At least, transparent issues like this one can only help.
- they only take credit card, probably because of the massive SEPA fraud they've had happen
- they require id verification with a third party(!), which then only supports the e-perso(!!) or video ident(!!!), which they could've just used the actual PostIdent service for, which would've provided an alternative for non-smartphone-havers / people who'd rather not have their ID and face recorded by some Eastern European company until the end of time
- their entire authentication system was down when it came to actually purchasing
buying from my local Verkehrsverbund was a single tap in their app instead, with no id verification whatsoever. If DB's offering were the only option it would be an absolute travesty.
Sometimes a law will be in effect for two or three years and virtually no one will even know about it. Recycling electronics in supermarkets? Nope. E-Rechnung mandated for all B2B invoices? In your dreams.
I work at the other end of the spectrum, reducing friction for new immigrants to Germany. I find it especially frustrating. I could explain how things should be, but it would be pointless when reality is far more disappointing.
Everybody already has local regional tickets anyway. And most people can't be in more then one place at the time anyway. And most people stay in the same region most of the time anyway.
So really you are not losing much compared to having separate local region tickets in a system where the long distance trains are separated.
> who cleans and repairs the trains
The already existing organizations that have run the trains for a long time.
> who invests in infrastructure and all that
The government ...
> I always wonder how the germans can pull this off for 50 Euro. Magic.
Its not magic its just a transportation policy and taxes.
Everybody already has local regional tickets anyway. And most people can't be in more then one place at the time anyway. And most people stay in the same region most of the time anyway.
I live in Rostock. So if I want to go to Berlin or Hamburg (you know, where stuff like actual airports are) I am crossing "regional borders" even if it is a 200-250 km trip to each city
Germany: 0.35 million square kilometer.
On the point of the upkeep, locals know German trains are now legendary for unpunctuality and cancellations, so maybe it's not working. But the answer is obviously (trigger warning for the libertarians...) taxes.
The ticket came about because energy prices went crazy after their energy dealer Putin went crazy and warry, I think it was an attempt to motivate people to take public transport rather than have them moan about fuel prices going way way up...
> Germany: 0.35 million square kilometer.
This does not matter much, since most people do not travel across states, countries, continents, etc on a daily basis. Most people probably travel within a 50 km (30 mile) radius (travelling to and from work, daycare, school, shopping, etc.).
iirc, the average is slightly higher in the US, but this is probably more due to how the US has approached urban planning over the last century or so than to the size of the country.
> But the answer is obviously (trigger warning for the libertarians...) taxes.
I think many people forget the huge societal cost of owning and running cars, including infrastructure maintenance, crash-related deaths and injuries, health conditions caused by crashes, air and noise pollution, climate change, resource extraction, and time lost in traffic. In other words, the savings from reducing these social, health, and environmental costs could easily finance the ticket. A study estimated that a modal shift of 10% to public transit could save Germany about 19 billion Euros a year (https://foes.de/publikationen/2024/2024-04_FOES_OEPNV.pdf).
Also in Europe excellence is not rewarded. Nobody become a millionaire by designing and building great IT systems, there is no SV salary to attract and motivate talents, so we are drowning in mediocrity and when the governments are making systems, barely delivering something is the norm. The quality of requirements is very low (who will do better?), the deliverables are either from the lowest bidder or from the party in power friends, depending on the country and project.
In the private sector, fraud detection is often heuristic based. So this was probably flagged because you didn't buy German railway tickets in the recent past and maybe even you didn't buy anything else in or near Germany.
I remember years ago getting a decline on a credit card transaction to pay for one of my ISPs, and then hours later a phone call. My bank apparently didn't understand (yet, this is years ago) that ISPs are like, not necessarily physically nearby and so since the ISP is on another continent and I had no other nearby transactions it was flagged as likely fraud.
Deutschlandticket fraud stemmed from decentralization and weak controls: tickets were issued instantly on unverified SEPA debits, and a leaked or mismanaged signing key let attackers mint valid tickets at scale. Poor revocation and fragmented verification meant many fraudulent tickets still scanned as valid, enabling mass resale and huge losses.
