Originally Posted by
MichaelBrighton
It seems to me that you really have very little understanding about European/German trains, yet you are making claims about their cost.
You do realise that the basic concept of public transport is that a group of people can be moved at a lower cost (more efficiently) than a single person (or small group of people) using personal transport?
You do realize just because public transport being more efficiently doesn't mean the "savings" is being passed back to the passenger?
You should do the math before claiming that car rental can't be cheaper than the train. It's a matter of fixed vs. variable costs. At some point, the car hire will be cheaper than train transport.
The cost of car hire plus fuel is fixed up to the vehicle's passenger capacity whereas cost of the train is variable (by passenger).
And you are changing the subject by stating public transport (as opposed to train) since public transport can contain other forms of transportation such as bus and aircraft. If trains are as cheap as you claim it to be, why are tour groups throwing money away by using buses instead of the train?
Originally Posted by
MichaelBrighton
The issue of ICE trains did not come up because, I suspect, few of the posters here are familiar with German trains. If the OP buys tickets early enough, he can get Sparpreis tickets, including the ICE, which are bound to a specific train. However, there are also Länder-Tickets, Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket and Quer-durchs-Land-Ticket, all of which offer discounts.
I travel often on German trains and have found that the regular service trains (non-high speed) are frequently more convenient than the ICE (and often, not so much slower either).
I should also point out that I was responding specifically to the poster who claimed that a rental auto could cost less than train transport.
And it can be cheaper under certain scenarios. One can easily determine the actual cost just by going to the car rental site and pricing the cost of car hire and comparing it to bahn.com.
All the discounts you provided are not valid on ICE. If you exclude ICE, then you shouldn't be bashing about traffic associated with driving. DUS to FRA is 2.25 hours by car on a good day/time. Regional trains will take you at least 3 hours between the two cities and that's excluding the time to get to/from the Hbf.
As indicated earlier, first hand experience is that diesel from DUS to FRA is about $35USD and I was driving a 5-series doing 200km/h about a quarter of the way. I paid 130EUR for a 1-day rental. Total with petro is about 170EUR. The 5 series could have carried maximum of 5 passengers. Train is about 45 EUR (restrictive discount) to 80 EUR per person. Five passenger fare is about 225EUR (restrictive) to 400EUR.
A Hyundai i10, 79EUR one-way rental from Hertz. I'm pretty sure it is less thirsty than a 5-series. Let's say $5 USD in fuel savings. That's about 102EUR total. Break-even is around 3 passengers (restrictive train ticket).
If OP wanted to get on a train to FRA right after landing at DUS, discount tickets could be a problem if an unexpected issue occurs (flight delay/lost bag etc) since you lose the value of the ticket if it is not used on the reserved train. This leaves OP with two options. Buy a walk up fare which makes car rental financially attractive than the train OR buy a discount fare (in advance) and leave a enough gap between flight arrival and train departure. Depending on how much OP values his time, this also makes car rental financially attractive.
I have nothing against trains. I much prefer ICE trains in Germany due to their punctuality and speed. However, between DUS and FRA, I don't find their non-restrictive pricing attractive at all
especially if you need to get on a train right after flight arrival which is what OP is suggesting (ICE 80EUR vs Hyundai i10 102EUR with fuel). Now if OP indicated he will spend some time in DUS before travelling to FRA, then buying a discounted ticket for one passenger then it would be as fractional of a cost than car rental as you had indicated.
Having said that, if I were in DUS and needed to catch a flight at FRA, I would take ICE instead of driving since I know I can buy the discounted ticket without fear of it losing value.