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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Case in point: nuclear energy popularity in Germany

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, apples to oranges.

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

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

Good of the goose, good of the gander, right?

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

But:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You could buy an electric scooter.

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

The only faster means were motorbikes & mopeds.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your comments are fascinating. Completely nonsense, but fascinating.

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

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

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

No, I don't.

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

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

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

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

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

> can come 30 minutes early from schedule

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

Padding actually makes those timings reliable.

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

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

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

> and introduce electronic ticket checks at every stop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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