> Does it? How do railways work in Austria? In the UK companies bid to get monopolies on routes. So you don't really have competition anyway.
There are routes on which there is competition (eg: Vienna to Salzburg) where two rail companies operate. For the most part the competition is quite limited, something which I hope will change.
> Is that a good thing?
Yes. Because public transit is primarily for the people who live there and pay taxes. That it's also something that tourists can use is great, but you don't need to subsidize it for them.
> Because public transit is primarily for the people who live there and pay taxes.
Public transport is transport for the public. This explicitly includes visitors. Tourism is a large part of the economy of most countries, and unless you are talking cities with over-tourism like in Amsterdam, getting rid of tourists is very much not what the people who live there (and who earn a living through tourism) want. Resolving congestion, improving air quality, and generally making cities more pleasant to live in, means getting as many people out of cars and into public transport, including tourists.
>That it's also something that tourists can use is great, but you don't need to subsidize it for them.
Although many places do. There are often city passes of various sorts for tourists. There are JR Rail visitor-only passes in Japan. I'm sure there are other examples.
> There are often city passes of various sorts for tourists.
Absolutely, but they are usually more expensive than it is for residents. In Vienna the tourist 7 day pass is ~17Euro which comes to 2.5 Euro, if you have the yearly subscription it's 1 Euro per day. The situation is quite similar in most cities I have been to.
but this is not a tourist/residence differentiation. but more like buying in bulk or not.
i have lived in vienna for years and never got a yearly subscription but bought weekly or monthly tickets as needed. and many others do as well. a better comparison to the yearly subscription is the monthly pass which is ~50€ and transferable. so two or more people can share it, and that may turn out cheaper than even a yearly pass in certain circumstances.
i never considered monthly or weekly passes to be only for tourists. they go from the beginning of the week or month which is not flexible enough for most visitors. only more recently a more flexible variant has been introduced that goes 31 days starting any day. those are obviously more useful for visitors but they cost the same.
that said, looking up the tickets now it appears that anything but the yearly subscription is considered for visitors. when i lived in vienna this was not the case. and in other cities it still isn't. tourist tickets were/are those valid for 2 or 3 days and they often are considerably more expensive because they include things interesting for tourists that i never needed even when i was just visiting. everything else was/is for locals.
it is also worth noting that vienna in general is considerably cheaper than many other european cities. which is probably why i never bothered getting a yearly subscription myself.
There are routes on which there is competition (eg: Vienna to Salzburg) where two rail companies operate. For the most part the competition is quite limited, something which I hope will change.
> Is that a good thing?
Yes. Because public transit is primarily for the people who live there and pay taxes. That it's also something that tourists can use is great, but you don't need to subsidize it for them.