“Ho lasciato il Regno Unito per vivere in Germania: il mio tragitto giornaliero ora costa £ 29 al mese”

Big surprise, public transportation is overpriced here.

Until very recently, Arriva were owned by Germany’s Deutsche Bahn. I have absolutely no proof that they gouged the British public to subsidise their own public transport network, no sir… so if anyone wants to link to reputable reports confirming what we all suspect, go nuts, I won’t be the least bit surprised.

A few years ago Germany had €9 monthly tickets which got you **unlimited** travel on buses and local trains, for a whole month. It was hugely popular. The estimated yearly cost if they made it permanent would have been around €10-12 billion euros, so a lot of money but very much affordable for a wealthy European country – and that cost would have gotten their citizens essentially free rail travel.

They didn’t extend the scheme in the end, but trains over there are still way more affordable than in the UK.

What is holding us back is political bravery and The Treasury, a hugely OP department which takes few numerate civil servants and turns them into miserly penny pinchers. If we injected £10 bn into the rail network every year you could bring down prices by maybe 80-90% (in comparison we spend £4 bn on migrant hotels a year lol).