[server_man3000]

Didn’t this start as unlimited anywhere for 9 euros no strings attached?

I LOVE the German transit system (although Denmark wins in cleanliness). However, Germany is a bit predatory with this new system. You can ONLY purchase this ticket as a subscription model. If you’re a tourist, you must cancel before the 10th of the month or you get auto rebilled.

Additionally, there are so many apps that resell the ticket as some white label system, so it was very confusing to purchase (you cannot buy them at the machines).

The price hike is the wrong direction here if we are reducing that much time on the road. Kudos though for the great rail systems. The USA has a lot to learn here and it’s baffling how terrible it is here. I doubt I’d ever need a car in Germany given the rail system was much more convenient. In the USA I spend 10-15 mins trying to park any time I go anywhere

[lispm]

> Didn’t this start as unlimited anywhere for 9 euros no strings attached?

That was a time limited earlier ticket. "The tickets were valid for June, July, or August 2022. The offer aimed at reducing energy use amid the 2021–2022 global energy crisis." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-Euro-Ticket

It influenced the idea to come up with a permanent ticket: the "Deutschlandticket". It started 1. Mai 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschlandticket

The Deutschlandticket costs max 49 Euros (next year it will cost 58€ per month) and is valid for one month for mostly all local&regional public transport systems (plus a few selected non-regional trains) in the whole of Germany. The subscription will renew automatically.

Companies often support employees by paying some of the costs. Then it typically costs 34.30 € per month. From next year on, employees pay 40,60 € per month max.

Here in my home city already 94% of the 213000 pupils use the Deutschlandticket for 0 € per month. Every pupil has free access to all of the country's local&regional public transport system... I find that kind of mind-blowing.

I have the ticket in my iPhone's wallet and thus also in the Apple Watch wallet. Additionally I need an ID card. Which at some point in time will also come to the smartphone. https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/new-mob...

[consp]

> Every pupil has free access to all of the country's local&regional public transport system... I find that kind of mind-blowing.

We've had this since the 1990s for higher education students. One of the known effects is that students who got it, used the public transport systems more often after wards as they were more familiar with it. I would not be surprised if Germany has a simmilar effect. The problem with these effect is they far outgrow the attention span of polititians as they take years to come to full force.

[sva_]

It was only valid for the state in which the university is, and not all universities offered it.

Most students now get the nationwide ticket for effectively about 30€/month.

[aeyes]

When I started studying at university it was an optional additonal fee paid with the Semesterbeitrag and the ticket was only valid in the city (not even the state) and its close surroundings. A bit later they didn't allow us to opt out anymore but lowered the price a bit.

So for students in my region this was never free and still isn't, you are forced to pay for it and can't opt out: https://www.studentenwerk-leipzig.de/mobilitaet/semestertick...

> Studierende der sieben Leipziger Hochschulen im Zuständigkeitsbereich des Studentenwerkes Leipzig zahlen den Beitrag von 176,40 Euro verpflichtend mit der Immatrikulation bzw. Rückmeldung zum Wintersemester 2024/25.

[ygra]

It varies a lot by university. In Osnabrück the Semesterticket basically allowed to travel as far as Hanover, Münster and Bremen, which was pretty far as that goes. In Rostock on the other hand it only covered the city and a few of the surrounding villages (back in 2011, though).

I think there was a provision of opting out if you needed a regular public transport ticket anyway to get to the uni (because you lived too far outside) but that varies by uni as well.

[riedel]

I only pay 20 EUR a month because a 25 EUR subsidy by my employer. It is a total nobrainer although, I often even use it less, just because I can jump on any local train, tram, bus without worrying about a ticket (particularly as we don't have NFC payment). Actually the 9 EUR will effectively mean a 50% raise for me, so I am not sure if the raise even makes sense economically because people like me just would cancel.

[Hugsun]

It sounds amazing. All these prices seem crazy low. A significantly zone limited monthly commuter ticket here in Denmark costs over 500€

[hskalin]

That sounds too high, even Switzerland isn't that expensive

[Hugsun]

It is indeed too high. It is the price though. Put in Aarhus H and København H here: https://pendlertjek.dsb.dk/

[okr]

They are indeed crazily low. The real prize is just hidden by subsidy. But more and more the true cost will be revealed. There is no free lunch.

But hey, germany could never really decide, are they living in an authoritarian, left or right utopian la-la-land or in a free country. For some time the american influence was huge, but i fear, the influence will diminish and the pendulum swings again.

[Hugsun]

I'd wager that those subsidies have very strong returns on investment. From a thermodynamic standpoint, trains are clearly the most efficient long distance transportation technology. The inefficiencies almost always appear as cost.

[mk89]

And if I am not mistaken, as a university student you get also that ticket for free and you just need to show your student card.

So students basically never have to pay for the public transportation which is really awesome.

EDIT: by public transportation I mean whatever is included in the D-Ticket (no Intercity or similar types of trains).

[lispm]

Where I live, students pay for it, 29.40 €. It's a part of the semester fees, IIRC.

[archi42]

For those not familiar with how this works/worked: At most universities, a similar fee was collected from all students. That was then used to finance a regional "public transport flatrate".

N.b.: mk89 is technically not quite correct, it wasn't free (nothing in life is). It's usually bundled with the tuition/enrollment fee.

Implementation details differed per University, but for us the fee (80 or 100€, can't recall) was socialized across all students and payed together with the tuition fee; opting out was not possible (with some exceptions, like disabilities). The money went from the University administration to the AStA - the "general students council" (the executive section of the elected student self-government). The AStA then negotiated with the local public transport company/companies as well as with the Deutsche Bahn (e.g. to get access to certain inter-regional train connections - we still have cooperations with 3 or 4 nearby universities, and students somehow need to get there). Those negotiations can be a royal pita, and often the students were in a weak position.

Source: I was in the AStA (~12 people), but not involved with that task.

[mk89]

Thanks for the detailed answer. I guess uni students don't know or don't care so it's "for free" (in the sense it's part of the tuition fee) :)

[weinzierl]

"I LOVE the German transit system"

I have some experience with the public transport systems in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France and Belgium. In my opinion Germany's is the worst. Everything seems to be stuck in paper based processes, only occasionally and very listlessly digitized. The tariffs (apart from the Deutschlandticket) are overly complicated and suffer heavily under the common balkanization.

The DB Navigator is so terrible that I try to book the German leg of my international travels from one of the other countries apps whenever possible.

For a counter example look at the French SNCF Connect app. It is not perfect but it is a pretty workable solution.

[jonp888]

> The DB Navigator is so terrible that I try to book the German leg of my international travels from one of the other countries apps whenever possible.

> For a counter example look at the French SNCF Connect app. It is not perfect but it is a pretty workable solution.

I am extremely surprised that you would write this. The SNCF Connect app has a lot of problems. Just for starters, it can't cope with any journey with more than 2 changes. SNCF shut down there international ticket sales computer system - because it was too old. They no longer sell any international tickets, unless it's on a train actually run by SNCF.

The DB App has train services for the whole of Europe. It can plan a journey from Oslo to Sofia if required.

[weinzierl]

"They no longer sell any international tickets, unless it's on a train actually run by SNCF."

I booked ICE trains run by Deutsche Bahn via SNCF successfully in the past, the last time three days ago. I had them even send me Deutsche Bahn paper tickets for no additional cost. (Not because I wanted them in paper, but because DB insists on their app or paper if it is not an international train)

"The DB App has train services for the whole of Europe. It can plan a journey from Oslo to Sofia if required."

You can plan that in DB Navigator just fine, but have you ever managed to successfully book such a journey. I admit that my attempts were always in the east-west direction, but I can confidently say that the DB Navigator app bails at the last step of the funnel for these journeys every time, when I can book the same trains via SNCF Connect just fine.

What I love about SNCF connect is that it shows me exactly if a train has free seats and is bookable in the inital step, where DB-Navigator lets me happily compose a whole itinerary only to tell me in the last step before payment one of the trains is booked out. Then I have start the whole process from the beginning, manually steering DB-Navigator to avoid the trains I now know are booked out but DB-Navigator still pretends were available.

[DominikPeters]

I agree that the booking experience of the DB-SNCF cooperation trains sucks from the DB end, but the underlying blame arguably lies with SNCF which insists on compulsory reservations which is against the philosophy of trains in Germany. On the other hand, in my experience DB offers cheaper tickets for these cooperation trains, most of the time.

But these trains are a special case; in other cases DB is clearly far more pleasant.

[weinzierl]

This is not primarily a problem of the cooperation trains, I have the same situation with trains within Germany. DB-Navigator only tells you if a train is bookable right at the end, right before payment. Before that, it might show "there is high demand", but this is rather useless, especially when you have a school kid and want to book a train a the beginning or end of school holidays, when every train is in high demand. Your only chance with DB-Navigator is to play the whack-a-mole game where you run all the steps repeatedly until the very last step until you find a train you actually can book.

In the SNCF app I have this information right away, that is what makes the difference for me.

[black_puppydog]

So much this. I often use DB navigator to plan trips within france. As soon as you're not going to or from Paris, the sncf offer and app are just terrible. Often, sncf-connect will refuse to offer me TER-only (regional train) trips, because one of the legs can also be done by TGV. Basically impossible to plan this kind of thing with the SNCF apps.

But even the basic UX is terrible. The most blatant example of this is the choice to make the first text input on the search the target station. If you do limit yourself to a single text input as the entry point to the search, I see the intuition. but the result is that they are the only transit search mask I know where I have to first type where I'm going, and then where I'm coming from. I hate it.

[weinzierl]

"But even the basic UX is terrible. The most blatant example of this is the choice to make the first text input on the search the target station."

This is just your preference and not terrible UX. In fact I find this the more intuitive way.

[black_puppydog]

It might be more intuitive if this was the first travel app every developed. But I don't personally any other transit UI that uses this pattern, and that makes using the sncf search "the weird one" and not in a good way.

[weinzierl]

Google maps and Apple maps all work like SNCF. The first thing you enter is your destination and then you can optionally change the point of departure if it is not your current or default location.

I would say this is a pretty familiar and useful pattern in general: Necessary and mandatory info first, optional data which has sensible defaults later.

[nonrandomstring]

> Everything seems to be stuck in paper based processes,

It is for that reason I'd love it. Accessible, universal, sustainable, resilient technology!

I once got stuck in Nuremberg overnight. The ticket office was open all night and an official looked up all my options from memory and timetable books and wrote me a diagram with pen and paper that perfectly showed me how to get to my destination. I'll never forget that helpful clerk.

Not saying you can't have your apps, but systems that lose touch with reality and human involvement are part of the emerging problem.

For my mind the smartest ticket technology I ever saw was Hungarian and used on the Budapest transit system in the 1980s - some devious discrete mathematics that coded the journey stops, used status, and allowed routes all in a matrix of hole punches on a small paper ticket. The punches (that you had to use when getting on trains, buses and trams) were purely mechanical, and so was the validating machine used by inspectors/conductors to see if you had punched your ticket. Simply genius.

[tasuki]

> For my mind the smartest ticket technology I ever saw was Hungarian and used on the Budapest transit system in the 1980s - some devious discrete mathematics that coded the journey stops, used status, and allowed routes all in a matrix of hole punches on a small paper ticket. The punches (that you had to use when getting on trains, buses and trams) were purely mechanical, and so was the validating machine used by inspectors/conductors to see if you had punched your ticket. Simply genius.

I think you're giving a little too much credit. In the nearby Czech Republic we had a system where there'd be eight (or perhaps 10?) places for a hole. Your ticket would get marked with a combination specific to the vehicle.

They'd periodically change which vehicle has what holes. With 8 holes, 256 tickets would be enough to give you a valid ticket for any vehicle. With 10 holes, 1024 tickets. I think some people carried around all the tickets to be able to ride for free. Others kept tickets with small number of holes for later reuse in a vehicle which had a superset of those. Good times!

I find it very hard to believe the Hungarians has something smarter than that, but would love to be proven wrong!

[euroderf]

There simply has to be a web page about this somewhere...

[cycomanic]

I don't know about apps (only used the HVV app, for holding a ticket), but in terms of websites SNCF (at least the English version, the French one is a bit better) is an absolute mess. There is like 3 different ones for starters, one to find a connection, one to buy the ticket and one to find current status/delays.

bahn.de is actually one of the more decent websites in my opinion (definitely better than most rail sites I have encountered).

That said, the biggest problem with rail in Europe atm, is the lack of an integrated ticketing system. Going between places by train is a so much nicer experience than taking the plane, but the ticketing experience is such a mess. As others have pointed out, on SNCF you can't find any international connections any longer (IIRC SJ.se in Sweden still shows connections to Norway and Denmark), on Bahn.de you can find the connections, but can't actually see a price or book a ticket (you are told to go into a station). Train travel in Europe could be a surely awesome otherwise.

[taffer]

The EU should create a standardised system for tickets in Europe, similar to the New Distribution Capability for flights or SEPA for payments.

There should also be a unified system for passengers to claim their money back if their train is delayed.

[tchalla]

EU has asked the rail companies to do so or else they will force their hand if they don’t.

[hagbard_c]

> The DB Navigator is so terrible that I try to book the German leg of my international travels from one of the other countries apps whenever possible.

While DB Navigator does leave something to be desired the sheer width/breadth of the DB booking system makes it my go-to choice for international train travel. They're also quite forthcoming in paying back 25% to 50% of the ticket price when delayed more than 1 or 2 hours which is a frequent occurrence on the longer trips - from Sweden to the Netherlands - which I make about every other month. I can get prices directly without having to go through some silly booking agency, I can book tickets, reserve seats and sometimes actually choose which seats I want (something which doesn't always work). They did have some problems about a year ago when they moved to the 'new' DB Navigator and the price I was quoted suddenly quadrupled, this turned out to be an omission in the booking system which I submitted a bug report for. They fixed the problem and prices returned to where they should be (about 5% higher than before the change, they used the opportunity to raise prices...).

No, the problem with DB is not to be found in their app or the booking system, those are at least on par and often better than their foreign equivalents. The problem lies in the unreliability of the long distance network, especially the ICE service which often sees long delays due to a lack of personnel, defective equipment, maintenance work, etc. Regional services tend to be more reliable, in part due to the higher frequency which makes it less of a problem if a single train does not run. All in all I can live with the problems and have switched over to rail travel whenever I can in Europe. The advantages - more space, more comfort, no security theatre, the ability to hack away while travelling, usually lower prices, I can take as much luggage as I can carry (which is a lot) - outweigh the disadvantages - longer travel times, need to change trains, delays which compound due to missing connections.

[weinzierl]

They're also quite forthcoming in paying back 25% to 50% of the ticket price when delayed more than 1 or 2 hours

There is nothing forthcoming about that, they are required to to that by regulations. No bonus points for DB here whatsoever.

which is a frequent occurrence on the longer trips

That is something we can agree upon.

reserve seats and sometimes actually choose which seats I want

SNCF-Connects lets you specify the exact seat configuration. You can choose single, double (window or not), quadruple (next to each other or face-to-face). In addition to that you can express your preference for family area and if you do not want to sit facing against the driving direction.

[hagbard_c]

> There is nothing forthcoming about that, they are required to to that by regulations. No bonus points for DB here whatsoever.

The way they implemented this process makes it easy and quick to get compensation while other carriers - who are supposed to follow the same rules - make it quite a bit harder to get compensated.

> SNCF-Connects lets you specify the exact seat configuration. You can choose single, double (window or not), quadruple (next to each other or face-to-face). In addition to that you can express your preference for family area and if you do not want to sit facing against the driving direction.

You can do the same on bahn.de or in DB Navigator (which is mostly equivalent to a canned version of the site plus a few extras). Not all trains allow seat selection, sometimes seats are assigned automatically. Other trains - e.g. Dutch Intercity trains - do not offer reservation at all. The Swedish/Danish Öresundståg (a service running mostly in the south and west of Sweden) theoretically allows reservation but this hardy ever works, at least when booking through DB. Do mind that I use DB to book trips crossing several countries using different operators, in this case SJ (Swedish state railway), Öresundståget, DSB (Danish state railway), DB, Eurobahn and NS (Dutch state railway). All in a single booking with a single payment and a single point of contact using a single ticket.

[weinzierl]

"The way they implemented this process makes it easy and quick to get compensation while other carriers - who are supposed to follow the same rules - make it quite a bit harder to get compensated."

For the last compensation I tried to get it took Deutsche Bahn 15 days to send an automated acknowledgement that they had received my request. I took another 20 days until they processed it.

I would not call that quick, but was it easy? Here is the procedure for the form translated from their site:

Procedure in the digital application in the customer account:

To do this, first select the main ticket for your journey in your customer account and start the online application.

If you had no other disruptions (e.g. delay), enter "Delay of less than 60 minutes". In the next step, a new message box will appear with the following sentence: "I had additional expenses due to the delay | I was unable to use my reservation". Click on the appropriate box and follow the next steps.

Alternatively, you can also request a refund of the reservation fee in writing (informally). Please send your request to the following address:

DB Dialog GmbH Passenger Rights Service Center 60647 Frankfurt am Main Germany

Needless to say that the form had me fill in a lot of useless stuff they either don't need to know or should know already. And of course you can send paper...

[hagbard_c]

That description of the process is quite concise I'd say? Here's how it goes for me:

1: I'm delayed by more than 20 minutes somewhere along the trip upon which a new section 'request compensation' appears in the travel schedule.

2: If upon arrival I'm delayed by more than 60/120 minutes I select that option or log in to bahn.de where I select the option from the relevant itinerary.

3: it asks me when I arrived, if this ends up being more than 60/120 minutes later than the intended arrival time it asks me if I was able to use the booking for the whole trip or whether I needed to arrange alternative transport. It also asks me whether I had extra expenses like a hotel, in the latter case it tells you to submit proof of payment - a hotel bill, a taxi bill - so they can reimburse those costs. I have never done this but my daughter has had 4 hotel stays paid by DB by now. Proof can be submitted digitally, i.e. a photo of the receipts.

4: I need to fill in the details on how I want to be reimbursed - voucher or bank transaction. I always select bank transaction and fill in my bank details (IBAN - a single bank account number which works in most of Europe).

5: I confirm the submission, get a receipt via mail and one via snail mail a few days later. It usually takes about a week or two for the money to appear in my bank account, the quickest it has ever been was 5 days.

I don't consider this to be a bad process, it works and can be completed in a few minutes at most. Yes, you can send in paper as well - this is Germany we're talking about, they love paperwork - but I've never bothered with that. I do get all those confirmations via snail mail but those don't bother me, I can watch my bank account to see when the reimbursement has been completed. I have never had any problems getting reimbursed, they always paid.

[locallost]

> SNCF-Connects lets you specify the exact seat configuration. You can choose single, double (window or not), quadruple (next to each other or face-to-face). In addition to that you can express your preference for family area and if you do not want to sit facing against the driving direction.

You can do all that in the DB app. You can manually select which seats you want or just say the types of seats you want (e.g. compartment or open area, isle or window, table or no table, quiet area or not, family area etc).

[Gravityloss]

One fun experience, arriving in München and trying to buy ticket for the airport train online. The app requires your birthdate. The date selector starts from present and only allows to go back one month at a time. So if you're 40 years old, you would need to click 480 times... We bought paper tickets from a machine . Machines work well compared to other countries though.

[emaro]

I thought the same thing first, but if you click on the year you can choose from a list.

[taffer]

I couldn't disagree more. You can say a lot of bad things about Deutsche Bahn, but of all the travel apps I have used, DB Navigator and bahn.de were the best.

SNCF Connect, on the other hand, not only had a terrible UX, but also crashed randomly, forcing me to use third-party apps to buy SNCF tickets.

[psychoslave]

I can't tell for other countries, but SNCF digital solutions have been a great example of everything you should not do for as long as I can remember. Actually bahn.de used to be a far better interface to consult french train hours than whatever fancy new name SNCF would come every few months or so.

[barrkel]

The DB navigator app is actually decent. The one downside is it kicks you out to a website to book many international tickets, but you can still plan and track your journey delays etc. in the app.

[weinzierl]

It kicks you out to a website if you are lucky (I had this when traveling through Austria), but often it just says: "Sorry, I cannot book this for you.".

In any case you will have to start from scratch, which is in my opinion the worst UX.

It is good that the app allows to research all theoretically possible connections, but I want the info if I can practically book a connection right there in the process and not just at the end. The SNCF-Connect app shows that this is possible, and even possible for Deutsche Bahn trains.

[locallost]

I agree with the part about complicated tariffs/tickets but not much else. Although not sure how many countries make it simple, the only one I am aware of is Switzerland which conveniently solves the problem by making everything expensive.

I use the app and bahn.de and things are generally pretty easy and just work. I haven't used paper in a while, recently once because my phone battery ran out, but that's it. Finding connections, adjusting options like transfer time, where you want to transfer, buying tickets, checking in through the app, getting notifications about changing trains, and even recently some things I never did like getting an invoice for my employer are all a breeze. It fails rarely and is in general slick. Recently I bought tickets through Hungarian railways and this was a pain in the ass.

The one annoyance I have is buying regional tickets, where you have to buy them one at a time which can be a hassle if you travel with e.g. three people and you want to buy tickets for all of them.

[ted_dunning]

I just used the DB Navigator for extensive travel in Germany without any problems. It doesn't provide quite as much information about how to deal with connections for a delayed train, but that is minor compared to the very transparent function for buying and displaying tickets.

[elpocko]

>Everything seems to be stuck in paper based processes

I want to buy a ticket every now and then. I want that process to be straight forward: cash money for one-time ticket. I don't want your app on my phone, I don't want a subscription, and I don't want to be tracked.

Paper based offline processes forever, please.

[weinzierl]

I don't want your app on my phone, I don't want a subscription, and I don't want to be tracked.

Exactly, no one wants that, no one needs that, but you should recognize that most people don't want to handle cash money either, nowadays.

Just let me swipe my card or phone and done.

If you insist on privacy we should be able to use a pre-paid card or temporary credit card (like Revolut), but I have not tried that and I doubt it works.

[locallost]

You can use a card on every ticket machine.

[iknowstuff]

lol you know websites exist right. what a luddite approach. Paper is expensive, wasteful, environmentally harmful, and time consuming.

[elpocko]

I don't carry a phone around with me at all times. Phones are expensive, wasteful, socially and environmentally harmful, time consuming, and they erode our freedoms.

[BirAdam]

I’d love to see an in-depth analysis of the overall production costs for paper and ink vs electronic. Tree to processing to ticket vs smartphone, grid, network, software, and so on. I imagine the paper process is exceptionally cheaper but I could very well be wrong.

[fuzzy2]

Sure. And how do you pay? I mean, really. You're forced to create an account, then link a payment method (PayPal and/or Visa/Mastercard may or may not be supported, Apple Pay almost never is). Sometimes you also have to link a mobile phone number or the number is the account identifier.

How is that an alternative?

[Qwertious]

Paper is fine for the environment. Paper takes an absolutely tiny portion of a tree (and burning the pulp waste tends to result in a net energy surplus from the pulp mill!), whereas the amount of energy to create one computer (even a phone) is massive.

[dietr1ch]

As a tourist I agree, and the Deutschland Ticket App is Region locked, so you are bound to the complexity of the system, which seems unnecessary and way too expensive as opposed to the ticket locals get.

[n_plus_1_acc]

There are many different vendors with different apps.

[lispm]

> Everything seems to be stuck in paper based processes, only occasionally and very listlessly digitized.

That's nonsense. Most public transport is digital by now.

> The DB Navigator is so terrible

It's not terrible. I managed to book all my train travels just fine with it, also using a business bahncard which gives me a 50% discount on all trains.

[eptcyka]

I couldn't pay for my ubahn with a credit card on the bahn, and the app required me to use some kind of a paypal derivative. I did not pay.

Regardless of whether it is digitized or not, regional trains suck. To pay on the train, I think I was forced to use cash.

Further, the process for getting refunds when you miss a connection requires one to fill in forms on paper and scan them in and then send in via email. Or was it snail mail? I didn't attempt it, I just saw that my train was delayed for hours with no explanation for what can I do about it, realized I'm missing my connection and then booked a plane ticket and got home faster than if I had traveled by rail without any delays. 10/10, will fly whenever possible from now on.

[lispm]

Pay before. That's how the transport systems generally work in Germany. In many trains you need to have a ticket BEFORE entering the train and also BEFORE entering the platform in the train station.

> Further, the process for getting refunds when you miss a connection requires one to fill in forms on paper and scan them in and then send in via email.

I can do that in the DB app.

[eptcyka]

The DB app? Definitely was not an option for the people who did that. Granted, we are europeans, not Germans living in Germany.

Paying before just isn't always practical, but I understand that such limitations are often a non-issue for locals.

[immibis]

If you don't pay before, and the train doesn't have a ticket machine on it (most don't, but some e.g. trams in Berlin do) you are riding illegally. That's how it works in Germany.

[lispm]

> The DB app? Definitely was not an option for the people who did that.

Yeah, it's in the app.

> Paying before just isn't always practical, but I understand that such limitations are often a non-issue for locals.

That's how it works. Typical here for local trains: there are no barriers in train and bus stations. One can just enter the train and bus without any ticket check. But you have to make sure that you have a ticket. The local trains have no installation to buy a ticket anymore. Typically one would buy them online or have a subscription ticket. How does the system make sure that people pay and don't game the system? There are random checks.

If you want a ticket, buy it before entering a train. Train stations have either ticket systems or a ticket office. But most people by now do it online either per website or app.

For long-distance trains I would always book in advance (it's often also cheaper) and book a seat, too.

[weinzierl]

That's nonsense. Most public transport is digital by now.

SNCF, SNCB and EuroStar let me manage my tickets digitally in my digital wallet. That is super convenient if you have more complicated itineraries because you have all the tickets handy in a single app, when you need them.

With Deutsche Bahn it is either their app or a PDF to print.

For local and inner city transport you usually don't need a ticket a all, just swipe your card or phone at the beginning and end of your trip.

You can forget about that anywhere in Germany. It is paper tickets everywhere or a gazillion of different apps, because every city and network has their own.

That is very much not my understanding of public transport being digital.

[lispm]

> With Deutsche Bahn it is either their app or a PDF to print.

They also have an extensive web-based ticket shop.

You don't need to print PDF tickets. One can also show a PDF ticket on an electronic device, without printing it. I used the DB ticket PDFs for several years, without printing it. Nowadays a load the long-distance train tickets onto the phone and have it in the DB app, I have also a PDF version via mail.

> For local and inner city transport you usually don't need a ticket a all, just swipe your card or phone at the beginning and end of your trip.

I have that here also in my city. The reality: most people have a subscription, that's the by far dominant model. Simpler and less tracking needed.

> It is paper tickets everywhere or a gazillion of different apps, because every city and network has their own.

Larger cities like Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, ... are central for large traffic regions. For example the traffic region here in Hamburg serves roughly 3.7 million people.

> That is very much not my understanding of public transport being digital.

We now have a Germany-wide affordable subscription-based ticket for local&regional public transport. That's my understanding of public transport gone digital, nation-wide. The basics were operational after only a few months of planning.

[weinzierl]

> Everything seems to be stuck in paper based processes, only occasionally and very listlessly digitized.

That's nonsense. Most public transport is digital by now.

I did a more complicated trip with multiple legs. Booked via SNCF, bc DB-Navigator would not let me book some of the border crossing legs, I tried. The only leg that required a paper ticket was in Germany. In 2023, not last century.

[BlueTemplar]

Was there really not even a pdf and/or matrix code option ?

[serial_dev]

> I doubt I’d ever need a car in Germany given the rail system was much more convenient

Sure, if you live in a larger city and you never leave… I lived in Munich for years and never needed a car, just comfortable shoes, a bike and occasionally a transport ticket.

Try to get to a smaller town or village, you are lucky if you only spend twice as much time getting there as with a car.

The trains get randomly cancelled, delay is basically guaranteed, the workers go on strikes relatively frequently, so you can never rely on trains working for anything remotely important.

[emaro]

Surprised how positive you're writivg about the German public transport. The Deutsche Bahn doesn't have a good reputation in central Europe.

I guess my frame of reference isn't average, given I live in Switzerland.

Edit: the 49-euro ticket is great though!

[0x008]

Of course your frame of reference is biased because you have the best railway system out of ~30 European countries.

Germany’s system gets a lot of hate but it still in the top ~8 or so.

[ck45]

I agree. Let's grant that SBB is more organized than DB. But given that Germany is 8 times as big as Switzerland and with 33,000 km has a significantly larger train network than Switzerland's 5,300 km, it's no surprise that trains accumulate more delays in Germany.

[ben_w]

As a UK citizen living in Berlin, I assure you that for all the cancellations and repair works, there's many places which look up to the German system.

(I've also been to the USA, and (IMO) Amtrak makes the UK look good).

[bowsamic]

I visited the UK, which is my home, and the UK train system was amazing. Got multiple tight connections with zero delays. Far better than I’ve experienced living in Germany

[LeanderK]

Interesting, i am in the opposite situation. Using the deutsche bahn for long distances is often horrible so I never thought I would miss it but omg I really didn't have a good experience with Uk trains. The ticketing is complicated and the trains were often so unbelievably dirty and run down. Never had this experience in an ICE. Okay there are sometimes issues like the toilet boing out of order or the restaurant closed but the train is usually clean and fairly nice. And while the delay wasn't massive I still had delays. It's also sooo slow, there's no high-speed train. Last time I took the train from southampton to edinburgh and it really took forever and I was soo slow.

Even Edinburgh-London is slow! It's a similar distance than munich-berlin, a train I often take. In germany these are sleek, clean trains that take just over 3 hours, with only one or two stops with the sprinter. The train in the UK takes around 5 hours, significantly longer. I can do 3 hours on a friday evening work and arrive not too late to then meet friends for drinks, you can't do that with 5 hours.

And not only ICE, it's the same experience with regional trains. I used to live in Baden-Württemberg and took a lot of regional trains. I didn't think I would miss it with the delays from the new central station that they've been building for what feels like forever but now I do.

There are many things that the UK does better than Germany but trains they manage to do even worse (or maybe its not that bad?)

[bowsamic]

> There are many things that the UK does better than Germany but trains they manage to do even worse

The trains are better in the UK than in Germany

[LeanderK]

really not my experience. I have never seen such dirty trains in other european countries.

Would have been bearable if they would be at least fast, but they are not

[ben_w]

Even when I lived in the UK, I never had that experience.

End of term, Aberystwyth to Birmingham trains were regularly terminated on route at Wolverhampton.

Loose connections generally worked.

[Aeolun]

The UK is so expensive though. I thought I was looking at airplane fares.

[ben_w]

Fair. I've had one flight to the UK that cost less than the train ticket from the UK airport to my actual destination. Air tickets got a lot more expensive after the pandemic, but it's still close.

(OTOH, I've also had one case where it was cheaper to take the ferry and trains back from the UK to Berlin than fly, presumably because of massive demand as that was the day Stansted airport was closed by 1cm of snow and I had an 8 hour queue for a replacement flight that was itself also cancelled).

[JackMorgan]

I recently needed two tickets from NYC to LA, and was astonished to find air tickets for $80 and rail tickets for $2200. It's so unbelievably expensive (not counting that the flight was a few hours and the train was 56 hours).

Very disappointing! How is it so expensive?!

[guenthert]

Competition, I suppose. Still, that seems extreme. A few years (might have been eight) back, I traveled Amtrak's Zephyr from Chicago to California. The roomette for two (coach would have been cheaper) was some $450, about the same as 2nd class air fare for one then. But yes, the train isn't in a particular hurry, expected travel time is some 50h, but 1.5h in, it was already 20m late for no apparent reason. Most passengers were tourist, but I also talked to a fellow who was going to California to pick up a used car for his daughter.

I like the idea of long distance train traveling, as one can get off and back on later (check the fine print of your ticket though). Apparently, that's not customary however and earned me an interview by a TSA agent (a very polite fellow, odd as it may sound) who approached me (with a local Sheriff in tow) at a scheduled stop.

[caskstrength]

> Edit: the 49-euro ticket is great though!

As a Swiss person you want appreciate German tax rates that subsidize that 49-euro tickets. The money has always got to come from somewhere.

[onli]

> If you’re a tourist, you must cancel before the 10th of the month or you get auto rebilled.

Just in case this is helpful to someone, you can buy the ticket from one of those different transport organizations you mentioned and avoid that time limit to cancel. The one to use for that is https://www.mopla.solutions/, it's a simple app (alternatively web site) that worked really well for me (no affiliation).

[jonp888]

> Didn’t this start as unlimited anywhere for 9 euros no strings attached?

The €9 ticket was a 3 month temporary offer, which was not originally intended to continue permanently at all.

> I LOVE the German transit system (although Denmark wins in cleanliness). However, Germany is a bit predatory with this new system. You can ONLY purchase this ticket as a subscription model. If you’re a tourist, you must cancel before the 10th of the month or you get auto rebilled.

The ticket is subsidised by the German government(beyond the amount that all rail infrastructure and most services are subsidised) for the purpose what is covered in the article - encouraging permanent modal shift of regular travellers(primarily commuters) from road to rail. If you're a tourist, it's not meant for you. Sorry.

[sadcherry]

Airtravel is also subsidised by the German tax payer. Much more than the 49 EUR ticket. No matter if you are a tourist or not. (Arguably mostly for tourists actually.)

[jacooper]

How is it subsidized while a local flight costs more than an international one?

The idea is to push people to use the train, but a train isn't an alternative if it takes 9 hours compared to the 2 hour flight.

[sadcherry]

ICE from Hamburg to Munich is about 5 hours. That's basically the other end of the country. Not sure where 9 hours come from.

And your 2 hour flight easily goes to 4-5 hours if you add the security theatre and the extra overhead that transport to/from the airport entails. They are far outside the city whereas central stations are usually in the city center.

[kristianp]

What's the method of subsidy there? Contributing to Airbus shares?

[echoangle]

Commercial aviation fuel is tax exempt in the EU, I would already count that as a subsidy (yes, I count not taxing something that's normally taxed as a subsidy, even if it isn't done by directly paying out money).

[Qwertious]

Subsidising airports and fuel, presumably.

[lispm]

> If you're a tourist, it's not meant for you. Sorry.

Tourist&foreigners can use the Deutschlandticket, too.

But: it's a monthly subscription automatically renewing every month, so one has to cancel it early enough when planning to leave the country. You'll also typically need a smartphone for the ticket.

[dietr1ch]

Well, on mobile they make you think you need the app, but it's region locked. I happened to email them about how this is annoying for tourists yesterday and got a very German response,

"Downloading the Deutschlandticket.de app from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store is only possible in certain countries." (ikr, it's THE problem)

[layer8]

The problem may be that if they offer the app in foreign regions, they are liable to the jurisdiction of those foreign regions.

[Aeolun]

Is a response repeating the thing you just concluded in your mail to them very german?

[Zak]

A factual, but entirely unhelpful response to a customer service query is very German.

[lispm]

The ticket is available by other apps, too.

[luto]

It started with 9€, is 49€ now, and will be 58€ starting 2025.

You can buy for a single month when booking through the right company. "mo.pal" is a good one, for example. However, I agree that it is a bit predatory.

[sva_]

> You can ONLY purchase this ticket as a subscription model. If you’re a tourist, you must cancel before the 10th of the month or you get auto rebilled.

Pro tip: some websites offer to start the subscription later in the month and you only pay for those days. So if, for example, you were to attend a certain hacker conference in Hamburg at the end of December, you could buy the ticket for the last 5 days of the month for 49/31*5 euro. Just have to cancel before 10th of December so that it doesn't renew. ("HVV Switch" App)

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

All of these tickets are only for local/regional trains, not the faster/long-distance trains. You can get from one end of the country to another by changing trains a few time, but e.g. getting from Munich to Berlin would be 6h (direct) with fast trains and 10+ h (changing 3 times) with the regional ones.

The subscription model is intentional - this isn't meant to help tourists or to be bought when you need it, it's meant to make sure people have already pre-paid the cost when making a decision whether to take a train or a car (by being cheap enough that people subscribe even if they don't use it all the time).

[carrja99]

As a tourist, the cost was well worth it. Used buses and rail to get everywhere, booked one DB train from Berlin to Bamberg but otherwise travelled all over Germany during my time there.

Just had to remember to cancel.

[dgellow]

It’s not really made for tourists from outside the country, you already have special tickets for people who visit for a short time. It’s for the local population. The price hike is from 49€/month to 58€/month next year. It’s the opposite of predatory IMHO, you have it on your mobile app in a few tap and can cancel easily

[luplex]

Yep, it's not really meant for tourists. They really want everyone to stay in the subscription model, because it's heavily subsidized, so they need to hit a high enough LTV anyways.

[happyraul]

Cancellation terms vary by vendor. With some better ones, you can cancel 24 hours before the end of the month to avoid being billed for the next month.

[2-3-7-43-1807]

> is a bit predatory

what bugs me the most is that i can only book it for a specific calendar month. that is _so_ stupid ...

[bowsamic]

> Didn’t this start as unlimited anywhere for 9 euros no strings attached?

No, you could never use it on IC or ICEs

[consumerx]

True, significant only because offered for 9 EUR initially.

[ben_w]

Not only — when I visit friends in the UK, I've had single rail tickets cost more than the increased next years' cost of a monthly nationwide ticket here in Germany.

[hilux]

I'm a big fan of public transit, but it's not entirely "baffling" why the US lags European countries (and Japan) - the US is a MUCH larger country.

[lispm]

> the US is a MUCH larger country

with much of the population in a few denser areas, where public transport would make a lot of sense.

[cycomanic]

The size "excuse" is often brought up, I don't think that's valid though, e.g. Sweden with a significantly lower density has much better public transport. Or if we talk absolute size I think even Russia has a better rail transport system than the US for example. Like usual I think it can largely be attributed politics and to the strength of the car lobby in the US (as well as a weird desire to "stick it to poor people"), which caused a complete focus on individual travel.

[server_man3000]

There’s a happy medium somewhere though and the US doesn’t meet it at all. I can’t even take a bus from my neighborhood in a California city to the grocery store in a timely manner and it’s often cancelled

[hilux]

Oh, I know - I live in Oakland. I think even here the population density is lower than in European cities. (It's definitely lower than in Asian mega-cities.)

But yes, I do wish California did better. People are used to bad transit, and have never visited Tokyo or even NYC, so expectations are low.

[ben_w]

The EU is only about half the land area of the USA; Germany is roughly equivalent of the fourth largest US state, Montana, and only CA, TX, and AK are bigger.

Do any states have something equivalent to this?

[hilux]

And Germany has a population of 83 million. Montana has a population of 1.1 million.

I don't get your point.

[ben_w]

You said the USA was big. Now you're saying population is the important thing. Combined that's population density, so does Maryland have this? Connecticut? etc.

On the density front, NYC is famously high density, and yet so far as I can tell a monthly pass for just there is double the raised price this ticket will be next year: https://new.mta.info/document/118601

[hilux]

Most adults should be able to figure out that IN THIS CONTEXT "big" refers to land mass relative to population.

Yes, NYC has a dense population, and yes, it also has the best public transit in the country.

[ben_w]

And your best is twice the price for something strictly worse. (I've used NY public transport, it's much worse than anything I've seen in Germany).

One thing adults often also do, and which you just did by continuing to ignore the point, is treat arguments as soldiers.

[mitthrowaway2]

Somehow that wasn't as much of an obstacle in 1920!

[reducesuffering]

But the DC to Boston line isn't

[oersted]

I don't have the details, but every single time I have heard the mention of Deutsche Bahn in the last few years it has been accompanied by comments of how broken it has become, with constant delays and cancellations, to the point where for many people it is no longer a viable option for commute or for anything where you cannot risk to be up to several hours late.

I guess it's all relative. If you come to rely on an excellent and omnipresent rail service for many years as a society, the impacts are quite big when it stops working well. If the service itself is built assuming reliability, where transferring between trains is common, then issues can get substantially amplified if that choreography gets somewhat disrupted.

[sadcherry]

There is a big reporting bias though. You won't see in the news "of the 40,000 railway connections today, most were on time". You only read about some train having had an AC issue or the like.

I have family in Germany and they never go by train but tell me regularly about how bad the train has become. They have literally not been in one for 15+ years. But they watch the news every day.

[ApolloFortyNine]

>There is a big reporting bias though. You won't see in the news "of the 40,000 railway connections today, most were on time". You only read about some train having had an AC issue or the like.

I feel most know about Japan's shinkansen being run well.

For those who don't, the average delay is 1.1 minutes on average.

For comparison, the DB long distance trains are considered on time if they're less than 6 minutes late, and still only 64% are considered on time.

[nisa]

> Japan's shinkansen

They have dedicated tracks. In Germany all train lines (freight, local trains, long-distance trains) share the same tracks and especially at different speeds this causes delays and problems.

Building new track or even adding more lanes is extremly difficult because of NIMBY's and from 1995 to 2005 switches and extra lanes for overtaking where build back to save costs.

Additionally signalling is in large parts still very labour intensive and smaller tracks are often still running with technology from the early 20th century and late 19th century.

So the problem Deutsche Bahn has to solve is quite a bit harder than shinkansen.

[currymj]

among intercity trains run by Deutsche Bahn, the on-time rate hovers around 2/3. it's technically true that "most were on time", but one third being late is really terrible, especially since you often need to make a tight connection.

even if your family has no justifiable basis for believing what they do about DB, they happen to be correct by luck.

https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2023/en/combined-management-re...

[n_plus_1_acc]

Long-distance trains are worse statistically because they travel longer Router and therefore have more opportubities to gain delay. Across all trains, puncuality is like 95%.

[currymj]

that is true, but tons of highly frequent on-time commuter trains doesn't help anyone who wants to travel long distances.

right now if you want to go between two cities you always have to plan on missing your connection.

[sadcherry]

I wouldn't call a 7 minutes delay "terrible".

[iggldiggl]

It is if you miss a connection that only runs hourly or so. (Even with a half-hourly connection it'd be annoying.)

[nisa]

Long distance trains are getting more unreliable (ICE, IC) due to repair works on the tracks - regional / local trains are mostly fine (at least in my place here) and I can't remember the last time there was an delay longer than 10 minutes here. However lately I've saw that trains are cancelled due to manpower shortages and due to the nature the local trains are organized (there is a tender and a railway company wins that tender for 5 years with the same rolling stock) peaks in capacity like on the weekend are not dealt with.

[dustyventure]

It was broken long before the offer though so the reduction in driving being moderate probably reflects fewer shifts in daily commute and mostly more leisure usage.

[rudnevr]

Last time I frequented Boston Amtrak it would delay about 28% of travel.

[juliangmp]

>I LOVE the German transit system

What? How? I have the ticket and despite that I never use any regional train because they're generally awful. (Local busses and trams on the other hand work pretty well)

[ahartmetz]

Regional trains are really okay compared to long-distance trains. These are so bad that it's unlikely that you reach your destination on time now.

[geraldwhen]

Germany is smaller than California. The United States is very, very large place, mostly unpopulated. It’s hard to apply whatever Germany, a small, densely populated country does to the US, which is largely empty land.

[Larrikin]

Why do we have to pretend that routes between Montana and South Dakota have to come up when discussing ways of improving rail usage in the US? We could treat routes between Chicago, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis like Germany. We could treat high speed rail in California or the Northeast like Japan. Choosing to live in an extremely rural area shouldn't just be a "well it doesn't help" me trump card to defeat things that will help most of the population.

[tetha]

We also have a similarly frustrating kind of arguments in germany itself.

Like, focus on public transport won't work. Because in some tiny towns of 30k people living there, there is never a bus around so why care? Like... dude. In Hamburg, we have subway stations that move more people in minutes than people live in your town. Yes, it may not work on your case. Your case is however a side note. It needs consideration, but not focus.

Or electric vehicles. There are interesting questions about electric vehicles in uncontrolled situations, emergency services and long-distance situations. As well as regions without a good charging infrastructure. Yes. These are problematic. Except, most likely, more unique cars drive past my window in an hour on a workday than exist in that tiny town. Just keep your ICE car for the trip to spain you never take by car, but we should optimize the vehicles in cities. Again, it needs consideration, but not focus.

[ryandrake]

Exactly. Always somebody trots out invalid arguments about size and population density. There are smaller states in the USA that are about as dense as Germany, like Maryland and Connecticut. So, why don't those states have great state-wide public transit systems?

[adamc]

The politics at the national level are likely to be that states not helped by this vote against it.

[twodave]

Yep, federal income tax is a big reason. For states to fund this on their own requires additional taxation. Some places like FL don’t even have a state income tax, so they are stuck trying to get tourists to fund transportation projects somehow or increasing sales taxes or higher tolls. And of course higher tolls have the unfortunate side effect of reducing demand for the thing to begin with.

[Larrikin]

Maybe we should work on making one vote to be equal in the nation.

[kortilla]

This is a boring trope. Whether it’s a group of United States or a single State is a debate as old as the country. You’re going to need really compelling reasons for states to give up their representation and participate in the state vote required to amend the constitution to remove their rights.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> states to give up their representation

> their rights

You talk about states as if they are people. But they are not. States are a fiction invented by people (and let's be honest, by rich and powerful people), and so they can be torn down by people (likely not the rich and powerful).

"State representation" and "states' rights" are not compelling to most people, other than via some vague appeal to "isn't it great that New Mexico can do one thing and Maine can do something else?", which by itself does not require "state representation" or the current ideas of "states' rights".

[Qwertious]

It was a valid debate back when travelling to the capitol took months by horse. Nowadays everyone uses services from other states on a daily basis, and possibly work in another state (with WFH) on a daily basis. It's pretty darn clear that the USA simply could not exist as a bunch of separate states anymore.

And frankly, states are already giving up their representation in the current system. If you're not a swing state, you're irrelevant. If you live in a populated state, you have a second-class vote.

If the USA had a modern voting system and anyone proposed the current pile of junk, they would be laughed out of the room.

[kortilla]

Because those states are part of the same federal government and they have a say in what the federal government does. These rail systems almost always require federal government level investments.

[BirAdam]

Another significant issue is that the USA wasn’t built for rail, and to do so now requires sign off by land owners, municipalities, and so on. The amount NIMBY-oriented policies in California, for example, is a serious impediment. Oddly, people cite rural areas as an issue, but rural areas aren’t typically an issue. It would be comparably inexpensive to run high speed rail over undeveloped land, while tearing up buildings, roads, water, sewer, and power would be tremendously costly. For much of Europe, rail transport was put in place long before automobiles became commonplace. For much of the USA, the cities didn’t even exist at that time, and they were mostly built around automobiles.

[BlueTemplar]

Rail was famously first in the USA, and you can still see politics focused around rail as the main long distance transportation merely a century ago.

But yes, there was a lot of car-centric buildup (and maybe even some new cities??) since then.

[BirAdam]

For places like NYC, Chicago, Boston, yeah. And we see rail in those locations. We do not see rail in towns and suburbs around those areas. In Atlanta, for example, MARTA exists, but NIMBY policies in Northern suburban counties keep it from expanding. This is especially bad considering more people live in those counties than in the city proper. Further, even if one could get sign-off, the cost to acquire the property required would be incredibly costly. Land prices are historically high, and after acquisition would need to be cleared and then rail would need to be laid. Unless the USA wants to get rid of compensation for imminent domain seizure, I don’t know how this kind of rail development would ever be done.

[BlueTemplar]

"Ever" is a very long time.

Considering how the wasteful cars / trucks / planes are on their way out in a short time frame (decades), while buses / rail / barges are much less so,

I expect that transition to happen naturally as economic pressures make the position favoring the minority able to still afford cars / trucks / planes as less and less politically tenable.

[shantara]

And how many people regularly commute across the United States? The absolute majority of the journeys people make regularly is still quite short, so why not start by optimizing for them? Then continue with building high speed intercity connections between the urban areas with <500 km distance to create valuable alternatives to being stuck in the highway traffic and dealing with the airport security nonsense.

Why do you always think that you need to reinvent a tried and true solutions that have been proven to work across the world?

[Dylan16807]

Also even if you're worried about going cross-country, that requires what, two fast lines between the coasts to get good routes? So even though those areas don't have many people per square mile, passing through would need an extremely small amount of track per square mile.

[waveBidder]

Look, nobody is talking about Nebraska. the density of the east coast is easily high enough to support high speed high quality rail.

[euroderf]

That's why they call it "flyover country". Not "railover country".

[ben_w]

1. CA is the 3rd largest state in the USA. Do any of the 47 smaller states have something like this?

2. As the unpopulated bits necessarily don't have many people or things to do in them, the cost of subsidising a public transit ticket in those places is necessarily small.