In hindsight, I think I underestimated the value of my OV card while I was a student: travel whenever, using all types of public transport, for free.
Funny fact: there are cities here that have tried to make public transport free. But the constitution says public transport must have a "reasonable charge". It's obvious that law was created to not overcharge but the courts have ruled that it also means that there can't be no charge. So no free public transport.
Still frustrating (if the taxpayers want it, might as well let them have it), but not purely a semantic technicality.
In other words: charge price = cost, or don't charge at all and get funded by public revenue.
Have the courts also said anything about the charge being super low, e.g. like a CHF 1 per month abo or such? I wonder if that would be a way around those rulings.
I know it’s stupid, but I’m genuinely curious now.
Every country defines what counts as public transport - it could be a snowmobile, a boat, or a helicopter if needed. The simple definition of "transports people in a public place" would cover a lot of funny things as public transport, like a carousel in a playground.
The promotional price of this subscription is only a few euros more expensive than the existing unlimited subscription for weekend train travel (i.e. 6:30 PM Friday to 4:00 AM Monday), which costs €39,50. You can pay €4 extra for a 40% discount the rest of the off-peak hours.
With that discount, my commute (Haarlem <=> Amsterdam) costs €3,30 each way. A single trip to work a month makes the promotional subscription better value.
[1] (in Dutch) https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2026/05/22/voors...
So if you check-in at 3.59 pm in the north of the Netherlands, and go to the south to arrive around 7.00 pm in the south of the Netherlands and you only use trains from 1 company (like NS) the whole journey will be considered off-peak hours. Even if by the time you arive in the south the peak-hours will already be over.
Most trains run with NS but some regional lines have Arriva (Deutsche Bahn) or Keolis (SCNF).
Additionally there is a 5 minute grace period in your favor, so if you check-in at 4.04 pm it will stil be off-peak.
And because the whole thing is rather confusing for those not already familiar with the system there you get to do it wrong once a year and get your fine waived if you call the train company.
And yes there's little queues just before 06.25 pm every day of people waiting in front of the check-in gates for their pass to become valid (especially on fridays when the weekend-pass will become valid).
Transfer don't change it, they're all part of the same trip. Going out of a station and then back in also doesn't interrupt your trip. As far as I know you need 60 minutes of being "out" of the train system for it to be considered a new trip.
Overall, DB Regio (the regional trains which are covered by the Deutschlandticket) has around a 89% punctuality score[1], which is very comparable to the Dutch numbers. There are certain hotspot regions though where the regional trains are truly fucked, but for most of the country they're totally fine and quite reliable.
It's mostly Germany's long-distance high-speed ICE trains which have punctuality problems (the much discussed 60% punctuality [2] score), but those are not covered by the Deutschland ticket, and the Netherlands has no comparable service to these trains anyways, so if one is envious of the state of Dutch trains, they can happily pretend that German ICE trains simply don't exist. In my experience though, the ICE's are a pleasure to ride.
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[1] https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2025/de/zusammengefasster-lage...
[2] https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2025/de/zusammengefasster-lage...
Sidenote, but the ICE punctuality score is not really directly comparable with the Regional train scores, since they measure different things. The ICE score is about the passenger arriving at their final destination with less than a 15 minute delay including connections, whereas with the regional trains they don't have granular passenger level data, so they measure whether or not a train gets to the platform within 6 minutes of the scheduled time.
the tax system is also progressive, so the people who are most capable of paying pay the most and the poor truly pay nothing
charging for a public system seems like pure waste
But also they are super expensive.
Never mind that you know what's also not "sustainable", if the definition means "costs > revenues"? Automobile roads :)
I'm also aware of no place where people who use transit to consider cost one of the major barriers to using it more. The barrier, even for the poorest people, is almost always not cause, but the service just doesn't meet their needs. Which is to say most transit systems need to raise their fares a little more and use that extra money to give people the service they actually want.
let's say the fare system costs $1 million to operate and maintain
and let's say the fare system collects $10 million in fares
couldn't you just collect $10 million in additional taxes, just add a "railway fare" line item, and save everyone the $1 million?
2) If there's sufficient money and will available to fund the transportation system to that level, then sure, that's great. But in most cases, I think it's better to just direct expansions in government train budgets towards expanding the network, not making it cheaper. Most people who drive cars don't drive because trains are expensive, they drive cars because there's no train at the time and place they want. Making trains cheaper doesn't address this problem.
> JOHN COCHRANE: I think the activists who wanted toilet equity did not imagine the solution would be no toilet or a fight with businesses over who's going to be able to use the toilet.
> [...]
> BERAS: Without that incentive, Nik-O-Lok was right. The free public toilets were overrun with people who had to go or people abusing drugs or having sex. Cities were changing. In lots of places, they struggled to fund and maintain public places. With no income from the toilets, taking care of them was harder than ever. Cities couldn't deal. Eventually, they closed them or let them fall into disrepair. The pay toilets may have been flawed, but they served a purpose that no public or private entity has been able to effectively fill since. John says this is a classic tale of a price control, when the government imposes a price.
I think the case for at least allowing nominal payments for toilets is pretty strong. Anything that is free either requires significant and expensive oversight to mitigate anti-social behaviors, or a society that has equivalent anti-social checks baked into the culture (which the U.S. definitely does not have). We should aspire to ubiqitous free toilets, free transit, etc, but there's an infinite number of things people want to be free, or at least subsidized. The public has to pick & choose and allocate its resources wisely.
Note that almost everywhere in the U.S., transit is strongly subsidized and often effectively free for the most in need, but it might require some legwork. In SF where it's quite trivial to get this subsidy (https://treasurer.sf.gov/economicjustice/sfmta-transit-disco...) people still balk at the requirement, though I think the people who complain the most are the ones far too wealthy to have to worry about these things. Some government programs, especially Federal programs, have onerous application and reporting requirements specifically designed to dissuade use, but individual transit subsidies aren't generally structured this way. In SF and to a lesser degree California, there are armies of people paid to hold people's hand through these processes (mostly for Federal and Federally subsidized programs, as many state and especially local programs tend to be very low friction).
It ends up being about the optics of politicians getting to advertise that they are doing "something" and never mind if it works or not, because the people clamoring the loudest, angry suburban whites usually, aren't even the ones using these systems to begin with. They are told in their propaganda bubbles that these systems are dangerous rather than experiencing it with their own eyes and making any conclusion. They demand action for a system they will never use. After whatever action passes they don't become users either, the goalposts move to some other slight or ill that is really a proxy for "I don't feel safe around black or brown people."
there is! people are just paying a portion of it out of pocket now and a bigger chunk out of taxes... the out of pocket part is really the same money but less efficient