It's at least good that they're moving in this direction at all. Maybe the pricing isn't spot-on, or the capacity isn't there, or there are debates over the ticketing or there are some other issues. But it seems to me that Germany has recognised the importance of encouraging rail travel, and they're taking the first steps in doing so.
I earn enough to afford the current "BahnCard 100", but the pricing versus value is such that I'm not remotely considering it. That means that taking public transport is a hassle:
- always need to buy a ticket: talk to a driver (who usually acts annoyed on behalf of the whole bus that you are holding up) or waste time trying to figure out ticket machines when you should be catching a connection;
- always need to carry cash (fun fact: there's a line from DE into NL with a big warning sign where there'd usually be ads, saying that in DE you can pay with cash only and in NL by card only, so come prepared!);
- need to check whether your ticket from city A to C is valid when taking a route that goes through city B where you'd like to make an intermediate stop (I called support for this once and could not for the life of me get a straight yes/no answer, she kept saying (iirc) wenn es auf dem direkten Weg ist which... is an intermediate stop direct ever? I'm pretty sure the answer for ticket validity is yes but she sounded like no, I'm still not sure 3 years later and I still commute between those towns, just usually via a different connection that doesn't stop in B);
- in many regions, you can't buy a ticket online via the national rail company, you need to separately deal with the local line operators to make your trip planning even more fun!
In NL I've got a chipcard plus a 2€/month subscription which gives me 40% off on weekends but, more importantly, lets me beep in and out of any mode of transport without wasting anyone's time and it automatically bills my bank account (instead of having to top it up prepaid, as is the default without subscription). I go where I please and don't have to deal with billing.
That's why I'll be getting the 49€ subscription straight away. I want to use public transport, but besides the limitations of the system (how fast you get from A to B), it's currently additionally a hassle to deal with billing. Even if the poorest aren't helped, everyone else now has less of an excuse not to use it. I'm much more okay getting an extra ticket for the long distant transport (intercity) that is usually just one leg and is not a spontaneous journey anyway.
Bahn afaik isn't allowed to sell you tickets when the start and destination are within a regional operator, and my regional operator (to get to work) doesn't have a web shop.
The bus drivers are comically confused when I try to buy "einen Viererkahrte zu Aachen, drei Stück" so that I don't have to deal with it every other office day (this I can pay with a convenient 50€ bill and lasts about a month, give or take). Then I still have to stamp them per trip and will be last in line for a seat, but at least I don't have to bother the driver most days.
The DB app allows you to buy tickets for local transport associations - not sure if it includes everything, but so far I always found the regional tickets there.
The legal difference is that here the DB (app) only acts as proxy, i.e. you don't buy a DB ticket for the local transport but a local transport ticket through the DB (app).
On the other hand if you get a DB ticket across regions it might include local transportation at the begin/destination of the cross-regional route as part of the DB ticket. And this they are not allowed to provide you if your DB ticket isn't cross regional. E.g. if you buy a ICE ticket from one station in Berlin to another station in Berlin they can't offer that. (Most ICEs passing through Berlin stop at least at 2 stations in Berlin).
When I book a train ticket, the regional trains are already included. My local public transport system (HVV) has online & smart phone ticketing for many many years now.
A regional operator where the ticket can't be bought online or via a smartphone should be really really rare in Germany by now. Which operator is it, which has no online payment option?
AVV.de, the menu options for ticket buying are "am Automat" and "Vorverkaufstellen" which is a list of physical stores.
...which I guess is why I never looked further and saw they have an app now. Never heard of Naveo before, maybe it was introduced recently? Either way, that looks like it might now be possible! Why did no driver ever mention / did the buses/stations not advertise this before it's ripe for being replaced with the 50 euro subscription?!
Well, you could of course use some tickets from other operators in the same region. In NRW there is the handy eezy NRW[0] ticket system where you just pay the kilometers travelled "how the bird flies". So even the connections that would be expensive otherwise could be cheap.
I use it sometimes for the last bit of my long distance travel if I visit my parents (not directly in VRR region but in Regionalverkehr Münsterland (RMV)). It states that it works for all stops within NRW - which is annoying as one of the busses I could take actually goes to Osnabrück (Niedersachsen) and I cannot use - even though it's actually operated by the NRW regional transit provider.
Overall public transit is / was a mess in germany and 9€ Ticket really was an eye opener on how easy it could be to hop on and off of everything that's moving however you like.
But only largely and not always and not always through the same app or site.
How nice or bad it is differs MASSIVELY depending on where you are in Germany (sorry for the caps).
E.g. in Berlin it works rather simple and straight forward. But then recently someone I know went to another city and Germany and was completely inable to figure out if a ticket they had bought to get from A to B also worked for A to C (close by B). That wasn't a stupid person but someone rather clever.
Similar in some areas the local public transport companies bounded together creating some kind of "common organization" (e.g. VBB for Berlin & Brandenburg) and in some areas you have a splinter network of many smaller local transportation companies.
> talk to a driver (who usually acts annoyed on behalf of the whole bus that you are holding up)
It is still an interesting cultural observation that here in NL, even people who manually buy a ticket at the driver while struggling using the card terminal do not seem to get an annoyed response inherently even on a half-filled bus, whereas in Germany it seemed almost expected to get chewed out for not having exact change or taking more than 10 seconds to gather a pile of coins - in the pre-app era, of course.
I guess in the Netherlands, you have to be nearly demented to not be able to use the ov-chipkaart. Beeping it when you step in and out could hardly be simpler, but my grandparents don't want to learn a new system¹ and also don't want to drive highways anymore. It's different if a 90 year old asks for a ticket at the driver's compared to 30 year old me.
¹ Pinnen existed before ov-chipkaart to they're okay with one form of electronic payment but don't even want to try out another... I'm waiting for the day where I am that old, probably then I'll understand!
I’m from US and periodically visit Netherlands for work; on my most recent trip, some local colleagues dropped me at the train station for the ride to AMS. They kindly asked me if I knew how to buy the tickets and were shocked when I said I just my OV card. Neither had one (which I thought was equally surprising).
There's some 14 million cards active on a population of 18 million. That they don't have one surprises me also! But yeah, there are some stubborn car people, particularly in the more rural places when you aren't often in a place with good public transport connections. Having one is essentially free, though, so there's not really a reason to not keep one on hand for when you do visit any of the cities anywhere in the country. It's more of a "I hate shared transport so much that I refuse to even look at how this card system works" type of mentality.
Note that "rural" in NL means civilization is virtually always <5 minutes driving but there's still no public transport to speak of (a bus might come once an hour between 8 and 19 'o clock... going home after an evening of visiting family or going out? Tough luck).
(Rant: The bus companies keep reducing frequency, operating hours, and stop count due to unprofitability and, guess what? Line profitability keeps going down! It's surprising, really. When it's made so inconvenient to use mass transit, why would anyone choose to buy a car? It's beyond anyone's understanding..!)
We have non of these problems in Switzerland, this is all just organizational.
Buy the ticket at the bus station or use your phone.
I don't know how often you do intermediate stops, that seem nice case to me. But even then, you just add 'via' when you book your ticket and that's it. Easy as pie.
> - in many regions, you can't buy a ticket online via the national rail company, you need to separately deal with the local line operators to make your trip planning even more fun!
Is this actually the case in Germany? That's crazy, we solved this long ago in Switzerland.
> We have non of these problems in Switzerland, this is all just organizational.
Sorry if I came across differently, indeed I don't think any of these are unsolvable or inherent with public transport. The Netherlands and Germany each have strengths (the former a more convenient and reliable system in cities; the latter better service on the countryside), so clearly it can all be done.
