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'ANTI BUS LAW RESCINDED IN GERMANY'

 
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Mr. Linsky
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Joined: 16 Apr 2007
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Location: BRENTWOOD, CA. - WOODMERE, N.Y.

PostPosted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 12:21 am    Post subject: 'ANTI BUS LAW RESCINDED IN GERMANY' Reply with quote

'Germany Moves to Lift Ban on Long Distance Bus Trips'


By JACK EWING
Published: September 9, 2010 The New York Times

FRANKFURT — Sometime next year, budget-conscious Germans will climb aboard a bus in Frankfurt and make a trip that has been unheard-of for decades.

The country's largest international bus service is usually not allowed to drop passengers in Germany.

They will travel to Munich, or perhaps Düsseldorf or Stuttgart. They are bus journeys that, for the last 79 years, have been illegal.

Long-distance domestic bus service has, with a few exceptions, been outlawed in Germany since 1931. But the ban, originally intended to protect the state-owned railway system, is likely to soon fall away under pressure from a recent court decision and a decision by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to deregulate domestic travel.

Despite the country’s status as the economic locomotive of Europe and a model of competitiveness, some say that the fact that it has taken so long to lift the bus ban says something about how slowly things change in Germany.

“It’s an anachronism,” said Roderick Donker van Heel, general manager of Deutsche Touring, which offers bus service from Frankfurt and other cities to foreign destinations, but is usually not even allowed to drop off passengers within Germany.

The anti-bus law is also a reminder that, despite steady changes over the last decade, barriers to free enterprise remain in Europe. Germany and other countries still shield certain professions and industries from new competitors with thickets of regulation.

“Deutsche Bahn can do whatever it wants,” Mr. Donker van Heel said, referring to the state-owned railroad. “The airlines can do what they want.” But when a bus company wants to offer intercity service, “the answer is no. And we’re in the year 2010.”

Even now, abolition of the law, which allows bus service only when it would bring substantial improvements over existing train service, is not a done deal.

Germany’s highest court for administrative law ruled in June that Deutsche Touring, the country’s largest provider of international bus service, could offer service from Frankfurt to Dortmund. The court set a precedent by accepting the company’s argument that lower prices alone constitute a substantial improvement in service.

But Deutsche Bahn could still undercut the legal victory by matching the prices that Deutsche Touring would offer.

A Deutsche Bahn spokesman declined to comment, but provided a statement in which the company pointed out that local authorities, and not the rail operator, decided whether to authorize bus services. The company also maintained that future providers of bus transport should be required to provide regularly scheduled service, as Deutsche Bahn does.
German transportation law “is not designed to protect Deutsche Bahn the company, rather it serves to protect the rail system, which is used by Deutsche Bahn and many other competitors,” the company said.

Mrs. Merkel’s government has pledged to sweep away such barriers. Promoting entrepreneurship is a central goal of the Free Democrats, junior partners in the governing coalition with the Christian Democrats, Mrs. Merkel’s party.

Patrick Döring, deputy chairman of the Free Democrats in Parliament and the party’s spokesman on transportation issues, said he was hopeful that a draft of a revised law could be presented to Parliament within a few months. The revised law could take effect in time to allow wide-open bus competition by mid-2011.

“I am very optimistic it will quickly become an established form of transport,” Mr. Döring said.
Mr. Donker van Heel said he was eager to start. Deutsche Touring is already making plans for new routes, probably focusing on connections to major cities.

Still, he is keeping his expectations in check. He noted that even some smaller German bus companies were lobbying against full competition. They would prefer that regulators allocate routes to companies, which would then enjoy quasi-monopolies.

Why has it taken so long to allow a form of transportation that is taken for granted in most other countries?

“Deutsche Bahn is a power in Germany,” said Gunther Mörl, president of the Association of German Bus Companies. “And the bus companies have a smaller lobby. It’s as simple as that.”

Deutsche Touring was actually owned by Deutsche Bahn until 2005, when the railroad sold it to Ibero Eurosur, a consortium of Spanish and Portuguese bus companies with ties to counterparts in France and Britain. Deutsche Bahn, via subsidiaries, remains by far the biggest provider of local bus service in Germany.

With a fleet of Setra buses made by Daimler, Deutsche Touring specializes in serving the Poles, Croatians, Serbs and other Eastern Europeans who work in Western Europe and need an affordable way to visit home. On a recent day, passengers boarded a bus bound for Kosovo from Deutsche Touring’s depot on the outskirts of Frankfurt.

The fares are cheap. A one-way ticket to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, costs 50 euros, or about $64, on Deutsche Touring, but also requires patience. The journey of about 1,050 miles takes 30 hours.

Because buses tend to be slower than trains, the prime customers will be budget-conscious young people, the jobless and elderly people “for whom the journey time is of secondary importance,” a recent study by Deutsche Bank said.

Bus companies are unlikely to steal many customers from Germany’s clean, fast and comprehensive train network, analysts said, though buses could put pressure on prices.

“The main effect is that we create a new opportunity for cheap mobility for people who can’t afford to go by train or plane,” said Alexander Eisenkopf, a professor at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, Germany, who teaches mobility management.

Signs are that demand for bus travel could be strong. Nighttime service offered by Deutsche Touring from Mannheim in southwest Germany to Hamburg in the north, by way of several airports, is booming, Mr. Donker van Heel said, though he declined to give figures. The route exploits a loophole in existing law that allows bus service to airports.

Bus routes to and from Berlin, which are allowed for reasons dating to the city’s status as a cold war outpost, are also booming, according to Deutsche Bank. About 370,000 people ride the Hamburg-Berlin bus line each year. Still, that is only a little more than Deutsche Bahn carries between the two cities every day.

Michael Svedek, chief operating officer of Deutsche Touring, estimated that bus service might take 5 percent of the roughly 5 billion-euro transport market. Currently, bus travel accounts for only a 0.1 percent share of total passenger traffic in Germany, according to Deutsche Bank.

“For them, it’s peanuts,” Mr. Svedek said, referring to Deutsche Bahn. “For us, it’s good money.”

Mr. Linsky - Green Bus Lines, Inc., Jamaica, New York


Photo by Gordon Welters Internation Herald Tribune
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HwyHaulier




Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Posts: 932
Location: Harford County, MD

PostPosted: Sat Sep 11, 2010 7:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mr 'L' -

The loaded, subjective language is everywhere! Note, "... The route exploits a loophole in existing law that allows bus service to airports...
"
"Loophole"? "Loophole"? Wow! Loaded word. Provision of services at airports clearly intended to provide ground support to air routes...

Otherwise, never realized that within Germany, intercity bus VERBOTEN. And, to think how we have all been shammed and scammed
about wonders of German High Speed Rail! BAH! No competitors! With longer air routes, I am persuaded DB cannot do it more efficiently
than air, on hauls of 250 miles or more. Boeing 737s are very efficient tools in getting the jobs done...

....................Vern.................
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Cdntruckphotog



Age: 71
Joined: 18 Sep 2009
Posts: 43
Location: Mississauga Ontario, Canada

PostPosted: Sat Oct 23, 2010 3:11 pm    Post subject: Germany and TRAINS! Reply with quote

Vern: George H Drury in TRAINS. I was thinking of that this morning when I read this thread. (OK you wrote it two weeks ago but still...)
Then, this afternoon my wife and I were clearing some OLD JUNQUE and I found an old magazine with one of his articles ..about Germany!
Now, it was published in February 1988 and described a trip he took in May of 85 but DB certainly ran a variety of trains back then.
( another aside....TRAINS still published articles that were a decent length in'88. GHD's piece ran (with illustrations) from page 36 to page 53.)
Nothing was written about buses of course.
I wonder if the train service has declined over the intervening quarter century. I doubt that the German government has the same level of resources to devote to train transportation. Re-unification, which occured 5 years after George's trip, was far more costly that originally assumed.
This might be one reason why the climate there has changed to make buses a palatable choice in 2010.

Rob Archer.




HwyHaulier wrote:
Mr 'L' -

The loaded, subjective language is everywhere! Note, "... The route exploits a loophole in existing law that allows bus service to airports...
"
"Loophole"? "Loophole"? Wow! Loaded word. Provision of services at airports clearly intended to provide ground support to air routes...

Otherwise, never realized that within Germany, intercity bus VERBOTEN. And, to think how we have all been shammed and scammed
about wonders of German High Speed Rail! BAH! No competitors! With longer air routes, I am persuaded DB cannot do it more efficiently
than air, on hauls of 250 miles or more. Boeing 737s are very efficient tools in getting the jobs done...

....................Vern.................
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