Looks like NL might be getting something similar to the Deutschland ticket.
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Looks like NL might be getting something similar to the Deutschland ticket. This is great.
Kinda.
On the one hand, it's going to dramatically reduce my transport costs. But, by far the biggest effect we can expect is it will highlight just how close to capacity public transport currently operates at.
Time for a little thread.
1/n
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Looks like NL might be getting something similar to the Deutschland ticket. This is great.
Kinda.
On the one hand, it's going to dramatically reduce my transport costs. But, by far the biggest effect we can expect is it will highlight just how close to capacity public transport currently operates at.
Time for a little thread.
1/n
I've talked about this before with a thought experiment (https://social.v.st/@quixoticgeek/115728861089232653). And while in the experiment it's about the idea of every car disappearing overnight. But the more likely scenario is every car not being able to find the fuel/energy needed to move it. At least not for a price most people can afford. When we have an NL ticket, it needs to come with a dramatic increase in capacity. NS can't be running a 4 car VIRM on an service. They need to be running max length max capacity.
2/n -
I've talked about this before with a thought experiment (https://social.v.st/@quixoticgeek/115728861089232653). And while in the experiment it's about the idea of every car disappearing overnight. But the more likely scenario is every car not being able to find the fuel/energy needed to move it. At least not for a price most people can afford. When we have an NL ticket, it needs to come with a dramatic increase in capacity. NS can't be running a 4 car VIRM on an service. They need to be running max length max capacity.
2/nNL also needs to really rethink it's approach to rural publ transport. Else an NL ticket is just aid for the urban majority leaving a rural minority either stuck, or having to spend a lot on fuel.
In the Randstad public transport is some of the best in Europe. But the moment you start to venture further away, it drops off dramatically. I've found villages with no bus services, or with one bus a week. An NL ticket isn't going to help much in those places.
3/n
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NL also needs to really rethink it's approach to rural publ transport. Else an NL ticket is just aid for the urban majority leaving a rural minority either stuck, or having to spend a lot on fuel.
In the Randstad public transport is some of the best in Europe. But the moment you start to venture further away, it drops off dramatically. I've found villages with no bus services, or with one bus a week. An NL ticket isn't going to help much in those places.
3/n
A NL ticket is a great idea, I look forward to it coming in. I just hope that when it happens we can learn the necessary lessons, and dramatically increase publicity transport provision across the country. From the tiniest hamlet to the biggest city. Everyone should have access to frequent, cheap, reliable, public transport.
4/4
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Looks like NL might be getting something similar to the Deutschland ticket. This is great.
Kinda.
On the one hand, it's going to dramatically reduce my transport costs. But, by far the biggest effect we can expect is it will highlight just how close to capacity public transport currently operates at.
Time for a little thread.
1/n
@quixoticgeek I was hoping we would also get the car free Sundays again in the landelijk crisisplan, but they are saying "De wereld is wel wat veranderd sinds de jaren 70" https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2611176-landelijk-crisisplan-olie-van-kracht-wat-betekent-dat
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@quixoticgeek I was hoping we would also get the car free Sundays again in the landelijk crisisplan, but they are saying "De wereld is wel wat veranderd sinds de jaren 70" https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2611176-landelijk-crisisplan-olie-van-kracht-wat-betekent-dat
@th yeah me too. I wanna cycle down the A10... But unless publicly transport dramatically improves, car free Sundays would cause chaos.
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I've talked about this before with a thought experiment (https://social.v.st/@quixoticgeek/115728861089232653). And while in the experiment it's about the idea of every car disappearing overnight. But the more likely scenario is every car not being able to find the fuel/energy needed to move it. At least not for a price most people can afford. When we have an NL ticket, it needs to come with a dramatic increase in capacity. NS can't be running a 4 car VIRM on an service. They need to be running max length max capacity.
2/n@quixoticgeek Realistically passenger*km share of rail is 10% of ground transport in Europe (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/relative-share-of-passenger-kilometers-travelled-by-rail-and-road, see also https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-reported-passenger-kilometers?country=~NLD). So shifting the 90% done by car means both a massive capacity increase of all trains and a reduction of travel and a shift away from sprawling urbanism. I can't see the latter taking less than a generation.
Shifting to (e-)bicycles is of course also part of the solution - but I hear the Netherlands have already done a lot in that regard?
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@th yeah me too. I wanna cycle down the A10... But unless publicly transport dramatically improves, car free Sundays would cause chaos.
@th @quixoticgeek I’d take the opportunity to cycle along the A4 to the A10, around, and back again via the A5.
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A NL ticket is a great idea, I look forward to it coming in. I just hope that when it happens we can learn the necessary lessons, and dramatically increase publicity transport provision across the country. From the tiniest hamlet to the biggest city. Everyone should have access to frequent, cheap, reliable, public transport.
4/4
@quixoticgeek I think that is the reality of rural though. PT will never compete with a car there, the sort of bar you're looking for is "possible", not "frequent", let alone "fast".
I mean, you could, but those buses would run empty most of the time, which only takes one VVDer crying waste before it's all over again, and even then they'd be worse than having your own transport.
Cars don't scale when the density gets too high. PT doesn't scale when the density gets too low.
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@quixoticgeek I think that is the reality of rural though. PT will never compete with a car there, the sort of bar you're looking for is "possible", not "frequent", let alone "fast".
I mean, you could, but those buses would run empty most of the time, which only takes one VVDer crying waste before it's all over again, and even then they'd be worse than having your own transport.
Cars don't scale when the density gets too high. PT doesn't scale when the density gets too low.
@Tubemeister the buses don't need to be full all the time. If they are powered by renewables, who cares about the energy. And cars spend 96% of their life parked, and average a 20% occupancy in the 4% of the time they are used. That's a low bar to compete with.
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@Tubemeister the buses don't need to be full all the time. If they are powered by renewables, who cares about the energy. And cars spend 96% of their life parked, and average a 20% occupancy in the 4% of the time they are used. That's a low bar to compete with.
Pet rant here:
Low carbon energy will be a scarce resource for the foreeeable future. If something is powered by renewables, that means something else is *not* being powered by renewables - hence it is still not OK to waste energy just because it comes from (say) a wind farm.Personally I'm more sympathetic to this line when it comes to public transport than when, for example, I used to hear it from Bitcoin enthusiasts, but a cost/benefit calculation still applies.
Back to your core post, I agree that rural public transport could get dramatically better, but I think it will require more innovation than just running mostly-empty busses around. And I don't think that waiting for that to get that figured out is a good reason to hold up improvement in less rural areas.
Re NL-ticket and capacity: Do NS have enough rolling stock that they are choosing not to run? Or is there a huge investment required to support an increase in demand?
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@Tubemeister the buses don't need to be full all the time. If they are powered by renewables, who cares about the energy. And cars spend 96% of their life parked, and average a 20% occupancy in the 4% of the time they are used. That's a low bar to compete with.
@quixoticgeek @Tubemeister you can drive a completely empty bus given that the general utilization of the line or network is large enough. Also the Netherlands don't have low population density. There are relatively low density areas where the network might cost more per passenger, but you need to serve those places for the robustness of the network. That directly conflicts with the drive towards efficiency.
But having everybody be their own personal transport driver is not efficient either
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@quixoticgeek I was hoping we would also get the car free Sundays again in the landelijk crisisplan, but they are saying "De wereld is wel wat veranderd sinds de jaren 70" https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2611176-landelijk-crisisplan-olie-van-kracht-wat-betekent-dat
@th @quixoticgeek well yes, we're not in a place of worship twice every Sunday anymore. We need to be able to drive to a place where we can buy, spend and consume /s
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Pet rant here:
Low carbon energy will be a scarce resource for the foreeeable future. If something is powered by renewables, that means something else is *not* being powered by renewables - hence it is still not OK to waste energy just because it comes from (say) a wind farm.Personally I'm more sympathetic to this line when it comes to public transport than when, for example, I used to hear it from Bitcoin enthusiasts, but a cost/benefit calculation still applies.
Back to your core post, I agree that rural public transport could get dramatically better, but I think it will require more innovation than just running mostly-empty busses around. And I don't think that waiting for that to get that figured out is a good reason to hold up improvement in less rural areas.
Re NL-ticket and capacity: Do NS have enough rolling stock that they are choosing not to run? Or is there a huge investment required to support an increase in demand?
@swaldman @Tubemeister ns could run more stock. Whether they have enough stock. That's a different question. Possibly.
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@quixoticgeek @Tubemeister you can drive a completely empty bus given that the general utilization of the line or network is large enough. Also the Netherlands don't have low population density. There are relatively low density areas where the network might cost more per passenger, but you need to serve those places for the robustness of the network. That directly conflicts with the drive towards efficiency.
But having everybody be their own personal transport driver is not efficient either
@meeoo @quixoticgeek It is quite efficient for those people and their time and energy, which is why you see so many cars everywhere.
Is it efficient use of resources? Nah, probably not. Of time? Yep. Is that shortsighted? Up to a point, but not entirely.
I could take the bus to work, but it would take me 2 hours. Car's 40 minutes. So I drive.
Were that a one hour train trip door to door I'd take the train. Unless it's loaded to capacity, because ick people.
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@meeoo @quixoticgeek It is quite efficient for those people and their time and energy, which is why you see so many cars everywhere.
Is it efficient use of resources? Nah, probably not. Of time? Yep. Is that shortsighted? Up to a point, but not entirely.
I could take the bus to work, but it would take me 2 hours. Car's 40 minutes. So I drive.
Were that a one hour train trip door to door I'd take the train. Unless it's loaded to capacity, because ick people.
@Tubemeister @meeoo so what do we need to do to provide a train option there ?
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@quixoticgeek @Tubemeister you can drive a completely empty bus given that the general utilization of the line or network is large enough. Also the Netherlands don't have low population density. There are relatively low density areas where the network might cost more per passenger, but you need to serve those places for the robustness of the network. That directly conflicts with the drive towards efficiency.
But having everybody be their own personal transport driver is not efficient either
@meeoo @quixoticgeek Also, it's low density enough once you get outside of the cities. Sure it could be lower still, but it's low enough that making public transport run past "possible" into "convenient enough" is not practical in the current understanding of the term.
The thing is that these musings tend to easily tip over into "all cars must go" type absolutism, and they are just too damn useful to not have them at all.
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@Tubemeister @meeoo so what do we need to do to provide a train option there ?
@quixoticgeek @meeoo Somehow run a train service between two minor cities separated by a military shooting range and a national park.
Which I still wouldn't take, because that hour of door to door will be spent entirely on the last few miles getting to/from the station with no time left for the actual train.
That's just the reality of public transport. With few exceptions, it runs from where you aren't to where you don't want to go, and making up the difference takes so much time.
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@quixoticgeek @meeoo Somehow run a train service between two minor cities separated by a military shooting range and a national park.
Which I still wouldn't take, because that hour of door to door will be spent entirely on the last few miles getting to/from the station with no time left for the actual train.
That's just the reality of public transport. With few exceptions, it runs from where you aren't to where you don't want to go, and making up the difference takes so much time.
@quixoticgeek @meeoo If I _had_ to take public transport to get to my current workplace, I'd have to move. It would drive me insane.
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@quixoticgeek @meeoo Somehow run a train service between two minor cities separated by a military shooting range and a national park.
Which I still wouldn't take, because that hour of door to door will be spent entirely on the last few miles getting to/from the station with no time left for the actual train.
That's just the reality of public transport. With few exceptions, it runs from where you aren't to where you don't want to go, and making up the difference takes so much time.
@Tubemeister @meeoo Apeldoorn and Arnhem? The Veluwe, and the Harskamp range ?
