In Germany, there are few national bus services with the exception of those operating to and from Berlin. Anyone who wants to travel by public transportation from Stuttgart to Munich, for example, can only do so by plane or train. That's in keeping with Paragraph 13 of the Public Transport Act of 1931. The clause permits national bus routes only in exceptional cases - and only if the national railway company, Deutsche Bahn, has no objections. This privilege is set to come to an end by 2011 at the latest, in accordance with an agreement between the members of the ruling coalition. New countrywide bus services could be launched soon, adding to the few routes that already exist, like the Hamburg-Berlin route, which is a relic of pre-unification days.
In Germany, there are few national bus services with the exception of those operating to and from Berlin. Anyone who wants to travel by public transportation from Stuttgart to Munich, for example, can only do so by plane or train. That's in keeping with Paragraph 13 of the Public Transport Act of 1931. The clause permits national bus routes only in exceptional cases - and only if the national railway company, Deutsche Bahn, has no objections.
This privilege is set to come to an end by 2011 at the latest, in accordance with an agreement between the members of the ruling coalition. New countrywide bus services could be launched soon, adding to the few routes that already exist, like the Hamburg-Berlin route, which is a relic of pre-unification days.
The wonderful new liberal 'transport' 'policy'. <tears hair out> *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Long-distance buses can compete with rail on price, so they will take away some of DB's income. Especially as a few years ago, DB infamously terminated its cheap long-distance services (the InterRegio brand) despite being successful and popular -- in the hopes that passengers will pay up for the more expensive IC, EC, ICE services, or go with the slower limited-stop local services (a result of splitting the company into operational branches, with the IR falling between two stools), rather than abandon trains. In addition, due to Germany's half-assed development of a high-speed network, those more expensive services don't have a significant enough speed advantage (and have capacity problems on some relations). It is also worth to note that that policy of higher ticket prices for higher-quality services is not a necessity, Austria for example holds to the same-price approach.
So there would be a lot of issues to attack to improve long-distance public transport in Germany. But, tough the new transport minister is said to be pro-rail, and promised to boost rail spending, so far his record is the stop and re-start of one high-speed line project, and this. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Of course, it all depends on how full the trains and buses are, but bus services will typically go to and from the train station and act as useful feeder services for other public tranport. Wind power
