I was maybe 3-4 blocks from a regional rail or S-Bahn station which that ticket entitles you to ride and it is a great ticket that can get you to nearby mountains or the Czech Republic or nearby cities like Leipzig. Really you could ride across Germany on the S-Bahn comfortably stopping where you want and staying overnight in a hotel occasionally. Nothing beat those sleeper trains which eliminated the hotel stay then you wake up in Dortmund and change trains for Amsterdam.
(EMEA people in 1998 seemed more inclined to use airlines than rail to go to distant domestic and international cities, they had service that was better and cheaper than the US; air service has become even more competitive in EMEA since then)
Dresdenites I knew who had cars would drive them to the appliance and furniture stores and even to nearby places like Quedlinburg and even to Berlin, Munich, Bremen, etc. with a resignation to traffic jams like that of the Los Angelino.
Delivery service is far along in the US and I would expect a truck to deliver anything larger than 7 cubic feet of sawdust even on my farm so I don’t need a truck. I have 8 horses but no trailer because we know many people who will move a horse for us for less than a month’s payment on a big ass truck.
It translates to about $1 a gallon tax on gasoline which is (a) not enough to change people’s behavior (at its peak gas was almost $2 more than it is now and I drove just the same) but (b) people in 2024 will complain bitterly about it anyway. That is, polities are hypersensitized to that sort of imposed solution right now: for a long time people in the US accepted fluctuations in the gas price because it was seen as a market price so we only had riots whenever a black person was shot by the cops; in “normal” countries (including France and Egypt) you have riots when the price of petroleum goes up because it is seen as being controlled by the state. I think the US has gotten more “normal” post COVID-19 and with GHG controls on the horizon. $1 a gallon is not quite going to make EVs beat gas but it certainly happens at a price below $500 a tonne.
Favorable CCS from industrial sources is quoted around $100 a tonne but that is (c) from a plant that runs 24-7 (e.g. if your natural gas plant runs 20% of the time the capital cost of CCS is multiplied 5x at least disregarding that the plant might not run well when it is starting up and shutting down) and (d) has few realizations.
The biggest positive externality of rail is suppressed traffic congestion, it is a big quality of life thing if you can avoid sitting in a traffic jam. (Reminds me of posters I saw in Germany that said Zukunft onhe Stau)
I find rail tourism to be luxurious compared to motortourism in that one gets to the center of town and doesn’t need to stress about parking, traffic and all that. Contrast that to the fight to refuel your rental car at the airport.