Germany's 9-Euro Train Tickets Scheme 'Saved 1.8 Million Tons of CO2 Emissions' (theguardian.com) 177
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Germany's three-month experiment with 9-euro tickets for a month's unlimited travel on regional train networks, trams and buses saved about 1.8 million tons of CO2 emissions, it has been claimed. Since its introduction on June 1 to cut fuel consumption and relieve a cost of living crisis, about 52 million tickets have been sold, a fifth of these to people who did not ordinarily use public transport. The scheme is due to end on Wednesday.
The Association of German Transport Companies (VDV), which carried out the research, said the number of people who switched from cars to public transport as a result of the 9-euro ticket was behind the saving in emissions. "The popularity of the 9-euro tickets had been unabated and the positive effect on it in tackling climate change is verifiable," the VDV said. It said the emissions saved were equivalent to the powering of 350,000 homes, and a similar drop would be seen over the period of a year if Germany introduced a speed limit on its motorways. A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 tons of carbon a year. The scheme is also believed to have helped keep inflation, currently at about 8%, slightly lower than it otherwise would have been. Additionally, the scheme "cut through swathes of complication ranging from myriad transport zones to ticket categories that differ greatly from region to region," reports The Guardian. "Just over 37% of people who bought the ticket used it to get to work, 50% used it for everyday journeys such as to go shopping or visit the doctor, 40% used it to visit people, and 33% used it for day trips."
"The government and regional administrations are under huge pressure to continue the ticket in some form. The expectation is that any replacement would be priced at least six times higher, but surveys show enthusiasm for such a scheme is high."
The Association of German Transport Companies (VDV), which carried out the research, said the number of people who switched from cars to public transport as a result of the 9-euro ticket was behind the saving in emissions. "The popularity of the 9-euro tickets had been unabated and the positive effect on it in tackling climate change is verifiable," the VDV said. It said the emissions saved were equivalent to the powering of 350,000 homes, and a similar drop would be seen over the period of a year if Germany introduced a speed limit on its motorways. A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 tons of carbon a year. The scheme is also believed to have helped keep inflation, currently at about 8%, slightly lower than it otherwise would have been. Additionally, the scheme "cut through swathes of complication ranging from myriad transport zones to ticket categories that differ greatly from region to region," reports The Guardian. "Just over 37% of people who bought the ticket used it to get to work, 50% used it for everyday journeys such as to go shopping or visit the doctor, 40% used it to visit people, and 33% used it for day trips."
"The government and regional administrations are under huge pressure to continue the ticket in some form. The expectation is that any replacement would be priced at least six times higher, but surveys show enthusiasm for such a scheme is high."
Berlin (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Berlin (Score:2)
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Berlin is a bad example for this because public transport was already great there before this ticket. The 9â ticket just made it a lot cheaper. Many people living there do not have a car because they do not need one. The main benefit is people using public transport instead of cars. And that happened quite often.
I saw many people using it for going hiking, getting further outside the city than they normally would on a normal ticket. It definitely changed things during the vacation, not so sure how much it would change in everyday, because public transport is already faster and better than the mess that is the "major roads" of Berlin.
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(Not that I'm against taking an efficiency dividend partly in reduced emissions but also in increased mobility.)
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and a similar drop would be seen over the period of a year if Germany introduced a speed limit on its motorways.
A... speed limit? SPEED LIMIT??!!? What's the point of having Germany if you can't go as fast as you want on the autobahns?
Oh for mod points (Score:2)
Thanks for a giggle...
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The trains have been so full like I have never seen before, but yes, it was awesome. I have visited so many small beautiful towns 200 km around Frankfurt/Main and instead of paying for the ticket I've been eating out there and spent time at the museums boosting the local economy a little.
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You were in a city. Most german cities have good public transport and you can get from A to B by underground and bus faster than by car if there's any traffic on the road.
Try the same in the countryside, where the bus leaves once an hour, if you are lucky, and twice a day if you're not. Where thousands of train stations have been closed over the past decades because they aren't profitable and where things like Uber or renting a scooter aren't a thing.
That includes many small cities which are counted when yo
Spain (Score:5, Informative)
Here in Spain they just made all trains free until January.
(apart from the luxury high-speed ones)
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Here in Spain they just made all* trains free until January
(apart from the luxury high-speed ones)
*... for regular commuting, i.e., if you make at least 16 trips in the free period.
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if you make at least 16 trips in the free period.
The ticket requires a 10 Euro "deposit" which you lose if you don't make 16 trips.
Even if you only make one return trip somewhere you're probably still ahead.
Great idea (Score:2)
This is the way governments should work, provide a public service with a decent level of quality for a reasonable cost - even 6x or whatever they are talking about is very reasonable for what they provide.
It does not eliminate car use but as the story shows, it provides a great alternative that a lot of people will take advantage of when it's easy enough to do so.
Public transportation should be free everywhere. (Score:2)
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There is nothing inherently more seducing about cars.
It all depends on where you live and what time environment around you is like. If you live in most of America where almost everything is bent towards making cars the only option, then yes cars are much better than anything else, because everything else almost by design sucks.
I don't live in America, and I don't own a car. I can certainly afford one, but all it would do is sit three losing money, doing nothing of use. For the few times a year one would be
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There is nothing inherently more seducing about cars.
Uhh.... Going from exactly where you live to exactly where you want to be in one go, with whatever personal things you installed to make the car yours, leaving when you want, not on a schedule, having the vehicle all for yourself, being able to turn on any music you like, ...
Seriously, personal transport has tons of obvious benefits. Doesn't mean public transport shouldn't be better/the norm, but saying there isn't anything inherently more seducing sounds pretty silly...
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There is nothing inherently more seducing about cars.
Uhh.... Going from exactly where you live to exactly where you want to be in one go, with whatever personal things you installed to make the car yours, leaving when you want, not on a schedule, having the vehicle all for yourself, being able to turn on any music you like, ...
And it only cost you $20,000!
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101% worth it IMHO.
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Maybe a look at China and its social system, soon coming to your country(tm), where you are forbidden to take the plane, to take the train, at the government's whim, will make you understand the value of a personally owned mean of tranportation?
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Well, sadly, wait until all cars are "connected" together and "they" can not only track you, but control your car....
If your social credit score drops too low...or maybe you make the wrong statement when drinking and twittering late at night, your ability to travel
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Mostly cars are cheap because you don't pay many of the costs associated with it. The roads and parking are heavily subsidized. Most studies find that it is about $5K - $10K per year per car. The gas taxes don't cover that and raising them enough to cover it would cause people to be extremely upset. Far less than that could be spent on public transit to get the best system in the world.
Even things like legally mandated parking minimums are subsidies to cars. Companies have to purchase expensive land far bey
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No, a public transport system without roads would be orders of magnitude more expensive than the current cost of roads.
You need to cover EVERYWHERE, if not with roads and buses then that means you would need to build rail lines absolutely everywhere. Rails also require considerably more space for turning etc, and a lot more planning to ensure that stationary trains don't block the line for other users.
If buses are a part of your public transport system, then you still need roads to carry them.
Not only does
But it pissed off the rich (Score:2)
Because suddenly all the plebes invaded their holiday spots that these unwashed masses couldn't afford going to before because going there for a day was too expensive and staying there wasn't really an option either for the same reason.
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Err no. Sorry but while day tripping to destinations increased it was never something done by the "rich". Lower middle class maybe. Trains were never really expensive in Germany to begin with.
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No, the rich could afford to drive up to Sylt and stay there for their vacation. But with the "practically free" train tickets, now Hartz IV (the German version of "social security, foot stamp level") recepients could now go there for a day, not spend a dime and leave again at night. And of course that didn't please the expensive holiday resorts one bit, because these "freeloaders" used their beaches without paying for their overpriced hotel rooms and restaurants.
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I think there was just one piece of news in early June about "punks with dogs going to Sylt for Pentecost", but I don't think there was an actual invasion of poor people afterwards. At least 0 mention of that in German media.
Also it's a problem that people like us conflate poor people with trouble makers. There are many things in life that can lead to poverty, and the "voluntarily poor" that people complain about (punks with dogs...) are a very small fraction of that population. Poor people are mostly singl
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Poor people are, generally speaking, no trouble makers. It's not like they enjoy not having money and flaunt it. They just wanted to have a nice day at the beach, nothing else.
The "problem" was rather the usual: Envy. The "rich" that spent a fortune on staying there were looking at the "poor" who had pretty much the same level of enjoyment "for free" and suddenly couldn't really enjoy their posh holiday anymore when they realized that they could have had the same, too, just for about 500 a day less.
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Well, to play devils advocate...
There is pretty much always higher crime associated with the poorer / poverty living areas.
They tend to have MUCH more vandalism, graffiti, etc that you see in more affluent areas.
And, it appears in this case, this type of behavior did indeed follow the poorer lot as they went to the more affluent areas for free.
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While traveling by train isn't necessarily reserved for 'the rich', public transport *is* prohibitively expensive for large parts of the German population. To give an example, from the small German town where I currently live to the next bigger city it is 20 km (12 miles) by car, which is 3 € fuel (6 € return) with my old and not too economical car at the current extreme fuel prices, a modern economy car would reduce that to half (not even talking about EVs here). A single round-trip ticket by tra
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A monthly commuter ticket costs â 140. That must be an extremley odd place.
Can you post the names of the towns.
I used to have monthly tickets from Karlsruhe to Stuttgart which is by train roughly 120km (I estimate), for 49 EURO.
Your 20km trip makes no sense, not even the EURO 12,80 back and forth sound plausible, but I used to have a 50% reduction card, so no real idea about that.
143 Million remaining (Score:2)
https://www.tagesschau.de/wirt... [tagesschau.de]
Seriously, the only way to get rid of this is electro plus solar, wind or nuclear.
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Re:Public Transportation is a right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe not exactly a "right", but most certainly a smart thing for a government to do.
Transporting people is a necessity of modern life. People need to get to and from work, to and from leisure activities, to and from places for various reasons, and pretty much all of these reasons are in the interest of said government, and society as a whole. If people don't get to work, they don't generate revenue and don't provide goods and services. If they don't get to where they can buy them, those goods and services stay unsold. Both are in the interest of government and commerce.
Having people travel individually is a headache for everyone. Government needs to provide the space for the cars and maintain it. Industry needs to pay premium to be placed at where people can actually get to and provide parking space (and you know how much real estate in inner cities cost). And of course the people ain't too happy about living next to a busy highway with tons of cars moving past every minute either.
So it's probably not exactly what I'd consider a "right", but it certainly is something that offers everyone a benefit, even if they don't use it themselves.
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Roads are paid for from taxation, because they are vital infrastructure. We should treat public transport the same way.
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Lots of being needing transportation on a regular basis is a problem, and one that's caused partly by city planning which keeps residential areas away from areas containing workplaces and leisure activities, and partly by the attitude of employers demanding physical presence and fixed working hours when modern technology often makes that no longer necessary.
Increasing the density of transportation is no solution, you cram people in like sardines, encourage the spread of disease, and due to the extra density
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That's a nice idea but not always an option. You'll notice that the jobs where remote work is possible is also the more "white collar" kind of work. Anything "menial" has to be performed on site. Which is also the people who can't just simply move every time their workplace changes. Not to mention that living right next to your work place may well be prohibitively expensive, twice so if you're working in some kind of service industry that caters to rich peoples' needs. These establishments tend to be where
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We absolutely need to reduce the number of necessary trips through better urban planning, remote work, etc.
But it's not either/or. I technically never need to leave my apartment, but like most everyone, woudl go nuts pretty quickly. People need to meet friends and family, go to restaurants, theaters,sports, etc. I don't have an exact source but I think something like 50% of the people don't have desk jobs and would need to go to work anyway.
I live within a 5 minute walk from the office because the zoning is
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Now for those of you that might not understand, count to 10 before replying.
When people claim something is a right then I remind them that keeping and bearing arms is also a right. A right to arms means you can have whatever weapons you constructed by your own hands or purchased with your own money. Likewise you have a right to healthcare, meaning the government cannot interfere with medical services, devices, and drugs that you bought. If you can't afford the medical services you require then the government is not obligated to provide them, but is also not restricted from provi
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Likewise you have a right to healthcare, meaning the government cannot interfere with medical services, devices, and drugs that you bought.
oO!?
If you can't afford the medical services you require then the government is not obligated to provide them
Trolling again? Seems you are not even realizing on how many levels and meta levels you are contradicting yourself.
Where is your right if you can not have it if you have no money?
I suggest to read the humans rights charter ...
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I have the right to medical care under the GI Bill of Rights. While that obligates the government to provide for my care that care is provided where, when, how, and by whom the government chooses. My options for care are limited. When I complain then I'm simply told I can seek health care elsewhere at my own expense. I have the right to health care much like anyone else, I can get all the healthcare I can pay for myself. If I can't pay for it then I'm getting care when it is convenient for the governme
Re:Public Transportation is a right. (Score:4, Informative)
Man that's a big rant that wouldn't be necessary if you looked around and saw that the healthcare systems in, e.g., Europe actually work just fine and people are happy [sci-hub.se] with them. [statista.com]
Some and some (Score:5, Insightful)
The right to free legal representation when charged with an offence is one example of a right that contradicts your model. This is because the citizen is far less powerful than the state, so must be helped to ensure - or at least improve - the probability that justice will be done. Of course the fact that the public defender services in most of the USA are dreadful is a scandal which shames the country almost as much as the state of many of its prisons.
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Right to bear arms in its current form was pretty much invented out of whole cloth by the NRA in the last 50 years or so.
https://www.brennancenter.org/... [brennancenter.org]
When the constitution was written "arms" specifically means weapons in a military context.
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When the constitution was written "arms" specifically means weapons in a military context.
Recent court cases disagree. The right as written was to assure that the states could raise a militia in case of the federal government coming to invade, or failing to act should there be a foreign invader. That was not the only intent of the right. The right was also for personal defense against criminals. This interpretation has been upheld numerous times in recent history. The right to keep and bear arms means the government can't prevent or delay the acquisition of arms when acquired for any lawful
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Recent court cases disagree.
Court cases rule on the decision of judges, they have no impact on what was intended by the writers of the constitution. It in itself becomes a whole separate means of writing law, just as Roe v Wade legalised abortion (without any act of Congress) and how it was overturned again by the same court (without any act of Congress). You can interpret what you want from a legal text, it doesn't have impact on the original intent and scholars differ greatly with court opinions on the matter.
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A right of the people does not create an obligation on the government to provide anything.
There are obvious examples that disprove that, such as the right to an attorney. Generally speaking though, this is the main difference between freedom in Europe and in the US.
The US and Europe both have "negative" freedom, that is freedom from interference by the government. But Europe also has a lot of "positive" freedom, which requires the government to provide certain things. Healthcare, education, shelter, the basics of life. Such things are considered human rights in Europe.
Note: I did not invent the
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Where do we draw the lines between right and government obligations. What keeps this from turning into an obligation for conscripted service? You want free education? Free health care? Free housing? Free food? Sign here. From then on the government owns you for the next 8 years for your training and years of work to pay back your debt.
That might not be a bad choice for many. They start with a shitty high school education and then go through a plan that sets them up for a government job, and then if
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Where do we draw the lines between right and government obligations. What keeps this from turning into an obligation for conscripted service? You want free education? Free health care? Free housing? Free food? Sign here. From then on the government owns you for the next 8 years for your training and years of work to pay back your debt.
The point of human rights is that everyone gets them with no obligation. Indeed, sometimes the people who benefit from them have wronged us, but we do not stoop to their level.
In Europe there are three countries with conscription, all less than a year. The number has kept falling, even after the introduction of the ECHR and codified positive freedoms. If it's a slippery slope, it's tilting away from conscription.
The limits are the negative rights. Anything like conscription has to be balanced against the in
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"A right of the people does not create an obligation on the government to provide anything"
The intersection of negative rights and liberty rights does not create an obligation on the government to provide anything, but that is just a definition not an argument
In addition, you offer no comment at all on positive rights or claim rights, but that does not constitute an refutation.
Re:Public Transportation is a right. (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is this moderated troll?
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Material goods and services cannot be rights, there is a word for it - entitlements. The OP redefines meanings of words for no reason except to incite a flamewar.
I am quite amused by people who redefine meanings of words instead of using correct wording. This is done on daily basis by politicians all around the globe of course. An entitlement is a perfectly cromulent word and it applies, you can be all for entitlements.
A right of a person does not require that someone provides anything material, whether
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More like a necessity. But I'm counting public roads/throughfares/paths as a part of public transportation.
What form public transportation takes is a feature of your society. When I lived in Japan, there were public walkways just about everywhere. They went through the private farmlands (well, rice paddies), up mountains, through city blocks. They also had a lot of cars, but the cars were clearly something "added on". They also had a good train system. And LOTS of taxis. But the basis was walking. (
Re:Public Transportation is a right. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, out here in the reality of Europe, trains are mostly useful for people living in rural areas where these trains are a quick and affordable way for people who don't have cars (read: poor people, school children and pensioners) to get into the city for work, leisure and chores in the only affordable way.
I know that in the US people think owning a car is pretty much a right, if not a necessity of life, but affording one over here is pretty much a privilege.
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Re:Public Transportation is a right. (Score:5, Interesting)
in the Netherlands, public transit is for the poor and the rich
FYI I'm the top 3% of earners in the Netherlands and I use public transport and bicycles to get around. My parents are coming to visit in a few weeks and I told them I won't be picking them up from the airport, they should catch a train.
If you're well off and have money to burn there's nice 1st class carriages on most ICE trains where you can guarantee a seat even during peak hour. That's what separates the rich from the poor.
Even the PM who resigned in January jumped on his bike and cycled to the royal palace to drop his resignation letter off with the king. During COVID and a crackdown on organised crime his security detail suggested he should drive a car with a visible security detail, he rejected that too preferring to cycle to work like normal.
Germany isn't too different with public transport. You'll find people drinking out of a paper bag. You'll find people in Amani suits.
In Austria at 2am I took a metro from the Ball of the Viennese Coffeehouse Owners dressed in black tie all the way to the edge of the city where we were staying. We weren't the only ones. Quite a few people dressed in black tie along side rough youths and the occasional passed out alcoholic on the metro.
The Netherlands is not unique in having a great public transport system.
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Having driven a few times in the Netherlands (mostly on weekends), I got the feeling that most of the population were driving on the motorway all weekend...
They were likely trying to get out of the Netherlands. The Dutch may have been invaded by Germany during the war, but they invade every other country every weekend.
The stupid thing is you should see the roads this week due to the NS Strike. https://www.paudal.com/2022/08... [paudal.com]
Re: Public Transportation is a right. (Score:3)
I disagree thats it is used by the poor rural people. I lived in Switzerland for 10 years and public transport was used by all classes of people, young, old, poorer, wealthier, urban and rural. However, I was surprised when I went to Los Angeles on a business trip and the people who took public transport were almost exclusively poor.
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Get off your high horse. Nobody is asking rural people to pay for city people. In fact, the city folk have been subsidizing rural infrastructure for at least the last 100 years.
Re:Farthest thing from a right (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps, not free, but the government can and should choose what transportation to subsidize.
In the US, the train system gets very little money compared to the road system.
If we removed the government subsidies/funding of the road system, _all_ roads would be toll roads, and other transportation may look more inviting. Working remotely would become the norm for many jobs.
But, unfortunately, it does not work that way. The government does not want solutions that are optimal, efficient or sustainable.
The government (or most members of government) want the solutions that leads to re-election. That means keep the "donors" happy, keep the unions happy. Keep the media happy. In theory, listen to the people. In practice, convince the people. Congress members all have approval below the worst presidents. There is a reason for that. The people are effectually not their constituents.
Congress critters get reelected (Score:2)
'Congress members all have approval below the worst presidents. There is a reason for that. The people are effectually not their constituents.'
It appears that people support THEIR representatives, but have no confidence in everyone else's. Yes, to some extent companies bribes (sorry - I mean campaign contributions) do enable their reelection, but equally if they are demonstrably fighting for their constituents against the establishment, they points for that. The classic example of that is the curmudgeon Dem
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Well...to an extent. But it's also true that the choices of who to vote for aren't that great. Sometimes it's "Better the devil you know".
Despite its problems, I'd really prefer Instant Runoff Voting, or one of the similar alternatives. Then I could vote for the candidate I likes. (OTOH, Australia argues that the results might not be much, if any, better.)
Single Transferrable Vote (Score:2)
Great system used in Ireland; constituencies have 3 - 5 members and voters get to pick as many as they want in an order of preference. Power to the people!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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That's because we largely don't want trains. Cars are better.
Re:Farthest thing from a right (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we please get back to some measure of rational thinking, where there's no need for over-blown statements?
User advantages of cars over trains: door-to-door; more choice of vehicle; private space; can stop en-route or change routes
User advantages of trains over cars: safer; can use the time for rest or work; can get up and move around while onboard; smoother ride (fewer curves, smoother acceleration, no sudden stops).
For some routes, trains are faster than cars (where door-to-station times are small and the train avoids congestion), and for others cars are faster than trains.
For societies as a while, trains offer significant additional advantages over cars, especially lower congestion levels, lower pollution levels, less noise, and lower carbon intensity. But upfront costs are higher and more of the direct costs come from the public purse.
So there are things to like and dislike about these two modes of transport, just as there are with every other.
It doesn't need to be a tiresome war
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You can contrive situations where a train is more convenient, when you happen to live next to a station and the place you're going to is next to another station on the same line and you aren't carrying significant amounts of luggage and you want to travel at the time the train is running.
But in the real world those conditions are very rarely met and most people would rather drive. What this experiment shows is that people will usually choose to drive and will only take the train if they either have no choic
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Contrivied? That is 80% of people living in major European cities. Public transport is right outside your door, and going to the place you work. For some it is inconvinient because you need to take a longer route to get to work, or change multiple times making it slower, but for most it is also FASTER than a car.
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public transportation advantages: usually cheaper than total ownership cost of a car (YMMV!), no parking problems at destination, no stops for refueling/recharging necessary (but have more stops in-between except in express trains/buses), no lavatory stops necessary on large trains and some buses, can use the phone for texting, makes traveling in larger groups more fun (in my experience).
car advantages: flexible schedule, you can take more/larger suitcases with you (depending on car and passenger
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User advantages of cars over trains: door-to-door
Rather than "door-to-door" the reality is often "From where the car is parked to a free parking space near where you want to go". Depending on the area that can be very inconvenient.
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Well, unless you work at the train station or bus station, a private car is STILL leaps ahead more convenient than mass transportation and more door-to-door than public mass transportation could ever be.
Something I appreciate whenever the weather is (like now) very hot and humid with daily tropical style rainstorms, and when I
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Cars are better.
Better for what? Consuming time which could be better spent doing literally anything other than concentrating on the fucking horrendous waste of life known as driving?
Cars are better when driven by someone else. Driving a car for a commute as opposed to racing or touring is the single fucking dumbest thing we've resigned the species to doing.
The average American spends over 4 days each year just in what is considered traffic jams, to say nothing of sitting their arses in a motor vehicle because they have no
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Well, maybe things are different outside of the US where you live, but in most cases within the US, public mass transportation is much more inconvenient, never on time, and often will force you to take MORE time that if you just jumped in your private car and drove yourself.
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If we removed the government subsidies/funding of the road system, _all_ roads would be toll roads
Why? Tolls are bothersome, and you can easily pay for those roads using taxes. An excise on petrol serves as a decent substitute for charging tolls for actual usage. In the Netherlands, both our road network and public transport system are in pretty good shape, but the government take in taxes and excise from car owners still (far) exceeds the amount they spend on roads and public transport.
solutions that are optimal, efficient or sustainable.
For many people, a car is an efficient solution in terms of time and convenience, easily worth the high cost. Even
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If a normal signalling block on rails is 500 m long, you could easily fit six trains in the same space you would need for the cars to move 400 people.
IIRC minimum train separation is around 1.5km, and that's with upgraded signalling. There are also capacity challenges at stations, so in practice it is very hard to achieve even that kind of separation. By your calculation, that leaves the cars taking up only twice as much space per passenger. Not a big deal, especially outside cities where space isn't at a premium. Trams in cities don't do much better, however it does make sense to save some space there, and there are other good reasons to reduce car
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In the 1980ies, the minimum distance between trains on the tracks around Berlin, Germany, were already down to 50 m in places, albeit at very slow speeds.
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The optimal mode depends strongly on the characteristics of the trip. For small length trips hauling baggage, a car is the best current choice. Think of grocery shopping, when the nearest appropriate grocery store is over half a mile away. It's hard to imagine railroads being an optimal solution there, even if it stopped in front of both your house and the grocery store. Bicycles could work for very light loads, and tricycles for heavier loads, but there would need to be save and convenient access paths
Re: Farthest thing from a right (Score:5, Interesting)
A person has no right to be transported around the globe for free.
This is exaggeration, not what OP said at all. But let's be generous here and give it a pass for now.
Then let's realize that there were times when life, liberty, pursuit for happiness and whatever Mumbo-Jumbo does generally pass for a human right today wasn't one, either, not so long ago.
Currently we're debating whether access to high-speed internet should be one. (And no, it doesn't matter whether you think it should - there are those who still believe slavery should be legal.)
The pattern here: expectation of what should be a "right" for all shifts as possibilities and necessities shift. Curreny, our society necessits for its functioning, more often than not, that people be mobile enough to leap 2-digit miles distances several times a day. This qualifies as a good precursor for requesting that transportation be a right.
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You cannot have a "right" to something that doesn't exist; if there is no transportation infrastructure, you can't have access to it, and if there is more demand for transportation than there is infrastructure, you can't have access to it whenever you want.
The only right applicable to things like health care and transportation is a right "to fair access to existing infrastructure."
That is - the right codifies an individual can't be denied health care or access to public roads or public transit except for co
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Rights to healthcare or education or transportation do not magically conjure new supply out of thin air; they just mean if there is available supply it can't be arbitrarily denied. It's arguable if rights also should compel people (for governments and corporations are just people, after all) to build more infrastructure; after all if you say that someone must provide high-speed internet, how do you decide who gets forced to do the task when they otherwise wouldn't choose to do it? Or how do you justify forcing people to give their resources (via taxes) to programs they don't want to provide?
It's the goverment's job to find a solution.
Typically, what they do is make incentives. Most of the times these incentives are in the form of granted advantages (e.g. a temporary monopoly, specific price, specific kinds of protection etc) to companies if they step up to the task.
What they can also do is order e.g. a high-speed internet connection: the government being the customer, a specific company being the contractor getting paid for it. Goverments have money to spend -- it's called "taxes". Essentially
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In places where public transport infrastructure is already relatively good, like Central and Western Europe it's a lot more feasible to subsidize public transport as a means for people to get around than to subsidize fossil fuels which can't be provided in the required quantities by the local economy and thus have to be imported making you dependent a lot more on geopolitics.
Disregarding the entire cli
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It was a "success" in that they proved that with a simplified and low cost ticket system they'd convince more people to take the train. It failed in that it cost them a lot of money out of the government coffers. This does not appear to be sustainable. They need to find a compromise on simplicity and cost. Kind of like how a postal stamp is a fixed price regardless of how far the letter goes. We know that the cost of moving every letter is not the same but we accept a single cost for a stamp so we don'
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Did it cost a lot of money? Roads are hugely subsidised, and this will have reduced the use of them. How much did it save on that front?
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This is the part that bothers me. Roads and parking is heavily subsidized and people just consider that their right even though it is VERY expensive per person per year. The same money spent on public transport would make the best public transport system in the world. It would also dramatically reduce energy costs and maintenance costs compared to what we do now.
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How is that going to work?
Public transport systems also rely on the roads because there simply aren't rails everywhere, and even where there are train tracks the roads serve as a backup for instances when the train tracks are out of action (blocked, maintenance etc). You need the roads otherwise you have no public transport either.
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They dont rely on the expensive highways for instance, even if you still have to use the cheap local roads.
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With all the talk of "sustainability" there appears to be a blind spot for the economic impact
There's no such thing which is precisely why the scheme is capped in length and why any future scheme has proposed a different pricing structure.
Governments around the world need to stop subsidizing efforts to lower CO2 emissions. This is picking winners before all the entries in the competition are known.
Governments aren't picking winners, they are promoting new entries in the competition. You should really look at the subsidy schemes available before you make sweeping statements about "picking winners", as part of this look into government R&D grants.
Light bulbs and transportation over a daily commute are teeny tiny contributions to our total CO2 emissions.
Household consumption still is a double digit contributor to global CO2 emissions, and lightbulbs in western co
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I always love the "government can't pick winners!!!" complaint as if this isn't something governments have been doing forever and is the direct cause of the suburban sprawl that developed in america lol.
No no, suburbs are a clearly a natural phenomenon and anything else is going against go ehm "the invisible hand".
Carbon prices to pay for subsidies (Score:2)
At present the true cost of releasing CO2 into the environment is not reflected in the price that people pay for things. Were this achieved a lot of cash would be released.
It's a nice dream!
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Are cars sustainable? They are heavily subsidized by governments and cost more than the gas taxes bring in. They also have heavily subsidized parking all over the place. Everything from minimum parking requirements to cheap on street parking.
Public transport moves far more people at a much lower cost. If we spent even close to what we spent subsidizing cars on mass transit we would have the best mass transit system in the world. Public transport also has a MUCH lower environmental cost.
Even if you replaced
Rail competition (Score:2)
In some ways it can work. The Barcelona - Madrid high speed line has a variety of different operators on it, with the result I got a cheaper ticket with one. But yes, for suburban routes it doesn't make a lot of sense.
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A more interesting question would be, how will they compensate the companies for the extra effort and service they provided during summer? The scheme was very successful and a lot more people traveled on trains than usual. Also the ticket was not only working for trains, but for subways, trams and city buses too. All those are managed by different companies, sometimes at the city level. And you could buy a 9€ ticket in any company, and it would work with other companies too!
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I was wondering the same thing. Lot's of stats trying to make the scheme look good, but arguably the most important stat - cost per ton of CO2 saved - notably missing. Without that, it's impossible to compare the scheme to any other options, and I tend to suspect that the reason it's missing is because it would not look good.