Genuine Question. Even if I look at hungarian Transport, and they to this day use trains from the UdSSR, they come more consistantly then the DB.
They are really Bad sometimes, with like 20 seperate prices: Theres the bayernwald ticket that only works in the alps, then theres the official ticket to the destination. Theres a special offer, but only in the very special APP. You can use a d-ticket, but look! Some random ass slum in the middle of the worlds ass dosent accept that, but it does the MVV zone Tickets. But then you need the MVV zone 11-M, a ticket to the beginning to the Nürnberg zones, and a ticket for the Nürnberg zones.
And yet this shit is better than americas rails? How?
I am not educated in public transport logistics, but why do they make ticket prices so obnoxiously difficult?
It’s seemingly a worldwide issue so there just be a reason.
… Which I assume is “money”.
The DB is like Sparkasse and others not „the” DB but a bunch of different regional companies. Some of them around bigger cities decided to make a regional zone network like The MVV. At The same time many make other regional Tickets with others, like the bayernwald ticket, which covers part of these MVV network and non MVV networks.
So you might just think „well why not just make everything into a zone tarif”, but if you do that, if someone wants to go from Hessen to munich, since the zones are so big/many, they will have to pay way too much for many stations they will not even want to go to.
But for smaller places like the mvv network, if you abolish those zones, most stations will just just as much and the small ones which only accounted for cents if your zone ticket will die out.
So personally I think the problem with these tarif prices is just the over advertisement of time limited offers that only work for specific people and people not having properly learned about the 2 most important tickets in public transport: stripe cards for simple one way routes or zone tickets if you want a flatrate.
So the rail networks are operated by private companies? I am not familiar with the various acronyms, but that would certainly explain the complexity… Everyone wanting their slice of the pie.
It certainly looks complicated:
We (Queensland, Australia) have 50 cent fares at the minute - any public transport, no matter the distance / zone / etc is a flate rate of $0.50AUD. I assume any private interests are being compensated with tax dollars but at least it makes public transport simple and affordable.
There was recently a change from a Labor government (centrist?) to a Liberal government (right / conservative) so I suspect the 50c fares will be removed at some point, though they did make it permanent as part of an election promise. “Permanent” is a pretty flexible term from a politician though.