The bags on seats happens in plenty of European countries. Indeed the €9 is for the slow trains not the zippy ones.

@@johnmc3862 I agree that the problem of bags on seats can occur in other countries too but usually people quickly move them when they see you are standing and even apologize. This did not happen in Germany. To reply to your second point, most of the problems of lateness and overcrowding we encountered were on the ICE trains, not the regional (9 Euro) ones.

Does the 49 € card include more regional trains or more intercity, or is it the same regional train category for me money?

@@lorettaray8317 no its the same but more expansive and not to buy easy ...

Maybe not, but pre-Covid, some Scotrail services had a catering trolley service. Thinking back, a trolley service probably wouldn't be easy to implement on a double-decker train with steps! :-)

regional trains can be something of a mixed bag in terms of distance travelled- for example London Northwestern services even going as far as London Euston to Liverpool would still be just regional trains- and absolutely on a journey of that length there should be some sort of onboard catering

At 9 €, it was so hugely underpriced that the state hat to chip in billions a month to compensate for lost fares. You can only learn and adjust or adapt a concept if the original concept is remotely sustainable - and 9 € a month for full national usage of local transports never was. However, it created more disappointment at the end than people appreciated this debt-financed gift while it lasted. I think it should have been priced at 29 € a month originally - that would have brought in almost three times the money, to most, it would have still been a no-brainer and it wouldn't have created excessive expectations of practically getting free transport forever.

they repeat IT in August,Its a German Insider information ✌️

Wow impressive. 👍👏

@@V8VORLICH About 400€ for 13 days

I am off to Spain next week and it doesn’t apply to single journeys.

@@andrewlong6438 Exactly. As in Germany this is a special pass, not a direct discount on single journeys. Also the regular passes of public transport will be cheaper until december, those with more time of use will recieve more discount (a full month pass will have more discount than a 10 journey pass)

Masked fools !

Not a surprise at all. German railways are notorious for their delays, and often it is true. The 9-Euro-Ticket obviously made things ten time worse, due to overcrowding and longer dwell times.

The national rail network in Germany is nothing special. The local rail networks are what is so impressive about public transport in Germany. 23 cities have some kind of local subway, subway/tram hybrid network or a suburban railway with a few subway stations under the town centre and over 30 further cities have a tram network. Local rail networks are very dense. Living less than a 5min walk from a subway station or tram stop with a departure every 10 minutes is quite an ordinary thing in Germany. Wuppertal even has a hanging monorail. It's also normal for kids and students under 25 to pay monthly for a ticket that let's them use all local rail and bus in their city and the surrounding region.

And I would guess another factor is that the railway is subsidised much more in European countries than in the UK.

That’s privatisation for you.

DB run a lot of former BR franchises.

Does the 49 € card include more trains?

@@lorettaray8317 No, only regional trains, trams and bus services.

RE19 Düsseldorf-Duisburg-Arnhem and RE13 Hamm-Hagen-Düsseldorf-Venlo were extremely busy and outright overcrowded at times

Germany has a government budget surplus. That means they collect more money in taxes than they spend, so they can afford it. The UK has the most debt out of pretty much any country in the world, except maybe America, and every year that debt is getting more because not enough money is collected by taxation. This means this will never happen in the UK. Well maybe in 100-200 years if things change. But of course right now, the UK is still paying off its 2nd world war debt, not to mention 20 more years for covid debt...

@@marioluigi9599 it certainly doesn't help that the UK government is forgiving billions wasted on VIP PPE contracts, while making the rest of us pay for it!

@@toranshaw4029 Loool PPE??? Don't make me laugh. That's not the worst of it. The worst is that they're paying about £100 billion to gas and electricity companies who have hiked up their prices for no reason, other than that companies from other countries are also putting up prices. But there's no reason why electricity produced by a wind turbine in the UK should suddenly cost so much more. It's nothing to do with russian gas. The operating costs of the turbine remain the same, but the UK government still indebted the country for it, while these energy companies are making so many billions literally in profit which they get to keep for their own pockets. They call it an "energy crisis", but really it's a massive energy cash cow for the energy producers. They love that it happened and Putin is their hero

@@toranshaw4029 I mean think about it, it's not like anything like a natural disaster happened or anything like that. No. All that happened was Putin put up the prices, and so everyone else did too, although they shouldn't be doing it because average people suffer from it. They only did it because they can. Without Putin's gas, there's less competition, so now they no longer have to sell at low prices and can literally just arbitrarily raise the price. And now the country is even more indebted because of it. That's the kind of political system we have. It's pathetic, so never mind the PPE. The government puts company profits and "the free market competition" above people's lives. So it literally shows what slaves they are to the corporate world. No spine, nothing. So much for "democracy". If we really had democracy, do you really think the will of the people was to allow these companies to pocket all that money after they raised the prices just because they suddenly can? No, I don't think that's the will of the people. So that shows you, we don't even live in a democracy. If it was a democracy, all those profits would go straight back into the people's pockets, and not put the country into debt. Literally what happened was, the energy companies found a way to actually steal from the treasury. Free money for them and the government was all too willing to provide it. At least the PPE companies actually produced something new. Energy companies produced nothing new, except higher prices because they had no more excessive competition in their market

Yes that's an aspect that is usually ignored by the petrolheads ...improved public transport helps personal transport

With Strasbourg being in France, Even a short Train journey across a international Border will always be more expensive even if it is a few stops A local or Long distance train makes no difference.

Cos Strasbourg is in France!

Funny thing is, there are a lot of Scots in the FFL.

FFP-2s are not legally required everywhere, only in some states, and even then, enforcement of the mask policy is pretty weak overall I‘d say

@@bahnspotterEU Thanks for the clarification. I had taken my information from DB website and assumed it was law. I hate wearing masks so am pleased to read enforcement is weak.

Many opearators are private as well

Ha ha! It was well overdue. :-)

A lot of them are not Uk owned so dont give a damn

NE (and NL) have got some of the SBahn franchises - not the most lucrative. DB run much of our former BR freight services. They seem to get a much better deal than we do.

DB run services in the UK, France and the Netherlands (and others), whilst the Dutch and French national operator as well as UK firms run trains in Germany. And it's this way across Europe. I suppose in some way this might make sense; personally it just appears unnecessary.

The money goes to a German subsidiary of National Express. It's not the UK mother ship running this service.

Is it also overcrowded without the 9€ card? It seems like a popular route between those 2 big city's.

@@baukewijnsma expect it to be pretty full. Cologne and Düsseldorf are both major centres on their own, but the main RE routes between those two cities also serve other important cities that generate additional traffic, like Duisburg, Essen, Bochum, Oberhausen, Bonn and Aachen.

@@baukewijnsma Even before, you had to expect extremely packed trains during rush hour, and those were almost always delayed, sometimes by an hour.

No one said it is a good idea to take a train that goes via Vladivostok. 😂

It’ll be a seen as anti brexit “losing sovereignty to Germany” can’t make our own ticket prices bull

Germany has a big public spending surplus. They should spend it on trains then.

​@@danearl8607 good one

I define factoids as simply small facts - nothing to do with reliability

I was wondering what would happen long term with this scheme. Would people keep using public transport, assuming the problems were ironed out, or would people start drifting back to their old ways again? Human nature is a hard thing to change.

?

You must live in utopia if you haven’t seen that.

Sounds like something an American might say. There are hardly any “hobos” on German trains, even when they’re super cheap.