06.05.2008 11:48
train fares at Deutsche Bahn
Imagine you want to travel from A to B by train. Then I can somehow understand that fast connections are more expensive than slow ones. But DeutscheBahn does not charge you extra for going fast, rather they charge you for using a certain type of trains. The longer you sit in an ICE the more you pay, even if that ICE dawdles around somewhere in the big green German forest. For them it's a good policy to make money, replace all trains by ICE's without having them going at top speed, (quite often the tracks do not allow it anyhow) and charge for it.
Take this example, you can travel from Wuppertal to Munich in 5 hrs (fastest connection) for 122 Euros. But you can also spend the same 122 Euros on a connection taking 6 h 55 min (that is 2 hrs more!) on the otherhand you get it for 99 Euros in 6h 50 min, which is five minutes less and some more travelling in old fashiones IC trains.
