
Germany considers free public transport in fight to banish air pollution - keeganjw
https://www.thelocal.de/20180213/germany-considers-making-public-transport-free-to-fight-air-pollution
======
jonashnk
In Tallinn (Estonia) free public transport was launched on the municipality
level. What's interesting, is that despite criticism that this is too
expensive for the city - free transportation has actually turned out to be
profitable.

This is because only residents of the city can use public transport for free.
So thousands of people, who have lived there already, but were not registered
as residents, now declared their residency to access free public transport—and
started paying their taxes there too.

~~~
propter_hoc
This does not make sense.

If the citizen (as you say) is deciding between paying taxes or buying transit
tickets on a monetary basis, he or she will choose the cheapest option, and
the city will lose out on revenue. On a purely financial basis making this the
citizen's choice cannot be a win-win for the citizen and the city.

Besides the above argument, it is also unlikely that there is any possibility
of net revenue to the city. Even if a few people irrationally decide to pay
more taxes than they were paying in transit fares, and hence generate some
revenue, there are presumably only a small minority of the population who make
this decision. But these additional tax revenues have to cover not just what
these citizens were spending on their own transit passes, but also the loss in
revenue to the city from _everyone else in the city not paying for transit
anymore._

Certainly, it is likely that free public transport enhances the economy and
generates revenue in other ways, but it does not add up in the way you have
presented it.

~~~
jedrek
It doesn't make sense because you don't understand how registered addresses
and taxes work in the former eastern bloc. It's common for people to move to a
large city and officially still be registered as living at home. Sometimes
it's due to laziness, sometimes they don't want to get the paperwork to get
registered at their new address, sometimes they just like having mom take care
of all their paperwork/tickets/etc.

Free public transportation is incentivizing these people to register where
they actually live. They aren't paying more in taxes, they've just registered
as official residents of the city, so their taxes are counted as being paid in
the city.

~~~
NittLion78
It's not just the Eastern Bloc - it's not uncommon in the US, particularly
among recent college grads who move to a new state, to not get a new driver's
license (which costs $), or to avoid getting new license plates on a car and
summarily to avoid the higher insurance costs in that locality, etc..

~~~
JackFr
With respect to auto insurance, the insurance contract is governed by the laws
of the state in which the car is registered, however the rate paid is based on
where the car is principally garaged. If someone is paying a lower rate by not
correctly listing where they live, that is insurance fraud (albeit of the
small time variety), and depending on the state can void coverage or incur
other penalties.

------
zanny
Practically every city with a transit system should be giving away free rides
_all the time_. Something along the lines of every citizen can come get a ride
card that gives you 4 free rides a week on the tube or 4 free bus rides within
city limits.

It accomplishes a ton:

* It gets people who cannot afford regular fares to use these services when appropriate, rather than what might be less desirable (having a friend drive them around if they are too poor, etc).

* It gets people _using_ services they might not use otherwise. A lot of commuters would take the train once or twice just because its free. If you can get people started on using public transit, they might just keep using it.

* You can also give away free rides during low density hours, such as at night. This can help offset daytime load by getting people to do their time-flexible commutes at off hours.

Now there are a lot of tweaks on the model, like making free rides only
eligible for non-peak hours. But the whole point of public transit is to
increase the efficiency of people and business in the economy where it is
built - it is never meant to turn a profit, and if it is profitable it is
probably failing on that first premise by costing so much to use. Making it
completely free all the time makes it rife for abuse unless you institute a
system where riders who ride the most get the least priority. But honestly if
anyone were willing to implement such a system making the transit free and
just using the tax revenue of booming business to pay for the transit is a
much more sensible model than trying to keep your transit system revenue
neutral or even cash positive (cough, Amtrak).

~~~
askvictor
This is a fantastic idea - is there anywhere which implements this?

However, if the transit system is already at capacity at peak time, then it
would need to be restricted to off peak (in lieu of building more services),
as the ticketing is acting as demand management rather than revenue
collection.

~~~
zanny
I'm not convinced that even with finite free rides public transit users would
make rush hour worse. The people taking the tube at rush hour are usually
doing it where they cannot travel at an alternate, less congested time. Those
people will go for free or not, and are stuck riding at the times they do.
Even with a free ride card, you would still want to avoid rush hour just to
not have to wait for transit to become available.

What is interesting is that most public transit obeys the same congestion
rules as roads - if you take a congested road system and add more roads, you
often just end up with more cars on the roads at the same times congesting the
new roads again because of all the offset load that uses transit at off hours
due to congestion. For people on the roads, they are effectively "free" to use
once you have the car, but people still actively decide to drive at off hours
to avoid congestion. The same happens with any transit system regardless of
cost - unsurprisingly, people don't want to be stuck in traffic.

------
majewsky
> Other attempts around the world to offer citizens free travel have failed,
> including in US city Seattle.

Why do they not mention the large amount of cities where free public transit
is working just fine (most notably Estonian capitol Tallinn)?

List:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport#List_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport#List_of_towns_and_cities_with_area-
wide_zero-fare_transport)

~~~
taoistextremist
I'm not sure how Germany organizes their rail systems, but I'm guessing the
rail companies profit from increased property values like in much of the
world. This makes free public transport potentially workable (and even
profitable) at least in the subway aspect. The US does not exercise a system
like this in the vast majority of cases.

Of course, there's also the fact that if you have a well-designed system, free
transport _should_ encourage a lot more economic activity that'll pay back
into the funding of the system. That's another thing many cities in the US
lack.

~~~
thesimon
Not really, the infrastructure is state-owned and separated from the rail
companies.

~~~
taoistextremist
I'd be interested to see how they intend to make this plan successful, then.
There's no other avenue for the rail to collect revenue in that case, unless
its economic benefit is already a significant net profit for the government.
It may be, for all I know, it allows higher population density and encourages
market participation, both of which increase taxes collected.

It is hard to see how it'll really convince many people not already taking
public transit to use it, though. Cars are pretty expensive to have anywhere
in Europe with the price of gas and typically more discouraging laws for car
ownership (not sure what they're like specifically in Germany), I can't
imagine it's a large cross-section of the population that drives because it's
cheaper.

~~~
majewsky
Marginal cost, I would guess.

When you have a car, but you don't have a transit pass, the cost of completing
a particular trip by car is (or at least appears to be) cheaper than doing so
by public transit. For example, if I have to go to the city center and back by
tram, the cost for two one-way tickets is € 4,60. The cost of one liter of
gasoline is somewhere below € 2,00. Public transit only becomes cheaper than
going by car if you use it regularly and thus purchase monthly or yearly
passes.

------
franzpeterfolz
Well, plans say the government is subsidizing Electric cars and Plugin-Hybrids
with 4,000 Euro. Half payed by the government and the other half from car
manufacturers.

They even want to expand these subsidies to small businesses and extend the
amount to 8,000 Euros.

The problem indeed is that this would not help to banish air pollution,
because the numbers are to low. The second thing is, that only wealthier
people would benefit from these subsidies. You have to be able to afford a new
car at first. And second you have to be able to afford an electric car. And
even if you are the typical buy brand new cars guy, you typically drive these
cars 6 to 10 years. So these subsidies might come in an unpleasent moment of
your car-buying-cycle.

Free public transportation could reduce car traffic and everybody could
benefit. Even poor people.

~~~
guitarbill
In light of this, the decision to shut down nuclear power plants by 2022, but
keep the coal power plants is, err, interesting? Sure, renewable sources are
increasing, but fossil fuels are still the biggest source. I wonder where the
energy for electric cars will come from if they truly become popular. Keep in
mind that Germany imports energy. So phasing out nuclear power, while still
importing from nations running nuclear is somewhat hypocritical (e.g. France
has some plants along the border).

Even in Germany, politics are politics and fears are not always rational.

~~~
lispm
> Keep in mind that Germany imports energy.

Germany imports energy. It also imports electricity sometimes. But Germany
actually has a large export surplus for electricity over the last five years -
even though several nuclear power plants have been closed. And the surplus is
widening.

> So phasing out nuclear power, while still importing from nations running
> nuclear is somewhat hypocritical (e.g. France has some plants along the
> border).

Germany has now the largest electricity export surplus in Europe. Germany also
has a large electricity export surplus with France.

The German export surplus of electricity in 2017 was 60TWH. 2016 56 TWH, 2015
57TWH. Etc.

[https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=import-
export...](https://www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=import-
export&period=annual&year=2017)

In money this means an export surplus in 2017 of 1.4 Billion Euro.

Renewable energy is now at 36% for electricity and Germany now for the first
time has days where the whole country is powered by renewable electricity.

> e.g. France has some plants along the border

The old french nuclear power plants Germany would like to see closed.

> I wonder where the energy for electric cars will come from if they truly
> become popular.

Depends where you are, but I live in North Germany and it's possible to have
large amount of surplus electricity in one or two decades from wind with
buffers (like hydro in Norway which is then transported via HVDC lines to
Germany).

~~~
guitarbill
> Renewable energy is now at 36% for electricity

Great, but my point still stands. Would I like more renewables? Of course!
Would I prefer running the nuclear powerplants we already have instead of
coal? Yes.

The surplus is great, but just illustrates the issue with renewables. I just
wish we could be a bit more truthful about the surplus. Large numbers are
nice, but that’s manager level detail. A surplus when you don’t need it and
have no way of storing it is useless, and you end up paying people to use
electrisity, which has happened. And that’s with only 36% renewable energy.
This problem will get worse, not better.

I guess electric cars will be able to store some of that by charging during
the day and overnight. But we’re still far away from 100% renewable without
electric cars, and just because we’re not burning petrol or diesel doesn’t
make electric cars environmentally friendly.

~~~
lispm
> Would I prefer running the nuclear powerplants we already have instead of
> coal? Yes.

I would not. But I'm for phasing out coal next.

> A surplus when you don’t need it and have no way of storing it is useless,
> and you end up paying people to use electrisity, which has happened.

these are rare events. As I said Germany has a surplus export not only in TWH,
but also in Euro.

The large exports numbers are not because we have renewable energy we can't
store, but because we have too much power plant capacity and the owners don't
want to shut them down while they are making money. Thus one can export the
surplus production - the power plants are already there and paid.

Also keep in mind, the old days of an energy market which is limited to a
country is over. The EU is also about a EU-wide energy market. This transition
is ongoing and in the future you will see more of this and you will see whole
new electricity networks set up between EU member states - for example
connecting all north-sea countries. These networks will also buffer demand
spikes. For example upcoming HVDC lines between Norway and Germany will be
able to reverse transport directions based on demand or storage priority.
Stuff like that is already in the works, like this 1.4GW line between Norway
and North Germany

[https://www.shz.de/deutschland-welt/wirtschaft/stromkabel-
no...](https://www.shz.de/deutschland-welt/wirtschaft/stromkabel-nordlink-die-
verlegung-in-norwegen-hat-begonnen-id17458221.html)

A second line is thought to follow somewhen in the next decade...

> have no way of storing it is useless

Storing electricity will get more important in the future. But the transition
phase to 100% renewable is still more than three decades and when storage is
REALLY needed might be a decade or more away.

Right now it is more important to deliver surplus energy to regions where this
would be needed. But keep in mind that this is also not an infrastructure
problem, but also about regions unwilling to import electricity from other
regions. Regions are egoistic and they want to benefit from the electricity
production without having the negative sides.

For example many regions in Germany were keen to have a nuclear power plant
and were happy to profit from electricity sales, but literally not a single
region could persuade their population to allow storing of nuclear waste,
hosting the dirty parts of the nuclear industry (like reprocessing plants) or
setting up some of the 'riskier' nuclear power plants (like breeders).

------
woodpanel
Not so fast!

This "consideration" comes with a couple grains of salt.

First the regulatory-political climate: The pronouncement was stated days
ahead of a court ruling regarding what measurements communities could take to
reduce air pollution, as well as weeks ahead of a decision the EU will make
about how to punish countries that repeatedly miss pollution thresholds, like
Germany.

That means: The government is telling communities 'behave', dare not prohibit
any type of cars (diesel) from entering your cities, you may get into our
"free public transport program" instead.

That it is a crude plan is exemplified by the fact, that some of the "first
tier" communities in the plan didn't knew about the plan at all and first
heard from it in the news, most of them were just informed days before. So
far, all communities criticize the idea.

The estimated costs for Hamburg alone would amount to 800-900 million
EUR/year, paid by all the rest of Germany. And then there is the problem that
public transit crosses community boundaries - the crude plan though as it is,
would grant citizens of one community free access to the same transit system
that the neighbouring citizens would have to pay in full.

Regardless of whether free public transit makes sense at all - The fact that
it is brought up in such a crude proposal and the fact that it is a
progressive idea taken "hostage" by conservatives it is an idea bound to fail
and to be muted a long time afterwards.

------
martinald
Poor idea.

1) It will have an enormous cost. TfL in London collects £5bn/yr in fare
revenue. While fares are lower in Berlin and it's a less busy system, it will
still probably cost €500mn/yr for Berlin alone.

2) Most people driving are not doing it because they cannot afford public
transit fares. They are either wanting a more 'luxurious' environment, can't
get where they are going easily on public transit, etc. I'm not convinced it
would actually induce much demand on the system _from car drivers_.

3) It may induce a load of demand from non-car drivers, who can now do a load
more trips, longer commutes, etc.

4) Most public transit systems are at peak capacity in rush hour. In London if
you switched everyone who was driving to public transit you'd need to double
the capacity to do so. Considering crossrail is being built for ~£20bn to
increase capacity 10%, you'd probably be needing to spend hundreds of billions
of euro on capacity upgrades.

Much better to actually tax the diesel cars properly for the externality cost
rather than do some other policy which doesn't directly address the issue.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Most people driving are not doing it because they cannot afford public
> transit fares_

If New York made the subway free, I'd ride it more. Less about cost than
hassle: Fishing out a Metrocard, (dropping it, picking it up); swiping;
learning it's five cents short; standing in line, negotiating the machine;
waiting for it to return your card while your train arrives and leaves.

~~~
wil421
Half of that seems like poor planning on your part. Can you refill your
metrocard online? I can do this for public transport in Atlanta and I have
done it a couple times when I visited Europe. In both cases I was able to set
it up well in advance.

~~~
masklinn
> Half of that seems like poor planning on your part.

Irrelevant. It's friction. More friction means more complexity and less use.
Not _having_ to plan is convenient and freeing. And leaves more headroom for
planning genuinely important things.

~~~
wil421
I have to remember to fill up my gas tank to use my own car or charge my phone
to use Uber. Both of these tasks require similar amount of work as reloading a
public transport card online.

~~~
vinay427
Not only is charging your average smartphone _far_ easier (one wire or just
dropping it onto a pad) but most people find their phone is necessary for
other uses as well, so using it for Uber requires no extra work.

------
adrianN
This seems like such a no brainer to me that I wonder why it wasn't
implemented much sooner. The biggest problem seems to be how to handle
increased demand. But increasing demand is exactly the goal of this measure!

~~~
fmax30
I don't think that this is such a good idea, as mentioned above by others,
during peak hours the trains are almost over capacity (At least in Munich
where I currently live). Making them free would lead to a degraded experience
for everyone.

One of the major reasons that I am not in favor is because in Pakistan ( where
I am originally from) they launched a Metro Bus service a few years ago, the
fare was a nominal flat rate ( ~ 15 euro-cents) for traveling as much as you
can in one direction. Now although it is a great service for the people but
the buses are always over crowded, and because they are incurring a loss and
the government has to spend millions of dollars per year in subsidies just to
keep it afloat; They have not upgraded capacity and it is really inconvenient
to travel on those buses ( I remember getting sick 4-5 times a year when I
regularly traveled on those buses).

A better solution would to be start banning the diesel engine, ramp up the
taxes for fossil fuel based cars. And to force factories to reduce their
carbon emissions.

~~~
vidarh
It will only lead to overcrowding if the service is still good enough that
more people than today find it worthwhile to deal with.

------
hannob
Before you get too excited: This is nothing more than a vague idea at the
moment. No specific plans and particularly no budget for it.

I'd be extremely surprised if this becomes a real project.

~~~
cf498
There is really nothing more to say to this news report.

To give some context, Germany is currently in coalition talks for the forming
of a new government and the Social Democrats(SPD) are screwed. They promised
no more coalition government before the election but stepped back on that. The
party voted by a hair to take up negotiations for a new coalition, during
which the prime candidate(Schulz) was completely abandoned after trying to
give him the post of former SPD foreign minister Gabriel. Now they face a
party vote on getting involved in a new government and they fall in polls
almost every week[1].

There is absolutely no substance on this topic.

[1] [https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/](https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/)

------
thesumofall
This initiative gets a nice public discussion going with most people seemingly
in favor. The best argument I’ve read against this initiative so far is that
it may disadvantage rural folks. The idea is: tax money goes into urban
transport hence further benefiting people in cities while giving little back
to those cut off the transport networks. Personally, I believe it is the best
for the environment if most people move into the cities - so I’m not convinced
by that point; but still always good to know the opposite side

~~~
psychometry
If Germany is anything like the U.S. (it might not be), the economically
prosperous cities are subsidizing/propping up rural areas already.

~~~
dx034
It is not. Germany has a much higher population density, from pretty much any
point within the country it's no more than 2 miles to the next village. And
those tend to be larger than rural US villages, often 3,000-5,000 people. So
public transport doesn't work as well in rural areas but there's generally
some service for most of the population.

~~~
franzpeterfolz
And these villages have a pretty nice industry.

There are many so called "Hidden Champions", which are often located in these
areas. Farming and so on is not very typical for German villages. A village
with 3,000 people has perhaps one to three farms employing at most 10 - 20
people.

~~~
kaybe
A friend of mine just finished his PhD in Physics and is jobhunting. He's been
to a lot of tiny villages in the last few weeks..

------
Spooks
Instead of making it free, could they improve the speed and comfort of public
transport?

I don't drive because it is cheaper, I drive because it is faster, more
comfortable and more convenient (it gets me closer to where I want to be).

~~~
SomewhatLikely
Agreed. I actually think it could be possible to make transit faster than
driving by implementing the right infrastructure. For example, bus only lanes.
I think there's still big issues with first and last mile though. One of the
things that kills bus time is stopping at many stops and waits between
transfers.

------
nostromo
In Seattle the “Ride Free Zone” caused the busses to be used as makeshift
homeless shelters.

This lead to a common sentiment that busses were smelly, unsafe places, and it
was eventually scraped.

(Germany seems to have less of a homeless population than West Coast cities,
so perhaps this won’t be an issue for them.)

~~~
goalieca
So instead of fixing the problem of homelessness, Seattle decided to
compromise on transportation. Is this ideological or pathological or both??

~~~
ams6110
Since nobody anywhere has ever "fixed" homelessness, not really fair to
criticize Seattle for not doing it.

~~~
pgeorgi
That sounds to me like [https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-
only-na...](https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-
where-this-r-1819576527)

Seattle has ~3x as many homeless per population than the US average. The US
has ~3x as many homeless per population than Germany.

That's about one decimal magnitude of difference (at a somewhat comparable
climate - San Francisco likes to claim that they have to deal with so many
homeless people because of the accomodating weather)

Whatever is going on in Seattle, there's likely room to improve.

~~~
jdminhbg
Not having a problem is not the same as having fixed a problem. Did Germany
have a prior homeless problem that they fixed?

~~~
pgeorgi
> Did Germany have a prior homeless problem that they fixed?

Do millions of displaced people after a sizable war count?

------
johnydepp
I applaud EU countries of being so considerate about pollution and climate
change, be it renewable energy, pollution control by traffic and other
industries. On the other hand we have my country India where in budget 2018,
not much attention is given to any of these matters.

~~~
frandroid
I wish India would ban two-stroke engines (phase them out, not ban them
outright obviously), that would make a huuuuggeee difference in the air
pollution of the large cities.

~~~
johnydepp
You have a good point but only stopping two-stroke engines is not going to
help. Single person car driving is a big problem and cab sharing is still
premature. I think these are by-products of the poor public transport. Major
cities don't have fully connected subway system, inter-city public transport
is even worse, be it railways (sigh!) or public buses.

Other bigger factors to pollution are industries and electricity production.
Curbing pollution is not possible if country/states are not very concerned
about it, be it regulating the industries, making better public transport or
focusing on renewable energy. Problem is, some of the leaders are focused on
politics and others care only about growth and economics. They don't even
think that pollution is a real issue. And those who care and think about it,
are not allowed to live and do their work!

------
chopin
The biggest problem in Germany is that the short-haul service is bad. My half-
an-hour car commute would turn to more than an hour. With unreliable service
and too few or insufficient connections (overcrowded at peak hours and too few
outside). This needs to be fixed first.

~~~
elros
Germany's a big place. Where exactly are you talking about?

My 20 minutes U-Bahn commute from Britz to Kreuzberg becomes a 35 minutes one
if I ride a car. That's also assuming that finding a parking spot is
instantaneous, which it isn't.

~~~
chopin
I live outside of one of the large cities. Apart from Berlin and maybe Hamburg
people tend to live more in the outskirts. That's where the service is bad.

I've been in Japan last year for vacation. Public transportation was a breeze
compared to Germany (5 min stepover time was no problem; try this in Germany).

Anecdotal: We returned from (another) vacation by plane and took the train
back home from the airport. We had to stepover once. Not only was the first
train late, but also time schedule of the catching train was at odds. When we
left the train station there was (in the train!) an announcement that the
train will not stop at some of the advertised stops in order to catch up with
time. We had to leave the train at an earlier station and where left to sort
out the problem ourselves.

~~~
emj
Simply put your commute time is artificially low, by cities designed to be
cheap for driving and owning a car.

Your anecdote is fine and all, but those problems are worse if you use a car,
and they are cheaper to fix in public transport since it reallyis problem in
the organization and prioritization of resourcse rather than sunk costs in
infrastructure and space.

~~~
closeparen
Given the effects of commute time on happiness, if I wanted to make life
drastically worse for as many people as possible like some sort of cartoon
villain, this brand of public-transit advocacy is exactly how I'd go about it.

Artificially depressing commute time is one of the greatest accomplishments of
humanity.

~~~
emj
First, I'm a bit sad that you choose to put words in my mouth to paint my
argument as evil.

Commute times go down with public transport, for all modes of transport,
individually and on a population level. When you try to fit public transport
after the fact on infrastructure built for personal cars, there will always be
an edge for the cars, making the choice for cars easier.

In the end you have to see infrastructure for public transport and bicycles as
a tool to increase network capacity. If you only prioritize cars you are
making it worse for everyone and yourself because more people will use cars
and your commute time is longer until you build more roads (Rinse repeat).

This is not rocket science, it has been known for a long time.

~~~
closeparen
>In the end you have to see infrastructure for public transport and bicycles
as a tool to increase network capacity

Prioritizing capacity at all costs makes sense in a bursting-at-the-seams
megacity like New York, San Francisco, London, etc. There, sure, everyone
needs to give up some convenience so that everyone else can fit. There's a
point beyond which personal cars as a transportation system doesn't scale, and
above that point, we need to put them down.

But much of the world doesn't live that way and doesn't want to. It's
completely appropriate for smaller and slower-growth communities which have
the space (i.e. away from the major cities, like parent's comment) to optimize
for quality of life, mobility, detached houses, yards, etc. instead. You don't
need to sacrifice everything in the name of capacity when your capacity
demands are small. That doesn't mean complete car supremacy like the exurban
US, but it also doesn't mean treating hours of people's lives as necessary
sacrifices.

~~~
emj
A big part of the discussion is going to hinge on what we mean with cities and
slower-growth communties. Almost everyone live in areas where public transport
is vital.

You have to ask yourself, generally when you leave these car utopian places,
will you pass or enter areas where public transport seems to be a good idea?
The answer of course depends on the definition in the first paragraph, and I'm
pretty sure you overestimate the population needed for good public transport
by some order of magnitude.. If those places are an important part of your
life then you also need to think about public transport.

------
Overtonwindow
After living in Berlin for a month I honestly thought it was free. Never saw a
fare gate and was never asked for a ticket. A wonderful system.

~~~
jotm
It's pretty embarrassing to get caught. Prepare for angry fast German, a fine
and threats of jail. Probably less funny when you live there and commute
regularly :D

------
garfieldnate
I don't know how the public transportation is in Berlin or Bonn, but I remain
pretty unimpressed with it in Düsseldorf. The train schedule is very
unreliable; trains and cars share the same road, and the train is regularly
held up by cars. It is difficult to buy a ticket because the machines on the
train only take coins, do not offer guidance on which ticket to buy, and are
regularly out of order. Tickets are not checked before boarding. Instead, they
regularly send stealth ticket checkers into the trains and give fines to
people that weren't honest or bought the wrong ticket. Many stops are not
elderly/wheelchair accessible, and it would take a lot of work to update them.
That said, I did move here from Japan, so I have a high expectation. If I had
come from the US, I would have been pretty happy just to see that trains
exist! Minus the handicap-unfriendliness; everywhere I've been in the US, the
bus drivers get out and set up a ramp for wheelchair users when needed.

------
TomK32
At first I was like "a word of caution" because Germany is inbetween
governments (even though they will be the same) but seeing that ministers from
all three parties involved support it, there might be something in it. On the
other hand, the EU as well as the German Bundesverwaltungsgericht are playing
hard regarding air quality in cities.

The source I've read ([http://taz.de/Regierung-erwaegt-kostenlosen-
OePNV/!5481464/](http://taz.de/Regierung-erwaegt-kostenlosen-OePNV/!5481464/)
) mentions seven more ideas in the letter to the EU, only the free public
transport standing out as radical. Traffic restrictions, incentives for
e-mobility and upgrading pollution vehicles are others. I bet that's what is
to be expected sooner or later and someone just slipped the radical idea about
free public transport in to see the fallout.

------
zwieback
Corvallis, OR is just a small (55K) wealthy college town but all our buses are
free to everyone all the time.

------
daxfohl
How about offering tax breaks to companies that promote telecommuting in some
fashion?

~~~
dx034
Because then everyone will promote it without any real change. Suddenly there
will be more remote working policies without people using them (because their
boss tells them off the record that they are not supposed to use them).

------
Robotbeat
Try allowing only electric cars in the city center. That should help a lot.

And electrifying buses is pretty easy and fast, comparatively speaking. Buses
tend to have a shorter operational life than commuter cars and are in use a
lot more and there's a lot fewer of them. Replacing tens of millions of
commuter cars is a lot harder than tens of thousands of transit buses.

...of course, Germany's grid is pretty dirty since they keep building coal
("lignite", a sort of euphemistic way of saying "brown coal") infrastructure
while shutting down perfectly good, clean nuclear power. But should still
help.

------
bickfordb
Downtown Portland used to have free public transit
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fareless_Square](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fareless_Square)

------
swombat
Counter-intuitively, given the state of German infrastructure it seems to me
they should consider doing the opposite, if it will help motivate them to
actually invest in their public transport infrastructure...

~~~
Shivetya
well it has been shown to not have had much of an effect when practiced
elsewhere. More services is a far better option than free.

example story [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/why-
can...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/why-cant-public-
transit-be-free/384929/)

------
revelation
Don't take this too serious. If it would stop driving bans for diesels, this
government would also consider rainbow unicorns for every school kid.

(Hello downvotes? If you are not in tune with German politics: this is the
same government that is in contempt of court for failing to enforce
_effective_ measurements to stop excessive pollution levels. This is not at
all a sincere suggestion.)

~~~
ju-st
I don't understand why you are getting downvoted either but keep in mind that
complaining about downvotes is not allowed on HN.

------
bischofs
FYI they are currently downplaying the contents of this article

[https://www.thelocal.de/20180214/government-plays-down-
free-...](https://www.thelocal.de/20180214/government-plays-down-free-public-
transport-plan)

------
lnino
If you want to banish air pollution then allow only electric cars. Perhaps let
some basic services use combustion engines because it's cheaper. There is no
"free" transportation.

------
walkingolof
Probably a great way to making money in the long run, wonder what healthcare
cost for all people going sick by the environment.

~~~
nwellnhof
OTOH, when I was using Munich's public transport daily, I always caught a cold
once or twice per year. This never happened since I stopped using it
regularly. And I know a few people who made the same experience.

~~~
Bdiem
Exactly, apparently the "ÖPNV-Immunisierung" (public transport immunization)
was fake news, too. I can report the same experience for Hamburg.

------
conanbatt
I wonder what this would do to bikers. Suddenly buying a bike is more
expensive than energy consuming public transportation.

------
byteofprash
The last mile problem is what usually makes me skip the Ubahn. I've tried to
solve the last mile problem using the bike.

I would happily stop using the car if this happens along with a solution for
taking bikes. Currently, I should buy a separate ticket to take my bike along
with me(around €2.50 in Munich for a day) and I'm allowed to take the bike
only during 6am to 9am and 4pm to 6pm.

------
gaius
Or they could just invest in clean, carbon-free nuclear power... oh wait.

------
grey-sunshine
By how much does the income tax increase.

------
jlebrech
one of the socialism's PROs. if done right. transport.

------
JoeAltmaier
Is this like, a version of Unix to standardize all the version? You just end
up with - another version of Unix.

So, more cars on the road (at least at first) will _help_ with pollution?

~~~
dx034
Not really. It's not about starting a lot of public transport companies, more
about expanding the existing ones. Public transport is heavily regulated in
Germany, you won't find more than one provider in most cities (mostly because
it's loss making).

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Again, expanding a losing (low ridership?) business is unlikely to reduce
total cars on the road?

~~~
dx034
It's not low ridership, it's mostly losing money due to low prices. A large
group of people tends to get free transport (university students, children,
the elderly, disabled people) which means that in the end, only part of those
using the system actually pay. Monthly tickets are also often heavily
discounted (not in all cities though).

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Good to know. Still I wonder how many of those folks would have driven a car.

Don't get me wrong; public transport is a great thing. But just pasting it
onto a culture of driving cars is going to fail, at least at the start.

