Is there a similar ticket, flat for 50 Dollar per month, that takes you through the US? I wonder who pays for the real cost of the ticket, who cleans and repairs the trains, who invests in infrastructure and all that. I always wonder how the germans can pull this off for 50 Euro. Magic.
> I wonder who pays for the real cost of the ticket
Everybody already has local regional tickets anyway. And most people can't be in more then one place at the time anyway. And most people stay in the same region most of the time anyway.
So really you are not losing much compared to having separate local region tickets in a system where the long distance trains are separated.
> who cleans and repairs the trains
The already existing organizations that have run the trains for a long time.
> who invests in infrastructure and all that
The government ...
> I always wonder how the germans can pull this off for 50 Euro. Magic.
Its not magic its just a transportation policy and taxes.
Everybody already has local regional tickets anyway. And most people can't be in more then one place at the time anyway. And most people stay in the same region most of the time anyway.
I live in Rostock. So if I want to go to Berlin or Hamburg (you know, where stuff like actual airports are) I am crossing "regional borders" even if it is a 200-250 km trip to each city
At least from Rostock to somewhat closer destinations you have both options. There's a bi-hourly IC to Hamburg or Berlin and another bi-hourly RE towards the same destinations. They're not terribly different in terms of travel time, but one is a regional train and one is an inter-city train.
Sure, long distances (I had to travel from Rostock to Tübingen last weekend) are typically not taken with regional trains (although you technically can; I did that as a poor student a few times, it just takes 16 hours instead of 10), but over medium distances (around 2–3 hours) you often have both options.
On the point of the upkeep, locals know German trains are now legendary for unpunctuality and cancellations, so maybe it's not working. But the answer is obviously (trigger warning for the libertarians...) taxes.
The ticket came about because energy prices went crazy after their energy dealer Putin went crazy and warry, I think it was an attempt to motivate people to take public transport rather than have them moan about fuel prices going way way up...
This does not matter much, since most people do not travel across states, countries, continents, etc on a daily basis. Most people probably travel within a 50 km (30 mile) radius (travelling to and from work, daycare, school, shopping, etc.).
iirc, the average is slightly higher in the US, but this is probably more due to how the US has approached urban planning over the last century or so than to the size of the country.
> But the answer is obviously (trigger warning for the libertarians...) taxes.
I think many people forget the huge societal cost of owning and running cars, including infrastructure maintenance, crash-related deaths and injuries, health conditions caused by crashes, air and noise pollution, climate change, resource extraction, and time lost in traffic. In other words, the savings from reducing these social, health, and environmental costs could easily finance the ticket. A study estimated that a modal shift of 10% to public transit could save Germany about 19 billion Euros a year (https://foes.de/publikationen/2024/2024-04_FOES_OEPNV.pdf).
fyi regional trains (which the deutschlandticket is valid for) are very punctual, it is the long distance/ICE trains that are always late/broken, and you cannot ride those with thw deutschlandticket anyways.
If you take a train to work five days a week and it's "on time" (not delayed by 6 minutes or more) 85% of the time, you'll be late on at least one day most weeks. Hardly very punctual.
Personally, I think they should just abandon timetables, run trains as fast as they can, and if you need to be somewhere by a certain time, you give the planner a target reliability and it uses a probabilistic model of the entire system to tell you when to leave so you can arrive on time (0 minutes delay, or earlier) with that given probability.
true, the actual word used is less important to me than the distinction between long distance trains and regional trains, since those get conflated quite a bit in this discussion.
Most local and S-Bahn trains in Germany are pretty decent, data is pretty clear on this. Its not Swiss level but still pretty good. Nothing compare to ICE.
The german trains, even at their worst, are so much better than anything in the US. Complaining can also be a sport in Germany. Take a ride on Njtransit or the NYC subway to appreciate the difference. Or try to get anywhere in New Jersey without a car. In many parts of Germany, you can get almost anywhere conveniently with only public transportation.
It's probably worse if it was once reliable and now not, compared to if it's never reliable: if it's never reliable, you've been trained to have a huge safety margin and backup plans, if it's reliable and suddenly it messes up, you're thrown in a new situation and have to think "Shit, what do I do now?". Probably very stressful, and it leads people to avoid the service altogether.
Although apparently NYC subways used to be better too.
what’s going on in New York is irrelevant. The trains in Germany are largely bad. Bad enough that I don’t use them unless I have to. Once they’re at that stage it doesn’t matter how much worse they get for me, I still won’t use them.
I can't say what your experience is and what 'absolutely broken' means. There is data on these things. I can only tell you what the data says. Could be you are in region that is worse then others. Or your definition of 'absolutely broken' is different then most peoples.
Well, if its related to the original poster, then how do you know it is their first time in indonesia? :)) Most likely, :)), it is Bali, and for sure, you can leave wifey alone.
Fair enough. Still rather odd thing to write without at least acknowledgment of this being unusual — I guess this is what had people somewhat triggered, because they made it sound as if this was a natural thing to. But we digress.
To clarify, I went to the hotel, she got through (eventually) and went to a conference. I collected her luggage. We met back at the hotel later that evening.
I am all in favor of continuous development. Program. Check-In. Build. Test. Merge to dev. Build. Test. Merge to master. Build. Test. Deploy. I have a very fancy Play Button, that does everything automatically.
But it always takes like half an hour. :))
I usually start then something else. I have many projects open. But its like....these context switches, they are draining.
So yeah, i like to go the dangerous part, deploy right away from my dev machine. But i get immediate reaction. I dont have to wait. But my mates dont like it. And so i deal with it.
That half an hour is a perfect argument for why _software_ speed matters too. Without fast software you get stuck being slow at the human parts too, ultimately reducing your potential.
Btw. we had a forced EKS restart last week on thursday due to Kubernetes updates. And something was done with DNS there. We had problems with ndots. Caused some trouble here. Would not be surprised, if it is related, heh.
What is the purpose of running lp(a) testing, if i may ask? Just for knowing the risk factor and dealing with it? As far as i know there is no easy way for dealing with it once and for all times (gene editing...)
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