Wednesday, February 14, 2018

More on the 'Free Ride' Commentary

I noted out of Hamburg news this morning, a fair amount of skeptical nature over this free bus/tram ticket idea by the Berlin leadership.

NDR put a fair bit of commentary over the idea. 

In the region of Hamburg, there's roughly 850 million Euro of local tram/bus tickets sold yearly....so as they point out....someone would have to cough up that money to make this all 'free'.  Hint: tax-payers.

The city spokesperson even went onto discuss the internal capability of the network....trams, buses, etc....it's all built to handle X-number of passengers.  The local Hamburg network is figured to transport around 770.5 million passengers every year.

I've been to Hamburg and will vouch that they have a four-star public transportation system within the city.  But to suggest it could double up?  Not without massive infrastructure costs. 

You would likely be talking about billions to be spent over a decade to reach some stage where everything works as advertised. 

Skeptical nature now attacking this Berlin idea?  I would speculate that the Berlin political folks are simply trying to buy time and avoid an EU confrontation.  In a way, by the EU's nature....it could make a lot of people angry over the attitude taken.

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