Advertise here with Carbon Ads

This site is made possible by member support. ❤️

Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.

When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!

kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.

🍔  💀  📸  😭  🕳️  🤠  🎬  🥔

“Flat-rate train ticket reduced Germany’s transport emissions by 5% in first year.”

Discussion  3 comments

Yen Ha

It's kind of incredible how the NYC subway/bus system is one fare and it takes you to the furthest reaches of the city

[email protected]

Possible downer correlation, but at the same time Germany and DB (their national provider) has been really sliding in on time performance.

What drove me to look for this info was a recent trip to Germany. Our trains were consistently late, and local Germans had nothing good to say about DB (although were very nice in helping us navigate alt routes). People talked of things getting better in 2030.

Not sure of my point, other than to just note that free lunches seem to be few and far between in climate work.

Lisa S.

Developing on what Kirk mentioned: I've been living in Germany for the last few months, after last living here 8 years ago. The Deutschland Ticket is great because I can buy one ticket that covers my regional subway / tram / commuter rail network AND longer regional trains.

However, at the same time, I now rent cars much more frequently than I did years ago, because the long haul trains are in crisis. They are consistently late -- 30 minutes to 2 hours late, in recent experience. If you manage to get on one, chances are that they've decided not to run half the train that day, so you've lost your seat reservation. Or even if the full train is running, there may be only one working washroom on the whole train. It's not reliable, and most people I know here just drive the long stretches now when they might have taken the train before.

The Deutschland Ticket is a good step, but they need to work on the rest of the system as well (they know this...lots of handwringing, few real solutions).

Hello! In order to leave a comment, you need to be a current kottke.org member. If you'd like to sign up for a membership to support the site and join the conversation, you can explore your options here.

Existing members can sign in here. If you're a former member, you can renew your membership.

Note: If you are a member and tried to log in, it didn't work, and now you're stuck in a neverending login loop of death, try disabling any ad blockers or extensions that you have installed on your browser...sometimes they can interfere with the Memberful links. Still having trouble? Email me!