It's odd how this 'free transportation' deal came up and became the number one topic for the past 72 hours.
This morning, my local network....HR (the Hessen public network) covered the topic.
HR went and interviewed the state Transport Minister....Tarek Al-Wazir...a Green Party guy. He more or less said that it's a fantasy.
His quote: "Easy to call 'in vain for everyone' does not seem particularly elaborate."
He points out....without ticket revenue, there's a heck of a lot (billions) that simply aren't there.
He even goes on to talk about the act of doubling passengers (basically what this whole process would be about)....you'd have to double the train and bus network. Most folks around Frankfurt would readily agree with him....the whole network operating now is at maximum capacity. 747 million folks rode the regional network in 2017. To suggest them taking up to around 1.5 billion? Don't even bother.
How much does the regional network make per year? 900 million Euro.
They even went onto to analyze how the network is used now and the biggest problem existing. If you have someone at some rural point of the Frankfurt 'shadow', needing to make it into a particular part of Darmstadt....you could be talking about four changes in a one-hour period to make it into work or university. At present, it's unrealistic to make the route work, and using a car is simply smarter.
It's amazing how this topic moved up and is long discussed by the public. I would suggest that the Merkel coalition has opened up a can of worms. Even the Greens kinda admit that this is way outside of reality to offer free transportation.
So you stand back and think about things that came up two years ago. Germany hustled up and passed a law that said that gas and diesel cars (new vehicles) would NOT be allowed to be sold after 2030. It had to be electric in nature. Most Germans (I'd say three-quarters) believed this was achievable and within reason. This would give everyone the ability to ride on their own, and still have a private vehicle to get to work. So you have to ask yourself....WHY go and dump this free-transportation deal on the table? I doubt if you can find more than ten-percent of society who think that it's possible to do this.
Behind all of this....I think the EU is getting close to pushing Germany into some fine deal....via the court system, over the clean air standards. When you go back twenty years ago....Germany was all hyped up to talk about enforcing clean air upon all of Europe and forced standards. So they got the standards, and now it's obvious that German cities (like Frankfurt, Munich, Essen, etc)....can't meet the EU standards.
It's a curious topic and will be around for weeks, I think.
No comments:
Post a Comment