Only if the trains are given enough budget that there is a train every 5 minutes (or less) at every station, the train routes provide reasonable ability to get anywhere, and the trains run "fast".
No train system in the world has all of that, which in turn means they need more money and so free riders harm the system's ability to get people where they want to go.
Maybe, but I've never seen anyone with such a proposal serious about giving enough money to run great transit everywhere.
By everywhere I include farms in the middle of nowhere as that farmer has a relative somewhere who wants to visit and the lack of great transit pushes that person to a car and then opposing transit subsidies. By getting some money from riders there is at least some inventive to make good compromises.
Sadly it is illegal in Germany to have a tax for a specific thing. So that’s that. But then there is GEZ which is basically the same thing just for TV :shrug:
But the fee that the GEZ used to collect (the Rundfunkbeitrag) does still exist and that's what a lot of people call it even the entity that collects it has a different name now, which doesn't make a difference to its effect.
I believe there are taxes in Germany that are zweckgebunden (legally bound to be used for a particular purpose), but the Soli isn't one: there were political justifications for its introduction, but it goes into the general fund and the government doesn't have to use it for those purposes.
I don't speak German but the tax you linked appears a tax that is /collected/ on a certain item (sparkling wine). The GP was talking about a tax whose /revenues are spent/ on a specific thing (transit).
It's especially egregious the neoliberals here insisted it only be bookable as a subscription, not as a paper ticket. Mostly so that very low income / homeless people couldn't use it. Almost like they hate the poor or something.
While I really like the German transport system, and I have been paying it for 5 years, making it mandatory seems too much. What if I don't have a need for it? Or if I barelly use it?
My taxes pays for many public infrastructures I don’t use too.
Taxes and public subsidies for infrastructures are especially powerful on networks because the output service is spread in many cross dimensional layers of the nation.
No train system in the world has all of that, which in turn means they need more money and so free riders harm the system's ability to get people where they want to go.