[santiagobasulto]

Unrelated, but shows the "slow collapse" of Europe (where I live in).

We all know what a big issue Climate Change (and specially warming in Europe) is. So most European politicians go on and on about environment and all that.

Well, yesterday, I went to play football at night and finished at around 10PM. I was planning on taking the metro, as any normal European citizen.

Much was my surprise when I compared the time and cost to a Car Sharing app (Free2move).

The metro in my city is €3,80 and Google Maps estimated a metro travel time of 30 minutes.

I ended up paying €3,64 for the Car and made it home in 19 minutes. Worst part, the car was not even electric.

It makes absolutely no freaking sense.

So yeah, European politicians are just scammers. They're doing their own businesses while claiming to protect the population.

[tossandthrow]

With all respect, the car sharing you used is likely VC subsidized while the metro runs on much lower subsidies.

That said, public city transport should likely just be free. (not so much regional or national transport as the extreme congestion from the Deutschland ticket has shown)

[adastra22]

Ride sharing has not been VC subsidized for many years.

[Mawr]

That doesn't track at all to me as a European also. You must have hit an edge case with the car app. First time customer discount or something.

The cost of a comparable single trip for me would be on the order of 5x more expensive, in favor of public transport.

If we take into account monthly tickets, it'd be on the order of 10x.

This isn't a fluke either, there is simply no way a single occupancy taxi service could ever cost less than mass public transport. You just got lucky.

[santiagobasulto]

A metro ticket for a 1hr trip, yes. For 15 minutes? I doubt it.

[Mawr]

I don't know what you mean. The only way you could ever end up with a cheaper fare with a taxi is the sort of edge case you've hit - a single trip that happened to end up cheaper. And that must be an edge case, since even single trip cost is always lower for mass transit. Travel times and such may be worse of course, but not cost.

Even discounting single trip price, the more trips you make, the better and better mass transit scales. For example, take London - even if you do the brainless act of just tapping your card on every card reader as you go, you can only get charged so much: [1].

But monthly/yearly tickets are really where the cost effectiveness comes in. I was being very generous in my calculations above, I assumed you'd only travel 2x a day, to commute to work. But as soon as you've bought the ticket, all trips during its duration become effectively free, so there's no reason not to use the system as much as practicable.

For example, I've probably made around 40 trips in the last 3 days. That plus all my commuting trips this month puts my cost per trip on the order of pennies per trip. You just can't beat that for cost.

[1]: https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/capping

[BobaFloutist]

Wow, a Car Sharing app was more expensive in a single case than a metro ticket.

Truly all European politicians are just scammers, and Europe is in a "slow collapse"

How sad.

[mejutoco]

Is that the metro price of a single ticket or proportional for a 10 trip card or similar?

[santiagobasulto]

PER ticket. Extremely expensive for the average salary. Theres a reduced fare that is 2.8 for students and elder citizens

[mejutoco]

I dont know which country it is, but do people buy single tickets? Isnt there a more economic 10 ticket card or monthly etc? I never saw a country where only single tickets are available. It might make the price comparison more representative for most people.

[santiagobasulto]

Dzień dobry. It's Germany. There are some options but as I don't use it a lot (I bike A LOT, or use the car, which is electric) I don't have it. Regardless of the tiny rounding errors of 1 or 10 passes, the argument is that if we REALLY want to fight climate change, we should make public transportation more affordable.

[mejutoco]

I see. Thanks for the clarification. The 29€ monthly subscription in Berlin is more affordable than one would think from the first post. I get the point of the single ticket you made (I actually lived in Germany for 10 years) but I thought it made sense too to talk about the most common costs. I dont think most people only buy single tickets in Berlin, especially when work usually pays for part of the transport. Just making sure it had this context.