This weekend I'll be travelling from Innsbruck to Vienna, a good chunk of the entire length of Austria.
I'm not here enough (and not travelling around enough) to be interested in the Klimaticket, but here's how public transport vs car stacks up:
Innsbruck to Vienna is 476km (~300mi) by road.
It takes about 5 hours to drive, assuming no delays. The way the world is right now, there will certainly be delays.
On the fastest route you exit Austria just after Kufstein and enter Germany at Kiefersfelden, drive through Germany on the A93, then on the A8 towards Salzburg, then cross back into Austria.
Pre-2015 you'd typically have crossed both those international borders at standard motorway speed(!), but since the refugee crisis, and even more since Covid, it's checkpoints (=delays) galore.
By train the journey is scheduled at ~4h15m. The train also enters Germany but doesn't stop there, so no border checks.
A standard ("2nd class"/economy) walk-up train fare is €74 ($85), but if you buy an annual railcard for €66 ($76) that's halved, so €37 ($43). This is a completely flexible ticket valid on any service that day, so if you are late (or early) you just get on the next train, and there's basically one every hour pretty much throughout the day. The railcard pays for itself in the first return trip.
Maybe it's just me, but €37 for a 300mi journey, with a completely flexible ticket, just seems like amazing value.
I still think it should be cheaper. The rail card thing is just a scheme to overcharge casual riders and tourists. It's reasonable for people who regularly go by train, but for people like me who do just one or two trips a year it feels like a rip-off.
Especially if I want to take my kids, I need to get a different rail card for families, and when you add it all up it's a lot more expensive than taking my car.
For some reason, public transport is always priced in a way that makes it really expensive for occassional usage. If you go everday, then an annual pass is a good value.
If you only ride on public transit occasionally, and you have a car, then taking the car is almost always cheaper. It shouldn't be like that.
Here in the US, a shorter trip of NYC to Boston (~364km/226mi) is about 4.5 hours to drive or a little faster by train (faster train "acela" is 3h45m, regular is 4h20m). I'm assuming a "walk-up fare" is just day of, when you arrive at the station. That's generally not something we can do here as trains sell out, but for tomorrow tickets are $170 for the longer train, and between $140-$220 for the faster train (depending on departure time). Prices are one-way. Flying is often cheaper even at these distances, which is infuriating to me.
I'd love to have that $85 full walk-up fare you're getting. I really wish we cared about rail travel here, it's far preferable for me to flying or driving on trips at this distance.
Even during the lockdowns there were times of no checkpoints on the borders again. It was such a relief to finally see them gone. I hope they aren't back again.
But yes that is amazing value and travel by train is just nicer.
Next stop: Just make public transport free for all reasonably permanent residents (for example, you could get a free ticket for next year when you file your taxes).
Anyone who rides public transport instead of expensive and polluting cars is doing a service for the environment.
If you go that far, why stop there? What's the reason to have all the expenses and effort of fare collection if you're only going to collect fares from the occasional users of the system and not the daily users?
If you're going to make it free for all residents, you might as well just make it free for everyone.
Tom Scott did a great video on Luxembourg's switch to free public transport. They were already covering 90% of the cost, so upping that to 100% was easy. London's network, on the other hand, gets roughly 50% of its funding from fares.
Here in Berlin the idea floating around is to make yearly tickets very cheap (365€), while keeping prices for single travel (2.80€) or daily tickets (9.50€) more expensive. That's probably the easiest, least bureaucratic route to go.
For poorer households, the yearly ticket will still be subsidized, but the public transport companies (fully owned by the state) will still have direct income to maintain a corporate-like structure.
Just remembered another consideration. When Ken Livingstone introduced free transport for school age children in order to remove cars from the school run, it simply meant a load more children who would have traditionally walked or cycled didn't need to because the bus was free.
Commuters were angry as anything that they couldn't get on the buses any more that were picked with children.
Societies are very different around the world and I'm not sure how much this is factored into ideas that could work really well in some places and not so much in others.
From what I've read about similar experiments in various cities, in fact it's not an unmitigated good thing. Most augmentation in public transport usage comes not people switching from driving, but people that used to walk or bike.
I've been saying this for a while. I used to live in queens and would take a practically empty bus down a traffic packed metropolitan ave to a coworking space in bushwick. There was no way the bus was breaking even with the 5-10 people that would get on during my trips.
Instead NYC spent $250 million to crack down on fare evasion [1] and installed huge ticket machines at a bunch of bus stops that probably cost >300K each to install.
Because it doesn't necessarily solve the problem of car journeys but costs a load. It might be fine for e.g. London but where I live, there is no public transport between my house and work (well, perhaps over about 3 hours compared to 30 minute drive) but even though my wife lives on a bus route, the times are less than hourly so she can't get to work for the right time, would get there an hour early or an hour and a half later!
If people still need to use their cars, it doesn't really work.
The simplest way is to do what my city (Missoula) did years ago and make the public transportation zero fare for everyone. No more tickets, no more swiping cards, no more concern over who "doesn't deserve" to ride a public resource. This succeeded so well they've even upgraded a number of their buses to be zero-emission as well.
Good luck with that as long as our society is based around subsidizing the fuel cost of those polluting cars (not to mention the externalized cost of pollution), and any politicians that tries to change that will lose their next election..
Our economic system ensures that we keep the gas pedal to the floor both figuratively and literally.
Maybe introduce a gradual shift instead over 50 years or so: with each next year taking the originally expected profits of public transport and gradually add those as taxes for cars while at the same time also reducing the current public transport ticket prices?
At the end of those 50 years public transportation could be free and the stubborn car owners or businesses would simply help subsidize more efficient ways of transportation.
Maybe allow reduced taxes for electric vehicles at the same time.
In the end, it wouldn't be much different than the subsidized meat production with artificially lowered meat prices in the US, nor would anyone care much about small increases like that on a year by year basis.
Why should public transport cost anything at all? I mean, what's the point? You might say the service costs money. It does. The ticket prices never cover that so you're already running at a loss. You spend money on enforcement, payment and ticket machines and you reduce usage of the service.
But here's the more important point: cars are already subsidized to a huge degree pretty much everywhere through roads, parking, etc.
Let's also start by removing free street parking from any area reasonably serviced by public transport. Or just removing it entirely.
> The ticket prices never cover that so you're already running at a loss.
London Underground usually runs at a profit. Not entirely from tickets, but also including other sources like advertisement. But ticket revenue is an important part of the income.
Public transport also includes privately-owned transport that is run for profit, like private buses and trains, which also make a profit (or go bust).
Free public transport means worse service. In the long term, subsidies < subsidies + fares, so there would be less money to fund the operations. At the same time, many people who would otherwise walk/cycle or not take the trip at all would be using public transport, and the reduced service would be crowded. Because the quality of public transport would be low, people who can afford it would prefer driving. That in turn would lower the subsidies, because people are always looking for ways to lower taxes and reduce public spending in services they don't need.
Sometimes the fares are also higher than costs to discourage using public transport, because capacity is limited and increasing it is effectively impossible. London zone 1 is a good example of this. People who won't use public transport will walk/cycle or not take the trip at all. They won't switch to driving in any significant numbers, because that would be physically impossible.
> Why should public transport cost anything at all? I mean, what's the point?
Because by subsidizing public transport, you are discouraging people from options that save the resources used by transportation even more: for example partial home-office, riding to work by bike, or moving closer to work || working closer to home.
Some context here: previously there was no single ticket you could get for public transport in Austria like you could in Switzerland. There was a yearly ticket for the national rail services but that was it.
With this ticket you can hop into any public transport now from long distance rail to local city trams.
Just to clarify : In Switzerland, one can buy a CA Travelcard (for CHF3860 a year, approximately $3850). With this card, one can travel on (nearly) all public transports in Switzerland (trains, coaches, subways, trams, etc.) free of charge. Since the public transportation system is very good, it's a good way to travel.
That's the part that makes a system like this subjectively unfair.
If my daily commute is a handful of bus stops and that guy's is a train for an hour from another city, then I am basically funding his commute by overpaying for my pass... even if it's cheaper to ride my bus with a pass than to buy a ticket for every ride.
Edit - I read the website as saying that this is going to be the only pass available in Austria. It looks like it's not, which, of course, makes far more sense in comparison.
I'm an American who studied abroad in France for a bit a decade ago and did a little traveling around Europe, including to Austria. The Austrian train system was the best by far even without Klimaticket. Specifically, you bought a ticket that entitled you to a set number of kilometers and you could use it any time in the month. Moreover, the trains actually ran on time and customer service was helpful. By comparison, under the French system, the trains were often late, the customer service was almost hostile, and your ticket was for a specific train and if you missed it for whatever reason you were out of luck.
This was a really big deal for me because the French government had just reneged on their commitment to pay my ~650 euro/month rent just a week or two before I arrived and consequently I chose to skip meals to save up a bit to make a couple of trips to Austria to Austria to visit my then-girlfriend-now-wife (I went from 175lbs to an unhealthy 140lbs over my 5-month stay).
As a parenthetical, when I was planning to fly to Austria from Paris, I put my luggage in a 24-hour locker in Gare du Nord the evening before the early-morning flight, but the room the locker was in was closed from 10pm to 6am and the flight left CDG at 7am, so I was devastated when I had to eat the cost of the flight ticket. I begged the staff to unlock the door for me in my best, most polite French, but they would invariably say "c'est impossible" (in my experience, this is what almost all French employees would say to any request which wasn't strictly in their job description, including asking for directions which made it all the more shocking when I would ask an Austrian employee in English for some help and they were positively eager to assist, even if their English was not very good).
> As a parenthetical, when I was planning to fly to Austria from Paris, I put my luggage in a 24-hour locker in Gare du Nord the evening before the early-morning flight, but the room the locker was in was closed from 10pm to 6am and the flight left CDG at 7am, so I was devastated when I had to eat the cost of the flight ticket. I begged the staff to unlock the door for me in my best, most polite French, but they would invariably say "c'est impossible"
Hm, was in a very similar situation at a Greyhound station in Merced when I returned from a hike through Yosemite. I had parked half of my luggage in a locker at the bus station when I took the shuttle serve to the park (which ended up with me having to put the snow chains on the shuttle bus since the driver had never performed that task...). When I returned to the station and wanted to retrieve my luggage to take the Greyhound which would eventually take me to the airport so I could catch my flight back to the Netherlands the station was closed, and would remain closed until past my bus department time. There was a cleaner in the station who I eventually managed to persuade to open the door... otherwise I would have missed the bus, which would have made me miss my flight. Since then I have made sure to check opening times on buildings containing luggage storage to avoid these problems.
Just as a counter-anecdote to "c'est impossible", when I was young and naive I went on a cycle tour from La Rochelle to Toulouse, thinking I could just book a train ticket with a bike from Toulouse to Paris and put my bike in the luggage carriage as you could at the time in the UK. In fact, technically, you had to take apart and box your bike before they'd allow you to put it on board. I arrived on the platform with my bike and spoke to the guard who told me what the rule was, looked up and down the mostly empty platform, and gestured towards the guard's van. Sometimes you get a Gallic shrug rather than "c'est impossible". (The difference may also be to do with Paris vs the rest of France, as tends to be the case with capital cities vs everywhere else in a country).
I'm sorry for your experience in France. French people are not really friendly to strangers (not in a racist way, more in a "i don't even know what language this stranger is talking"). I'm 50% sure the locker staff didn't even understand what you wanted from them and just reacted with stress.
But Paris have the reputation to be pretty hostile, even to the rest of french population. Our other cities are much more open and friendly. Our countryside is also pretty friendly but don't expect anyone there to understand you but at least they'll friendly try to fake that they can.
This should be the preferred way to ride all local transit systems. One price for the whole family, ride as much as you want for the month (I think month is better then year - easier to budget, and if you move you are not out as much). If people aren't willing to pay for the pass, your system isn't useful and you need to fix that. Because it is unlimited rides people are less likely to think about using the car for trips that could go either way.
Note that I said local. For trips to other cities it might (or might not) make sense to charge a different price - such trips are not as common.
In Germany the "Bahncard 100" has been available for years. It costs 4,027 Euro/yr (2. class) or 6,812 Euro/yr (1. class) for infinte train rides with Deutsche Bahn and a lot of local transport associations.[1] Since Germany is about four times as big as Austria the price is comparable to the Klimaticket, if one is really travelling a lot of long distances.
For smaller areas the situation is very complicated. Almost all local transportation associations have yearly tarifs of their own. Sometimes they are valid in adjacent destinations, sometimes not or only for a limited time (such as during the summer school holidays). More consistency would be desirable here.
Not really the same scale, but I loved having an annual travel card when I lived in London. It was so freeing knowing I could basically get on anything or go anywhere without having to worry about getting the right ticket or making sure I had enough money on the Oyster card. Plus the ticket gave a third off travel outside London.
It was expensive-up front, but ended up saving so much money, especially as I could buy it via salary sacrifice before tax. Definitely recommended.
I really want this to exist for Belgium. Right now the public transport prices are absurd here... An all year pass for just the train in all of Belgium ranges in the 10k eur/year, and there is no national metro+bus+tram access (just Brussels is 700 EUR / year for that with no access to other cities).
It's absurd and caused by fragmentation of services between Flanders, wallonia and Brussels with no coordination between them.
Er... sounds good, but first they say "All public transport in Austria with a single ticket", and later "...in a specific area for a year: regional, cross-regional and nationwide". And after that, there is only one price (with various rebates) listed for the "Klimaticket Ö". Are there cheaper versions planned which are limited to e.g. one ("regional") or two ("cross-regional") states (Bundesländer)? I checked the German version, it's not a translation mistake.
EDIT: Ok, found out myself, thanks Wikipedia! All but one (Kärnten) states already have a yearly public transportation ticket, with prices ranging from 365€ (Vorarlberg and Vienna) to 695 € (Oberösterreich). I guess these will be called "Klimaticket" too in the future. Might have made sense to mention this in the FAQ though...
BTW the introduction date, 26.10.2021, is the Austrian National Day.
If it's really also for long distance rail, that's a lot of value. For comparison, the German Railway has something similar (but I think only for the railway) and it costs easily 3x as much. It's a bigger country but regardless. I live and work in a smaller city where I don't really need public transport, but when I was working in a city near me, the monthly ticket for the two cities was more than this. I don't know much about living in Austria, but in my mind it should be a no brainer for a lot of people.
Interesting. The "family supplement" feels like it could use some work though. You pay €110 extra, and up to 4 of your children (<15 years old) can travel with you. But your partner isn't included...they would also have to pay the extra if they ever planned on being with the kids, and without you. And the kids have to buy a ticket if traveling alone. It's not expensive per se, but it seems like a narrow set of uses.
In Germany you can buy a Bahncard 100 for roughly 4k, which allows you to take any Deutsche Bahn train at any time.
Not sure if the cost should scale with size of counrty, but I guess 4x is roughly reasonable between Austria and Germany. Austria probably is more expensive to build railroad in, since it's mostly mountains.
I see a detrimental incentive here. Let me explain, and then someone please show me what I'm not getting.
We're trying to incentivize public over private transit because the former emits less carbon (in general).
However, public transit still costs carbon, so taking less trips total seems to be better for the environment (the "reduce" part of "reduce, reuse, recycle" - kind of). If the marginal cost to a public transit user per trip is zero, then that incentivizes taking small, useless trips (e.g. "I could wait until the weekend to pick up a few small groceries, but transit is free, so why not go now").
Wouldn't it be better to add a *small" fee per trip, e.g. 1 EUR (much smaller than private transit), to incentivize people to make fewer trips in the first place?
As miserable as public transit is for us in the US, I could actually see this kind of deal succeeding in New York (and neighboring areas of Connecticut and New Jersey). Those in the city are constantly perplexed by the various county-run transit lines and costs, but some kind of single pass would actually make bus lines approachable to visitors (whereas they are only used by those who can't afford a car today).
Also, could this model be a response to a decline in ridership due to COVID? I don't know how these commuter lines fared in Europe, but I can only assume there were less folks traveling to a different area due to lockdown/remote work.
I like what Montpellier (France) is doing, which is a phased approach towards all public transportation free. For now it's for under 18 yo and 65+ yo, and all weekends for everyone, with a phase 3 total gratuity in 2023. I prefer to choose and accordingly pay for my long distance travels, but in the city trips consume a lot of money, on a personal / family level, which is nice to see reduced. And who doesn't want to travel with the nicest tram in France and for free??
When the San Francisco Bay Area tried to move to a single means of payment, a digital card Transit-Link or whatnot, it was delayed more than a year by BART due to arguements over who holds the cash payments from ticket sales, and when those funds are released, exactly. The funding of MUNI, BART, Alameda County Transit and others, have different histories and cash control, so they fought about it.
[+] [-] logifail|4 years ago|reply
I'm not here enough (and not travelling around enough) to be interested in the Klimaticket, but here's how public transport vs car stacks up:
Innsbruck to Vienna is 476km (~300mi) by road.
It takes about 5 hours to drive, assuming no delays. The way the world is right now, there will certainly be delays.
On the fastest route you exit Austria just after Kufstein and enter Germany at Kiefersfelden, drive through Germany on the A93, then on the A8 towards Salzburg, then cross back into Austria.
Pre-2015 you'd typically have crossed both those international borders at standard motorway speed(!), but since the refugee crisis, and even more since Covid, it's checkpoints (=delays) galore.
By train the journey is scheduled at ~4h15m. The train also enters Germany but doesn't stop there, so no border checks.
A standard ("2nd class"/economy) walk-up train fare is €74 ($85), but if you buy an annual railcard for €66 ($76) that's halved, so €37 ($43). This is a completely flexible ticket valid on any service that day, so if you are late (or early) you just get on the next train, and there's basically one every hour pretty much throughout the day. The railcard pays for itself in the first return trip.
Maybe it's just me, but €37 for a 300mi journey, with a completely flexible ticket, just seems like amazing value.
[+] [-] yarcob|4 years ago|reply
Especially if I want to take my kids, I need to get a different rail card for families, and when you add it all up it's a lot more expensive than taking my car.
For some reason, public transport is always priced in a way that makes it really expensive for occassional usage. If you go everday, then an annual pass is a good value.
If you only ride on public transit occasionally, and you have a car, then taking the car is almost always cheaper. It shouldn't be like that.
[+] [-] mtalantikite|4 years ago|reply
I'd love to have that $85 full walk-up fare you're getting. I really wish we cared about rail travel here, it's far preferable for me to flying or driving on trips at this distance.
[+] [-] jahnu|4 years ago|reply
But yes that is amazing value and travel by train is just nicer.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Aeolun|4 years ago|reply
Cost may be a bit higher though. You’re liable to burn through 30ish liters of fuel at a price of around €50.
[+] [-] quadrifoliate|4 years ago|reply
Anyone who rides public transport instead of expensive and polluting cars is doing a service for the environment.
[+] [-] sokoloff|4 years ago|reply
If you're going to make it free for all residents, you might as well just make it free for everyone.
[+] [-] ortusdux|4 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feCQPD9DSOA
[+] [-] bakuninsbart|4 years ago|reply
For poorer households, the yearly ticket will still be subsidized, but the public transport companies (fully owned by the state) will still have direct income to maintain a corporate-like structure.
[+] [-] lbriner|4 years ago|reply
Commuters were angry as anything that they couldn't get on the buses any more that were picked with children.
Societies are very different around the world and I'm not sure how much this is factored into ideas that could work really well in some places and not so much in others.
[+] [-] wazoox|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m_ke|4 years ago|reply
Instead NYC spent $250 million to crack down on fare evasion [1] and installed huge ticket machines at a bunch of bus stops that probably cost >300K each to install.
[1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/11/14/mta-will-spend-249m-o...
[+] [-] newsclues|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lbriner|4 years ago|reply
If people still need to use their cars, it doesn't really work.
[+] [-] msla|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cannabis_sam|4 years ago|reply
Our economic system ensures that we keep the gas pedal to the floor both figuratively and literally.
[+] [-] KronisLV|4 years ago|reply
At the end of those 50 years public transportation could be free and the stubborn car owners or businesses would simply help subsidize more efficient ways of transportation.
Maybe allow reduced taxes for electric vehicles at the same time.
In the end, it wouldn't be much different than the subsidized meat production with artificially lowered meat prices in the US, nor would anyone care much about small increases like that on a year by year basis.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] m463|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cletus|4 years ago|reply
But here's the more important point: cars are already subsidized to a huge degree pretty much everywhere through roads, parking, etc.
Let's also start by removing free street parking from any area reasonably serviced by public transport. Or just removing it entirely.
[+] [-] joshuaissac|4 years ago|reply
London Underground usually runs at a profit. Not entirely from tickets, but also including other sources like advertisement. But ticket revenue is an important part of the income.
Public transport also includes privately-owned transport that is run for profit, like private buses and trains, which also make a profit (or go bust).
[+] [-] jltsiren|4 years ago|reply
Sometimes the fares are also higher than costs to discourage using public transport, because capacity is limited and increasing it is effectively impossible. London zone 1 is a good example of this. People who won't use public transport will walk/cycle or not take the trip at all. They won't switch to driving in any significant numbers, because that would be physically impossible.
[+] [-] richwater|4 years ago|reply
It's why public restrooms are always disgusting.
[+] [-] Jenda_|4 years ago|reply
Because by subsidizing public transport, you are discouraging people from options that save the resources used by transportation even more: for example partial home-office, riding to work by bike, or moving closer to work || working closer to home.
[+] [-] denimnerd42|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_mitsuhiko|4 years ago|reply
With this ticket you can hop into any public transport now from long distance rail to local city trams.
[+] [-] LittleNemoInS|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malthaus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huhtenberg|4 years ago|reply
That's the part that makes a system like this subjectively unfair.
If my daily commute is a handful of bus stops and that guy's is a train for an hour from another city, then I am basically funding his commute by overpaying for my pass... even if it's cheaper to ride my bus with a pass than to buy a ticket for every ride.
Edit - I read the website as saying that this is going to be the only pass available in Austria. It looks like it's not, which, of course, makes far more sense in comparison.
[+] [-] throwaway894345|4 years ago|reply
This was a really big deal for me because the French government had just reneged on their commitment to pay my ~650 euro/month rent just a week or two before I arrived and consequently I chose to skip meals to save up a bit to make a couple of trips to Austria to Austria to visit my then-girlfriend-now-wife (I went from 175lbs to an unhealthy 140lbs over my 5-month stay).
As a parenthetical, when I was planning to fly to Austria from Paris, I put my luggage in a 24-hour locker in Gare du Nord the evening before the early-morning flight, but the room the locker was in was closed from 10pm to 6am and the flight left CDG at 7am, so I was devastated when I had to eat the cost of the flight ticket. I begged the staff to unlock the door for me in my best, most polite French, but they would invariably say "c'est impossible" (in my experience, this is what almost all French employees would say to any request which wasn't strictly in their job description, including asking for directions which made it all the more shocking when I would ask an Austrian employee in English for some help and they were positively eager to assist, even if their English was not very good).
[+] [-] hagbard_c|4 years ago|reply
Hm, was in a very similar situation at a Greyhound station in Merced when I returned from a hike through Yosemite. I had parked half of my luggage in a locker at the bus station when I took the shuttle serve to the park (which ended up with me having to put the snow chains on the shuttle bus since the driver had never performed that task...). When I returned to the station and wanted to retrieve my luggage to take the Greyhound which would eventually take me to the airport so I could catch my flight back to the Netherlands the station was closed, and would remain closed until past my bus department time. There was a cleaner in the station who I eventually managed to persuade to open the door... otherwise I would have missed the bus, which would have made me miss my flight. Since then I have made sure to check opening times on buildings containing luggage storage to avoid these problems.
[+] [-] frereubu|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjerem|4 years ago|reply
But Paris have the reputation to be pretty hostile, even to the rest of french population. Our other cities are much more open and friendly. Our countryside is also pretty friendly but don't expect anyone there to understand you but at least they'll friendly try to fake that they can.
[+] [-] bluGill|4 years ago|reply
Note that I said local. For trips to other cities it might (or might not) make sense to charge a different price - such trips are not as common.
[+] [-] Archelaos|4 years ago|reply
For smaller areas the situation is very complicated. Almost all local transportation associations have yearly tarifs of their own. Sometimes they are valid in adjacent destinations, sometimes not or only for a limited time (such as during the summer school holidays). More consistency would be desirable here.
[1] For a list see: https://www.bahn.de/angebot/bahncard/vorteile/verbuende (in German)
[+] [-] mattkevan|4 years ago|reply
It was expensive-up front, but ended up saving so much money, especially as I could buy it via salary sacrifice before tax. Definitely recommended.
[+] [-] scrollaway|4 years ago|reply
It's absurd and caused by fragmentation of services between Flanders, wallonia and Brussels with no coordination between them.
[+] [-] rob74|4 years ago|reply
EDIT: Ok, found out myself, thanks Wikipedia! All but one (Kärnten) states already have a yearly public transportation ticket, with prices ranging from 365€ (Vorarlberg and Vienna) to 695 € (Oberösterreich). I guess these will be called "Klimaticket" too in the future. Might have made sense to mention this in the FAQ though...
BTW the introduction date, 26.10.2021, is the Austrian National Day.
[+] [-] locallost|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flemhans|4 years ago|reply
Austria is 1/10th the size of Germany. By this logic, the ticket price should be 300 EUR, not 1095 EUR.
[+] [-] tyingq|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] athenot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] turbinerneiter|4 years ago|reply
Not sure if the cost should scale with size of counrty, but I guess 4x is roughly reasonable between Austria and Germany. Austria probably is more expensive to build railroad in, since it's mostly mountains.
[+] [-] Aeolun|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fouric|4 years ago|reply
We're trying to incentivize public over private transit because the former emits less carbon (in general).
However, public transit still costs carbon, so taking less trips total seems to be better for the environment (the "reduce" part of "reduce, reuse, recycle" - kind of). If the marginal cost to a public transit user per trip is zero, then that incentivizes taking small, useless trips (e.g. "I could wait until the weekend to pick up a few small groceries, but transit is free, so why not go now").
Wouldn't it be better to add a *small" fee per trip, e.g. 1 EUR (much smaller than private transit), to incentivize people to make fewer trips in the first place?
[+] [-] schnevets|4 years ago|reply
Also, could this model be a response to a decline in ridership due to COVID? I don't know how these commuter lines fared in Europe, but I can only assume there were less folks traveling to a different area due to lockdown/remote work.
[+] [-] netfortius|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistrial9|4 years ago|reply
source: public news story at the time