planes classified as | public transport I guess my framework fits that, because | while you may need to maintain the air and the airport, | the individual flights only help the individual person. | danaris wrote: | This is a very individualistic and American view of what a | "public good" should be. | BasedGroyper99 wrote: | I'm neither an individualist nor an American. I'm | actually from Germany and experienced how the 3 months of | Deutschlandticket affected the people around me. | josefx wrote: | Only if you assume a road network of infinite size which | goods and various services can traverse without any | interference from private car owners. Which a short look at | any given city during peak hours should disprove and those | roads are not free either. | urbandw311er wrote: | It's in the public interest because we want you to choose a | greener more sustainable transport option, such as the | train. | HPsquared wrote: | It depends on the quality of the government and administrators. | panick21_ wrote: | That's one of those grand standing issues that many people like | to focus on. The reality is the is a wild mix of private, | public and everything in between out there in the world. And | some system that are increasingly good have combinations of | everything. | | Generally speaking making great announcements about how things | will be and how an idealized version should look like often | distracts from making the incremental improvements necessary to | ever get to this point. | | To many time is wasted in politics arguing about fundamental | principles and almost non about actually improving the | situation of transit riders. If you have a shitty semi private | system, just taking public ownership often doesn't improve | service at all. | | Usually there are 10 things that would be easier to do and help | people more. Once you actually have larger part of the public | using it, then you have a better argument to make it public. | timellis-smith wrote: | Theres a really interesting graph showing rail usage under both | public and private ownership in GB. | | https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/GB... | | I'll let you draw your own conclusions | | From this page https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail | asdajksah2123 wrote: | That seems to align with the state of the British economy | more than anything else. | dsfyu404ed wrote: | [dead] | HPsquared wrote: | The infrastructure (railways and stations) is still publicly | owned under Network Rail. Only the trains themselves are | privately owned (often by foreign state-owned enterprises, | funnily enough) | matthewmacleod wrote: | Nobody should be drawing any conclusions from a graph like | that, since it provides no useful information allowing anyone | to draw any conclusion about anything. | | If you do choose to draw a conclusion from this, you're doing | nothing except reinforcing whatever bias you may already | have. | panick21_ wrote: | There is a big problem with this graph. Its highly | misleading. | | Because in other parts even of Great Britain, like Norther | Ireland, it was always public and it shows the exact same | pattern. And many other countries had the same effect too. | | It just so happens British Rail happened right at the time | when the basic understanding of governments in Britain and | most the world were anti railway and pro building an absurd | amount of highways. | | Lots of the increase in early part of semi privatization | period in Britain happened and were only possible because of | investments done by British rail. It very likely that the | same effect would have happened under British rail. In fact | the whole system basically operated on many of the same | principles set up by British rail for quite a while. | | In reality the government in the 'private' period still | determined what prices and schedules were. And the same | prices and schedules could and would have been done by | British rail. | | Next up, in this private period, Network Rail, they private | company responsible for infrastructure so mismanaged and the | infrastructure was about to collapse (they managed this in | less then 10 years), so it was emergency reacquired by the | government who then had to do lots of delayed infrastructure | maintenance at high cost. | | Rail nationalization in Britain made no sense. Even the | people that did it didn't really have a good plan or reason | why they wanted do it other then privatizing things seemed | popular with right wing parties. They basically threw | together a haphazard plan with a bunch of consultants who had | little knowlage of railways. | | > I'll let you draw your own conclusions | | Yes feel free, but don't do it based on a single highly | misleading graph without understanding the context. | | If anybody is actually interested in the British railway | network and history, I would recommend the RailNatter | podcast. | ben_w wrote: | It's certainly possible this was caused by who owned what; | but I'd just add the decline on the graph begins around the | UK's pyrrhic victory in WW1 which IMO marked (in tandem with | Irish independence) the beginning of the decline of the | British Empire; while the rise at the end is roughly | congruent with the increasing wealth from exploitation of the | North Sea gas deposits and (depending how much you accept the | possibility of noise in the data making it hard to tell | exactly which year it changed direction) joining the | precursor to the EU. | revelio wrote: | North Sea came on-stream at the start of the 80s. The rise | in rail traffic clearly starts around the time of | privatization in ~95 and the huge plunge followed by | decline starts around the time of nationalization. | | Certainly there were other problems: the nationalization | was downstream of the socialization of the British economy | between the end of ww2 and Thatcher, and as can be seen | rail traffic (a general proxy for economic health) is in | steady decline from then until it rebounds slightly in the | 80s before taking off again once put in (mostly) private | hands in the 90s. | | The reason the graph seems to run a few years ahead of the | changes is that actually privatizing and nationalizing | something on the scale of a national railway takes a few | years to implement between politicians floating the idea | and the final handover of power, but the effect on people's | motivations and incentives begins almost immediately. | zimpenfish wrote: | Doesn't really cover a lot of things you'd want to know like | price, satisfaction, reliability, etc. - all of which, I | believe, are strongly negative compared with 30 years ago. | Also doesn't tell you if it's long distance or commuter or | both - which is an important distinction since many more | people commute these days. | | In summary, it's a meaningless piece of chartjunk [edit: in | the context of nationalisation vs privatisation, at least.] | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _price, satisfaction, reliability_ | | Do these matter if ridership is falling? | zimpenfish wrote: | > Do these matter if ridership is falling? | | If they're not a proximal cause, no. If they are, yes. | | But if ridership is going up even whilst prices are | offensively high, satisfaction is at an all-time low, and | reliability is a joke, then you can't assert that | ridership is going up because of privatisation, it's more | _despite_ privatisation because people have few other | options (cf London where driving is slow because of | congestion, buses are often stuck in the same congestion, | cycling is still sketchy in some parts, high prices have | forced people out of walking distance, etc.) | revelio wrote: | Prices were so heavily subsidized they were ruining the | government's finances, so that's not a valid metric to | compare on because it wasn't sustainable. Even when being | bailed out by massive amounts of tax (a regressive tax!), | ridership was falling because the services sucked so hard | that they couldn't compete with cars/trucks, despite the | latter being a source of tax revenue, not a sink. | | Dunno about satisfaction but clearly, when people were | truly dissatisfied they stayed away and now the primary | causes of satisfaction and reliability problems are simply | that the network is so in demand it's at capacity all the | time, especially London commuter routers. Some of that is | driven by the huge increases in population via immigration | in the last 20 years but some of it is just that privatized | services are better, so people use them more. | inglor_cz wrote: | In Europe, ownership of public transport is a pretty wild mix, | and corporations that are publicly owned (or indirectly so) do | not seem to work substantially better than private corporations | that won public contracts. | | Aside from ideological arguments, can you support your opinion | by pointing out examples that show that public ownership of | means of transport improves customer experience? Because as | someone who travels all the time with public transport, I | definitely care about my customer experience. I spend quite a | lot of time in trains and trams, and I want the time spent | there not to be arduous. | | Notably, once you look at the related field of airlines, many | publicly owned airlines were outright atrocious (looking at | you, Alitalia). The traditional Czech airline, CSA, was blown | apart when the local social democrats appointed their useless | crook of a colleague (a former minister who was looking for a | nice job) to be the CEO, and he ran the airline to the ground | with alarming speed. | woodpanel wrote: | As some comments here mention uncomfortable means of buying | tickets across German transportation systems: I've been working | on multiple software projects that tried to solve it and I can | tell you that the reason is not sinister but rather that each | system is funded locally. Which means it is subsidized locally | and the need to cross those boundaries was always a luxury issue | (by people like us - the E-Mail caste). | | Even the juggernaut Deutsche Bahn (they handle public transport | in almost every municipality) couldn't break through these | structures (eg the city of Munich just couldn't be pressured to | comply with their ticketing schemes). | | In the end mandating it by the federal government was the only | way. Although I'm curious who's really benefiting from it: yes we | solved the annoyances for the E-Mail caste, but the service | quality itself will surely deteriorate by this measure. | panick21_ wrote: | Its kind of ridiculous to call it a luxury issue. Its a luxury | issue if you make it one. In Switzerland 85 year old | grandmothers travel between cities to go for light walks. 15 | year olds go to football tournaments in other cities. | | Claiming that only some elite cast of digital nomads profits | from it is utterly ridiculous. In Switzerland city to city | travel is more common with trains then with cars, and a huge | part of the population does it. | | > but the service quality itself will surely deteriorate by | this measure | | If the government actually correctly invests in it then it | doesn't actually, specially not long term. If anything it leads | to more regular more frequent service on many routes. | pjmlp wrote: | Also most people end up buying demi-tarif card, to make | travel affordable. | | Although a great thing of Swiss trains used to be being able | to switch trains quite easily between destinations, | regardless of the train type. | | No idea if that is still a thing nowadays. | splatzone wrote: | What do you mean by email caste? Do you mean people with | internet access? | kelnos wrote: | Is that really true? The only people who need/want to regularly | travel across local transit boundaries are tech people? That | seems unlikely, especially nowadays. | woodpanel wrote: | Where did I write ,,tech-people"? Yes, all tech people are | part of the E-Mail-Caste, but not all of said Caste are | techies. | Dylan16807 wrote: | Basically everyone uses email, and you said "people like | us", so the poor communication here is on your end. Please | elaborate if you want to be understood. | rebyn wrote: | I got the Deutschlandticket for May and am tempted to travel from | Berlin to Stralsund. Using RE/RB for this journeh takes more or | less three hours without any train change (so not having to deal | with the possible delay(s) and missing connecting rides), however | I do hope the operator supports reserving a seat in advance with | this subscription, cause otherwise showing up at the station not | knowing for sure I'd have a seat would deter me from using this | offer and instead just book ICE/IC (if any). | mqus wrote: | reserving seats in rb/re trains? Never heard of it. | generationP wrote: | Very few regional trains allow for reservation. See | https://www.bahn.de/angebot/zusatzticket/sitzplatzreservieru... | [deleted] | admax88qqq wrote: | We need Uber for Public Transit. Enter you destination and it | tells you which bus to get on in real time, when to transfer and | deducts payment automatically at the end of your trip. | | The Uber experience on transit would make lots never riders and | occasional riders use transit more often. | | The mental load is a lot of some people at the end of the day, | driving is just easier. | Moldoteck wrote: | It's overcomplicated. Take swiss by example. You turn on gps, | press a button, take any transport you like, even boats. When | you are done, press the button again and it calculates final | price. It's called easyride. In theory you can avoid pressing | the second time, I've read the app understands anyway that you | are no longer in transport and will not charge you | asdajksah2123 wrote: | Google Maps does this for you. And nearly every local provider | tends to have apps with end to end directions these days. | milesskorpen wrote: | GM tells you the route, it doesn't let you pay for it all at | once at the end of the trip. | kersplody wrote: | Nor does GM understand ticketing nuances or optimized route | costs. (discount cards, demand-based pricing). This is a | big problem in cities without integrated fare systems. In | many places, 3rd party planner apps are a must. | iudqnolq wrote: | The solution to that is to get rid of the nuance and | optimization opportunities and turn them into a small | across-the-board discount. Far fairer. | | Google Maps does offer "Buy Ticket" buttons for a number | of agencies that have opened up their systems. They're | far from universal coverage. But a new Uber for Transit | would snap up the APIs Google has worked to open up and | then be in the same position. | asdff wrote: | Because its not the interface on your phone to do that. On | iPhone at least, you have apple wallet and transit agency | cards often interface through those means. That's a much | better system as you can access it when your phone is dead, | unlike something that might be bounded behind google maps. | iudqnolq wrote: | Anyone who regularly uses public transit in the USA could tell | you this isn't a serious solution to a real issue. | | You use either Google Maps, Apple Maps, or the Transit app to | tell you what to get on. You either buy a local nfc card or | have an app on your phone you tap on the sensor to pay. | | Having to use more than one app isn't an significant burden | compared to the fact that that trains and busses don't come to | the places I want at the times I want reliably. | jackson1442 wrote: | Some cities come close to that, but most don't. Ignoring the | fact that most cities in the US don't have expansive transit, | even _getting a transit card_ can be a challenge in many | cities. | | * in Denver, CO - there is a custom app that works fairly | well until your phone is dead. Couldn't find a place to | purchase tap cards, but the paper ticket vending machines | worked well enough. | | * Seattle, WA - still working on mobile NFC tickets, and the | current mobile ticketing system seems to only allow existing | (> 1 year ago) customers to pay using a credit card. All new | customers seem to only be allowed to use the app by filling | up their balance using cash at a convenience store. Tap cards | were an extremely rare find last summer. Only a select few | buses seem to send their tracking data to Apple/Google maps, | the OneBusAway app was really the only one that was close to | accurate. | | * Dallas, TX - yet another custom app implementation | | * Austin, TX - _another_ custom app | | * Portland, OR - can only buy tap cards at some retailers, | BUT they accept contactless credit cards and have an app that | integrates with mobile NFC | | While I haven't been to NYC and a number of other cities with | large transit systems, Portland OR and Washington DC had the | best implementations, largely because they simply integrated | with the native mobile NFC wallet. DC even lets you provision | your card straight from the iOS Wallet app, though you can't | use a standard contactless credit card. | | IMO the solution isn't an app, but rather simplifying fares | and accepting contactless credit cards for fares. In Portland | you "earn" your passes by riding rather than needing to | purchase in advance - once you have paid $100 in a month | you're automatically exempted from fares for the rest of a | month. | iudqnolq wrote: | I'm quite familiar with the situation in Denver. Your | criticism is that it doesn't work well if your phone dies. | True, but I'm replying to someone suggesting "Uber for | Public Transit". I presume that involves a app rather than | a physical product. | | It would be kinda neat if we standardized across the | country on one app, but it's nowhere near the top of the | list of things to address. Most people mostly use one or a | small number of public transit systems. You can just have | more than one app. Municipalities are also increasingly | opening up the payment system such that apps like Google | Maps and Transit are able to offer buy ticket buttons. | spullara wrote: | NYC/SF let you just tap your phone to get on transit. Apple | Maps does a great job of trip planning using real time | information about the status of trains. It is super smooth and | easy. Easier than Uber even. | asdff wrote: | Same in LA county. The same tap card will work across all | agencies afaik. | FooBarWidget wrote: | The Netherlands also has something similar: a country-wide public | transit card. You put money on the card and then you can use it | for all forms of public transport, checking in and out using that | card. When it was introduced there was a lot of skepticism about | whether it's a good thing, but now 10-15 years later I can't | imagine not having it. | | Likewise, there's a country-wide public transit planner, 9292.nl. | It works across all public transit companies. Seeing how | fractured other countries' public transit are, it's amazing how | 9292 came to be. I have no idea why Dutch public transit | companies decided to work together to make it possible. | TekMol wrote: | The problem is that in Germany, the city-to-city trains that can | be used with this ticket do not have WIFI IIRC. Can anybody | confirm this? | | Traveling time without WIFI is a much higher burden to me than | normal traveling time, where I can work on my projects. I | actually like working on the train. It is a nice environment. But | without that possibility, long train rides are a chore to me. | | And it will be interesting to see how crowded the trains will be. | | Durig the 9-Euro ticket times, city-to-city trains were | uncomfortably densely packed. | Escapado wrote: | And also the inner city transport - at least in hamburg. Which | is a great datapoint I think. Because this was true for all | three months if I recall correctly and it means that there is | absolutely a lot of public demand for inexpensive/free ways to | travel. I work in an area with a lot of publicly subsidised | housing which hosts mostly families that are less well off and | I sometimes get to talk to these people and what I hear time | and time again is how they had trouble paying for public | transport and so they put off doctors appointments, can't have | their child join a soccer team because they would need a | monthly ticket to get to the field or have to compromise on | other parts of their life that are completely non-negociable | for many others. So there are many higher order effects where | making public transport financially accessible to everyone | could have positive benefits for financially underpriviledged | people. Also higher public transport usage might lead to less | cars and hence less polution, less road damage that needs | repair and less crashes and accidents so there might also be | other positive effects downstream. I would be interested in a | full economic breakdown of this, although that might be hard or | infeasible to do. Yet I would not be suprised if it turned out | quite positive for most. | eliaspro wrote: | At least in Baden-Wurttemberg, most regional trains (and even | some busses) I've used so far have WLAN nowadays. | [deleted] | tempaccount1234 wrote: | Mobile data usually works fine in German regional trains. But | if you want trips longer than 2 hours, you probably want the | higher speed trains anyway (which now might have less annoying | poor people in them) What's more annoying is that the price - | in regions without good public transportation it's actually too | expensive, but it's a nice gift to big city dwellers. | timeon wrote: | > annoying poor people | | > annoying is that the price ... too expensive | | >.> | usrusr wrote: | It's actually not half as bad for rural residents as it is | usually presented by car addicts: for those amongst rural | residents who would be interested in making their cumbersome | trips using public transit, subscription in conventional | price models were usually prohibitively expensive. They | basically took distance based single ticket price, scaled by | "what if it was used for the full trip five days a week?" and | applied some discount. They were offered bad service at high | price. In some places 10x the price a city dweller would have | to pay for their short range subscription. Sure, many out | there won't buy it even at the lower price, but for those who | do is a much bigger improvement over the status quo than for | a city dweller. For many city dwellers, it will in fact be | nothing more than an upsell option to the ticket they already | have, pay more (in some places twice as much) for a ticket | that will also be valid for the occasional trip out of town. | usrusr wrote: | The possibility to go long distance on trains meant for | commuters is an unfortunate side effect of the ticket, more | tolerated than intended. | | The big improvement is that the ticket you buy for your home | town now also works in cities you visit, no more figuring out a | different byzantine price model each time you book a hotel. | | Imagine vehicle tax would only permit to drive on the roads of | your home town and going elsewhere would require you to | register locally. Until yesterday, that was exactly how public | transit worked. | odiroot wrote: | Even if there was WiFi available on the train, the mobile | network outside large population centres is so terrible, you | wouldn't be able to get much done. Train WiFi is not magical, | it needs proper infrastructure all over the place. | flohofwoe wrote: | ICEs and some regional trains do have wifi, but it can be quite | slow and unreliable. Good enough for the occasional git push | though ;) | hannob wrote: | Not sure why you get downvoted, lack of wifi in German trains | is an issue, unreliable mobile internet coverage is another. | throwaway22032 wrote: | Just use mobile data? That's what the trains are using anyway. | iruoy wrote: | Apparently data reception in German trains is very low. | | This report[0] says it's 62-78% nationwide. Of the | neighbouring alps countries Austria is 78-88% and Switzerland | is 93-96%. | | [0]: https://www.umlaut.com/uploads/documents/Reports- | Certificate... | TekMol wrote: | In my experience, the mobile connection is _very_ flaky on | the trains in Germany. | | I would think the train can have a much more powerful antenna | to talk to mobile towers and then relay that to the | passangers. So that WIFI is better than mobile data. | pluijzer wrote: | In my experience network coverage in Germany is way below | must other European countries I have visited. Some with a | much lower inhabitant desisty like Finland. | konschubert wrote: | A bigger issue than WIFI is the spotty cell coverage. | dstick wrote: | From my limited experience on the German rails (Amsterdam - | Berlin 5/6 times in the last 4 years) the mobile 4G/5G | connection was pretty good. Only dropping off when travelling | through very remote rural areas. In the Netherlands we have | unlimited data subscriptions, I assume Germany has something | similar? That should be enough to get some work done in the | train :) | tempaccount1234 wrote: | Unlimited data here is rare (or too expensive), usually | normal people have 5-10gb a month. Still it covers most web | and messaged stuff, just don't watch too much video.... | Escapado wrote: | To be a little more precise about the pricing: | | O2 Unlimited: | | - 32,99EUR/month for 4G/5G capped at 3mbit with unlimited | data | | - 42,99EUR/month for 4G/5G capped at 15mbit with unlimited | data | | - 62,99EUR/month for 4G/5G up to 500mbit with with | unlimited data | | Vodafone: | | - 79,99EUR/month with 4G/5G up to 500mbit with unlimted | data | | Telekom: | | - 84,99EUR/month with 4G/5G up to 500mbit with unlimited | data | | 1und1: | | - 49,99EUR/month with 4G/5G capped at 10mbit with unlimited | data | | - 69,99EUR/month with 4G/5G up to 500mbit with unlimited | data | r3drock wrote: | Freenet Funk is offering unlimited data with 4G for | 0.99EUR/day. Speeds are up to 250mbit. | logifail wrote: | > From my limited experience on the German rails (Amsterdam - | Berlin 5/6 times in the last 4 years) the mobile 4G/5G | connection was pretty good. Only dropping off when travelling | through very remote rural areas. | | Not sure what you'd call "very remote rural areas", but when | on the main rail lines through Bavaria (Munich-Rosenheim- | Salzburg-Vienna and -Rosenheim-Innsbruck-Verona) if you're in | the countryside you'll often experience patchy or zero mobile | coverage, never mind 4G/5G. | _s wrote: | With 5G speeds and unlimited data* - do you even need WiFi? Not | to mention most companies nowadays have clear policies of (not) | connecting to free public wifi's or even working in public | spaces where your screen may be visible. | | * Usually the first 50gb is max speed and then it drops to | 25/25 etc - which is still really fast. | jillesvangurp wrote: | Because network coverage in Germany is pretty bad, so you are | mostly out of reach from networks when traveling by train. | It's gotten better over the years since I moved here. But I'm | basically still offline 80% of the journey between Berlin and | my parents place in the Netherlands. As soon as you cross the | border into NL, it's fine. It's a German issue. You have this | effect on all its borders. You travel to the border, you are | basically offline. As soon as you cross it into Poland, | France, Denmark, etc. it's suddenly fine. | | Of course train wifi on intercities has the same issues since | it relies on the same infrastructure. Even when it works, it | tends to be a pretty poor experience and the network is low | speed, over subscribed, etc. | cyberpunk wrote: | What network are you with? This doesn't match my experience | -- I've traveled around 35,000km on trains inside Germany | in the last few years, and apart from one 5 minute section | just outside of Berlin when going SE dresden, I've pretty | much always had a full signal. | | YMMV I guess. But I just wanted to say that I don't think | this is completely accurate. | locallost wrote: | I travel long distance exclusively by train and can't | really confirm. Sure there might be an issue here and | there, but overall it's fine. Maybe if you want to watch a | very bandwidth intensive video, but I don't know if that's | realistic. | Mashimo wrote: | > Not to mention most companies nowadays have clear policies | of (not) connecting to free public wifi's or even working in | public spaces where your screen may be visible. | | Why is that? Would a VPN not make it safe against most threat | models? I mean assuming you are not working at a place where | government actors are trying to target you specifically. | | Or can they inject something to force the VPN to disable and | hope non-encrypted data gets transmitted? | meghan_rain wrote: | > and help us achieve our climate goals | | There are 90 million Germans. Even if they all stopped doing all | non-work-related travels immediately, it wouldn't push the needle | thanks to China and India. | willio58 wrote: | I'm always confused by this. Climate change is inherently a | global issue. It will take progress by _every_ country, not | just those with the highest populations. Blaming China and | India does no good to help the planet. We should instead push | forward progress wherever we can get it and encourage | technological progress, market changes, and regulation in this | area. | | People in India and China hate pollution just as much as the | rest of us, they've just been forced by their governments to | endure it for the sake of growth. India last year banned | single-use plastics. Few other countries have made those sorts | of sweeping regulations. | mahathu wrote: | So they should just shrug and do nothing then? Spalter | meghan_rain wrote: | They should reduce importing cheap plastic shit from | polluting countries. | busymom0 wrote: | Can this have the potential of having the MoviePass type outcome? | Also, wouldn't this overcrowd public transit? | e4e5 wrote: | There was already a 9EUR ticket last year, while I wansnt in | Germany at that time I didn't read a lot about overcrowding. | With a more expensive ticket the effect will probably be even | smaller today, though in the long run all trains will probably | get more filled up. | cbmuser wrote: | > There was already a 9EUR ticket last year, while I wansnt | in Germany at that time I didn't read a lot about | overcrowding. | | There actually was a lot of overcrowding in the local and | regional trains. | woodpanel wrote: | > I didn't read a lot about overcrowding | | Everybody I know complained about it. The 9EUR ticket didn't | cover the ICE trains and instead put more strain on those | lines that are already needed by lower- to median income | commuters. Regional train lines have rush hours too and | during those 9EUR Tickets months some wild videos went viral, | where things got heated between old and ,,new" users | _fizz_buzz_ wrote: | It's backed/subsidised by the government, so a MoviePass | outcome is unlikely, because nobody expects it to ever be | profitable. | solarkraft wrote: | Overcrowding is the best thing that could happen, we need more | public transport users as quickly as possible. | | Then, of course, the guy in charge who doesn't know how road | signs work would have to take care of spending further | investments, which is probably going to accidentally land in | car infrastructure. | cbmuser wrote: | > Overcrowding is the best thing that could happen, we need | more public transport users as quickly as possible. | | Unless the capacity of public transport grows as well, no. | | > Then, of course, the guy in charge who doesn't know how | road signs work would have to take care of spending further | investments, which is probably going to accidentally land in | car infrastructure. | | Roads aren't just for cars but also trucks which are the | backbone of German logistics. | 3D30497420 wrote: | Certainly that's a risk, but I'd hope they've done some | projections on it. | | I'm not all that worried that this will cause overcrowding | since I'd wager many people who bought the first round of | tickets are just transferring over their current local | subscription to the national one. Both my wife and I did that | for example. | | It is worth noting that this ticket is 10EUR cheaper than our | prior subscription, which I expect will result in a solid bit | less revenue for the regional transit authorities. With a | system that's already straining from under-investment, | hopefully this doesn't compound already existing problems. | bahnkenner wrote: | The biggest advantage of the new Germany-wide ticket is not the | price, but rather that it simplifies things. | | This is a map of German public transit companies: [0]. I've heard | the current fractured system be compared to the Holy Roman | Empire. Every little region has its own ticketing system. If you | arrive in a new city, you have to figure out how to buy local | transit tickets, often with quite complicated rules (e.g., "Is my | destination in zone 1, 2, 3 or 4 of this city, and what zone am I | in now?"). You can usually buy monthly cards for an individual | transit company, but what if you live in one region and work in | another? You may have to buy two separate monthly tickets. It's a | mess. | | With the new system, you just buy one monthly ticket, and you can | ride on local transit anywhere in Germany. There's no more | worrying about different ticketing systems, if city X is in | transit region Y, and so on. | | The fact that the new monthly ticket is half the price of what a | typical monthly transit ticket used to cost is just the icing on | top of the cake. | | I should also mention that while this solves one problem with the | transit system in Germany, there's another, much larger problem | that is still unsolved: on-time performance is abysmal, after | years of neglected maintenance. The Deutsche Bahn is not what it | used to be. | | 0. | https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Karte_de... | TulliusCicero wrote: | Exactly. | | The new ticket is an excellent example of when national | government can be superior to more local government: when the | national government forces coordination to solve fragmentation | problems, where local agencies lacked the... _motivation_ to | solve things on their own. | | On a technical level, it was always possible for different | transit agencies to cooperate to simplify things for consumers, | but they didn't, and likely never would, at least not on this | level. A complex system per locality can still work okay for | local residents; and if it's painful for visitors, well, | visitors don't vote, and it's not the kind of thing that's | likely to kill tourism. | roamerz wrote: | Agreed. Another much needed example would be nationwide | reciprocity for concealed carry firearms. It's too easy to be | on the wrong side of the law when crossing state lines and | the regulatory nuances are difficult to understand state to | state. | wpietri wrote: | Which reminds me to give a shout-out to the Clipper card. The | SF Bay Area really did the right thing here. 24 different | systems, all of which use the same card: | https://www.clippercard.com/ClipperWeb/where-to-use.html | | And they have now expanded that card-based system to include | a mobile app, Google Pay, and Apple Pay, so now I just tap my | phone and I'm all set. | ghaff wrote: | Yeah, not as much in the Bay Area these days, but the | Clipper card is a huge improvement over the previous | system. And I imagie by the time I eventually run down my | Clipper balance I'll be fine with my phone. | wpietri wrote: | It's been a while since I set it up, but I'm pretty sure | that setting up Clipper on Google Pay (or Google Wallet | or whatever it is) is using my old Clipper balance. So | you might be able to swap it over now and have it ready | to go for your next trip. | inferiorhuman wrote: | The SF Bay Area really did the right thing here. | | No, no they really didn't. They spent millions rebranding | it, there is (was?) a huge lag between adding value and | posting the value depending on how you added value. The | original card readers were incredibly unreliable, and | because Clipper/TransLink did absolutely nothing to unify* | the fare structure across the twenty-four different systems | you could be set up for a nasty encounter with a pop cop | because you couldn't tag on or get charged the max fare | when you can't tap off. Been there, done that. | | BART did their best to make a fantastic mess too and, at | least according to their web site, they still _only_ sell | paper tickets at SFO. For whatever reason the three _other_ | vendors at SFO do sell plastic cards. Because three | additional vendors isn 't confusing at all. | | * Some systems are flat rate (Muni, Golden Gate Ferry, | VTA), some are zone based (Caltrain, Golden Gate Transit, | Marin Transit), and some are distance based (BART), | SamTrans has a flat rate depending on the type of bus | you're on. Some systems are proof of payment (Muni), some | use turnstiles (BART), some are partially proof-of-payment | (AC Transit). And some (AC Transit, Muni) still maintain | their own proprietary mobile payment systems. It's still a | fucking mess. | wpietri wrote: | It's not a perfect thing, sure. But it's a big step | forward. It's hugely better than having to deal with each | system separately; I've had days when I've used 4 | systems, for example. | | As you note with the pricing complexity, there is just a | wide divergence of views and interests on how to run a | transit system. And I get it; I think there are | legitimate reasons people picked those different pricing | systems. But they figured out how to overcome that so I | can have one card for all of that. And even better, one | card that is now my phone. | | If people are interested in the history that drives some | of what it ended up the way it did, this is a good start: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_card | | For younger developers who are used to everything being | connected, it's really worth thinking about how you'd | build a reasonably robust, hard-to-exploit system when | many of the important terminals, as on busses, were | usually out of contact. | inferiorhuman wrote: | I've had days when I've used 4 systems, for example. | | Sure, I've done similar trips and the worst part was not | the payment but rather the obstacles that BART puts up | and the sparse service in the suburbs. BART's TVMs have | historically made it difficult to pay with cash _and_ | credit cards. TransLink /Clipper didn't fix that. | If people are interested in the history that drives some | of what it ended up the way it did | | The answer is, of course, that the Bay Area is fiercely | provincial. The disparate payment methods were merely a | symptom, as is evidenced by the wide array of fare | policies. We didn't/don't need a single fare system we | need a single hierarchy to unify all of the different | transit systems. For younger developers | who are used to everything being connected, it's | really worth thinking about how you'd build a reasonably | robust, hard-to-exploit system when many of the | important terminals, as on busses, were usually out of | contact. | | The problem with this is that by the time TransLink | rolled around the rest of the world already had the | technology and did a better job. Portland's TriMet had | mobile payments (QR codes and NFC) long before the Bay | Area. Mifare had already been exploited, and a huge chunk | of the Bay Area's buses were connected to cellular data | networks. | mikae1 wrote: | _> With the new system, you just buy one monthly ticket, and | you can ride on local transit anywhere in Germany. There 's no | more worrying about different ticketing systems, if city X is | in transit region Y, and so on._ | | There were some exceptions mentioned in | https://youtu.be/hzuAohOSLi4, but perhaps those were only for | inter-city transport. | bahnkenner wrote: | By "local" transit, I mean regional commuter trains | (Regionalbahn, Regionalexpress and S-Bahn), not the faster | long-distance trains (Intercity and Intercity-Express, the | latter being Germany's high-speed trains). | morsch wrote: | I mean, you don't _have_ to figure it out. You can just punch | in start and end of your journey into one of several apps that | work nationwide, and pay whatever it says. | | Of course, many people don't have any of the apps, particularly | people who rarely use public transport, which are also the | people most easily confuse by the complicated fee structure. | | Unfortunately, the new monthly ticket does little to help them. | 49 EUR isn't a value proposition for them, and so they are | still stuck with the awful status quo. | eliaspro wrote: | You're out of luck, if none of the route segments is served | by Deutsche Bahn (which is often the case for regional | routes), because then you'll be unable to buy your ticket | using the most common nation-wide app DB Navigator. | morsch wrote: | That's not true, they sell tickets for many regional | transport associations. | | https://www.bahn.de/angebot/regio/verbuende | | Not all of them, I'm sure, but all of the major ones seem | to be covered. | | I'm using it every day, because it's better than using the | association's own app, which is not saying much. Or I used | to, anyway, now I'm doing the 49 EUR thing. | bahnkenner wrote: | There are regions where the DB app will only sell you | tickets that cross the region's borders, but not tickets | that are wholly inside the region. There's even at least | one region I know of that straight up does not do online | ticketing. You have to buy physical tickets, in person, | at a machine. | generationP wrote: | DB Navigator for regional transport is hit-and-miss. I've | been using it a lot around the southwest, but it's fickle | and sometimes fails to offer me tickets for no clear | reasons (seemingly at random; the same connections by the | same companies work on other days). And don't forget that | a lot of the German hinterlands has very spotty to no | mobile data. | fweimer wrote: | Or worse, you can still buy the ticket, but it's not valid | for any trains actually in service. This stuff is really | non-obvious. For example, train operators can license | certain Deutsche Bahn trademarks without accepting Deutsche | Bahn tickets. | danhor wrote: | Where? As far as I know, all the Deutsche Bahn Tickets | for regional traffic use the Deutschlandtarif, which is | accepted in all "normal" (excluding heritage trains and | the likes) regional trains in all of Germany. | calaphos wrote: | For regular commuters the price is a big deal. Not only where | tickets crossing multiple zones complicated to get but also | unreasonably expensive (~200Eur/Month). In contrast the 49 | Euros is less expensive than (almost?) any single zone monthly | ticket out there. | brd529 wrote: | Monthly train pass on New Jersey Transit, LIRR and Metro | North can get to above $300 once you are 20 miles from NYC. | ghaff wrote: | About 40 miles outside of Boston I'd be around $500/month | to have commuter rail plus subway per month. | kspacewalk2 wrote: | They're essentially actively trying to dissuade talking | public transit regionally. Curious choice. | gravypod wrote: | If only NY/NJ could figure this out. I often take a longer | route to work as it's much cheaper than buying the three | separate tickets I'd need. | moltar wrote: | You are so right! I was just in Munich and had some of the most | confusing experience in any public transport system I've ever | used. And I've seen many! It was so shocking. The UIs of the | ticket machines are horrendously slow and confusing. Stop names | are always in German even when switching languages. This, of | course, doesn't align with Google Maps half the time, as my GM | is set to English. | tcptomato wrote: | What stop names are translated? | 3D30497420 wrote: | A good example of this complexity is Berlin. Many people have | monthly passes for just A and B zones, which comprise the bulk | of central Berlin. However, the new airport is just over the | border in zone C, which requires an additional ticket. The | transit authority knows this and will catch and fine people who | neglected or forgot to buy a B to C ticket. | patall wrote: | What is complex about the B/C border? That Honow 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. | throwaway60607 wrote: | 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. | tcptomato wrote: | Berlin is one of the 16 federal states of the Federal | Republic of Germany. | mahathu wrote: | The airport is located in Schonefeld, 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. | watwut wrote: | Germany is federation of 16 or so states | rcme wrote: | 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. | mejutoco wrote: | 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. | cbmuser wrote: | > 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. | [deleted] | cbmuser wrote: | If you think that Berlin's zone system is complex, you | haven't seen the public transport in many other cities like | Munich which has 6 zones or Japanese cities where trains are | operated by different companies. | | Berlin's system is rather simple and comparably cheap. | TulliusCicero wrote: | Yeah but these days Japanese trains can all use the suica | (and similar) cards to tap in and out, right? You don't | actually need to understand the different rail companies or | zones or whatever, you just get your one card and put money | on it and then tap. | inferiorhuman wrote: | For regional, yes, a Passmo, Suica, or whatever card | works pretty much everywhere. For Shinkansen service, you | still have to buy tickets. | poulsbohemian wrote: | Your comment is a fascinating take on _perspective_. To you it | 's a fractured, difficult system. To this American, it has been | absolutely futuristic every time I've been there. Wish we could | get such an awful system anywhere near where I live. | rconti wrote: | Yup. As an American, I found it quite easy to navigate | transit systems every time I visited Germany; most recently | Berlin. Especially these days with things like Google/Apple | maps transit directions that work more-or-less flawlessly. | But maybe it's because I'm used to systems like Caltrain that | don't even have a functioning app, and which just randomly | cancel trains for huge chunks of the day, or BART, which has | an even-more-insane pay-per-distance system than anything | I've seen elsewhere. | kingofpandora wrote: | This is typical in most countries that aren't very small. I'm | struggling to think of a moderately-sized country that doesn't | work have regional transit authorities with their own ticketing | systems. I haven't been everywhere in the world so I bet they | do exist, but I've yet to see one. | z2 wrote: | While Japan has regional ticketing systems and companies, | they did standardize nationally on supporting 3 major prepaid | transit cards (pasmo, suica, icoca) so most rapid transit and | regional transit are low friction enough to just tap in and | tap out. China has done the same with T-Union. | | I suppose with NFC contactless payment, a plausible future | state is just supporting credit card payments everywhere, | though of course this doesn't solve the monthly pass problem. | ghaff wrote: | And for visitors who may not even speak the primary language, | public transit is awful in most places in terms of onboarding | jet lagged visitors. Apparently no one does UX trials of people | who have zero familiarity with the system and don't speak the | language--though at least they maybe accommodate major Western | languages. But, in general, it's pretty awful and you at least | should do some research in advance. | atourgates wrote: | Can confirm. | | I usually do a decent amount of research about public | transport in our travel destinations, so I more or less know | what type of tickets or passes I'll be buying ahead of time. | | But, last fall a flight cancellation left us with an | unexpected day in Amsterdam. | | I guided our family through immigration and customs after an | overnight flight from Canada, and then purchased what I | thought were the correct tickets for our train ride from the | airport to downtown. | | When we went past a card reader, it didn't seem to work, but | there were no turnstiles and we were able to board our train. | | There were however turnstiles when we got off at the station | downtown, and they wouldn't let us through. | | I walked over to an attendant at a podium, who looked at our | (incorrect) tickets, our obviously sleep deprived selves and | children and just laughed, told us we'd bought the wrong | tickets, and let us through. | | I always imagined the world of high-stakes metro-related | international criminality would come with more consequences | than being good-naturedly laughed at by a Nederlandse | Spoorwegen employee. | riedel wrote: | I agree that vending machines are really a mess. However I | recommend the Deutsche Bahn Navigator App. If you have an | account you can easily get most tickets. | | Also states like Baden-Wurttemberg got their act together | recently and made it possible to book tickets all way | through. | | I recently was in Netherlands trying to get from the Hague to | the islands south of Rotterdam and it was also quite | confusing. | | but the new ticket is really nice wrt booking. | ghaff wrote: | I was just in Amsterdam. One of our locals there said that, | although there's an ongoing switch to just tapping | contactless credit cards, he advised just getting a | contactless transit chip card because even if it cost a few | dollar more it would more reliably work everywhere. Things | have improved in most places over time but it can still be | confusing for the occasional visitor. | | I remember at some point pre-pandemic I was in the UK with | a friend and we had all these these different | tickets/receipts were trying to use to go through a | turnstile and doubtless really pissing off the people lined | up behind us but it was super-unintuitive what we needed to | stick into the machine. | Symbiote wrote: | The UK has since simplified that into one ticket, | possibly also a receipt of you ask for it. | | Prior to this, the ticket and seat reservation were | seperate bit of paper. | ghaff wrote: | Yeah, it seemed better last time I was traveling there as | I recall. | Maarten88 wrote: | > I recently was in Netherlands trying to get from the | Hague to the islands south of Rotterdam and it was also | quite confusing. | | You can just swipe your phone (Apple Pay / Google Wallet) | or credit/debit card to check in and out (do not forget to | check out!) and you're done. Works for all public transport | in the Netherlands. | | Of course there are also more traditional ways to pay for | your ticket, but it does not get much simpler than this | imo. | cmarschner wrote: | The company that runs the DB system (HAFAS) provides this | system for half of the European railways though. And, | interestingly enough, also for BART. | | https://www.hacon.de/unternehmen/ | formerly_proven wrote: | Their codebase has to be a wild ride. There are still | traces from the days it ran as Windows binaries in CGI | fashion (very much doubt they still do it like that, just | like a large number of eBay URLs still contain the | ebayISAPI.dll bit from the time the site was literally a | Microsoft IIS plugin). On the DB instance it also outputs | like five different generations of UIs depending on the | exact parameters you hand it. You can also find several | different iterations of APIs, like one search API will | output actual, non-trivial JS code to fill auto- | completes, another gives you JSON with a totally | different format and yet another XML with everything | slightly different again. From their job postings it | follows their backend is C++. | | The previous system came from the 80s and ran on multiple | Tandem/Nonstop clusters. | KptMarchewa wrote: | It remembers X.25 networks. | mcspiff wrote: | I will given Berlin credit here -- after checking in to our | accommodations (took a taxi from the airport), I poked a | ticket machine, quickly saw the Union Jack flag and got the | machine into English. Couple minutes later we had our 1 week | passes in hand. In general I found the system very | approachable, using google maps for route planning. | bombcar wrote: | Every transit system should have a "tourist day pass" that is | moderately expensive but allows you to use anything for 24 | hours or so. | jtvjan wrote: | I think having tickets at all is antiquated. In the | Netherlands, there are terminals at the stations you tap | your bank card against to "check in". When you get off, you | tap it again at that station and your card gets charged. | Sometimes the conductor comes around with a device to make | sure people have checked in. | | If you don't want your travel to be associated with your | bank account, you can get a chip card which can be topped | up using cash. | josefx wrote: | I have about half a dozen different ways to get from one | train station to another, some with first and second | class options. Just tapping in and out would not be | sufficient to find out how much I have to pay or in some | cases which company to reimburse. | andrewshadura wrote: | For that reason before tapping in, you can select the | correct class and discount in the app. | Scoundreller wrote: | Integrate it into my visa (stamp). | | I'm also surprised airports don't integrate it into their | passenger fees and boarding passes. But maybe that's | getting a little too multi-modal to handle. | KptMarchewa wrote: | Very impractical on some routes, no one is even going to | look at your passport in Schengen area flights. | ghaff wrote: | Depending on what I'm doing I often don't want to pay a | lot for public transit because I won't use it much. And | often don't even get a stamp, e.g. going to the UK from | the US. | bombolo wrote: | Yes like in london. | | I bought a 24h pass at 8pm, only to find out it's 24h only | if you buy it at 00.00, because they all expire at | midnight. | | They are basically running a legalised tourist scam over | there. I can imagine hundreds of thousands of people | falling for this. | Symbiote wrote: | In London, aren't you pushed towards using a contactless | credit or debit card? | | (They expire at 4am, though the point remains.) | f_allwein wrote: | In Rome, you can now just tap contactless payment cards (/ | smartphones, I assume) to readers in buses/ at underground | stations. Huge step up from the previous system, which was | based on buying paper tickets from newsagents. | willyt wrote: | But now Italian newsagents don't get to laugh at us | pronouncing the 'g' in biglietti. Makes me feel a bit | nostalgic/sad for some reason. | akavi wrote: | The "g" is pronounced (in a sense). In Italian, the | digraph "gl" represents a single sound /y/, which is | distinct from the sound represented by "l" alone (/l/) | ghaff wrote: | City passes are mostly a lousy deal unless you're zipping | here and there all day every day. Pay per use is almost | always a better deal but you need to know the particulars | and get the right card/amount. | atourgates wrote: | True, but I often find them worth it to not have to worry | about buying appropriate tickets for every journey when | I'm a tourist in an unfamiliar city. And on many transit | systems, the options seem to be, "Be a local and get an | affordable pass or reloadable card, buy individual | tickets for every journey, or be a visitor and buy a | moderately more expensive tourist day pass." | | This is extra true if you're traveling with a family | including kids, as I often am. | camillomiller wrote: | Berlin reporting: this is huge for anyone taking public | transport. Monthly ticket for the AB area alone was way above | 80/EUR/month for the city only. This is 49 for everything | anywhere in Germany except for high speed long distance trains, | flixbuses and flixtrains (the latter are private entities) | mqus wrote: | I thought the ticket was more like 63 Euros per Month, when | paid yearly ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-05-01 23:01 UTC)