Even at that price, the British mind cannot comprehend such good a deal. An equivalent pass in the UK would be easily 10x that to even cover just a much smaller region than The Netherlands.
For sure. I currently live in the US (fairly rural) and I would kill to have my transportation-related costs reduced to about $150/mo. But where I live, I simply need to have a car to do any basic thing since the moment I step off my driveway, there aren’t even footpaths.
I live in the Netherlands and have absolutely no need for this ticket. When I need to go somewhere, I just walk or bike there, never takes more than 20 minutes. I cannot even imagine living in American suburbia
I moved here from The Netherlands in 2004, and have now lived in Florida, California, and Mississippi and stayed for prolonged periods in many US cities for my job. I wouldn’t feel safe riding a bicycle anywhere here considering the speed of traffic, the size of the vehicles, and lack of dedicated biking infrastructure. It’s a completely different world when you share the road with angry F150 drivers blasting past you at 80 MPH. No, thank you.
That you clearly value other things the US offers over the transit situation. If the transit matters that much, making the US such an unlivable hellscape, why stay?
I think that's probably the point they're trying to make.
IMO that doesn't mean we shouldn't bother to make the transit better, but some people think its somehow related. A lot of people think the "success" of the US is strongly correlated to this suburbia design somehow.
Right, I assumed the same argument. I've spent over half my life here, so it's obviously not that important to me, nor was it a factor in my decision to move here. Yet it's an observation I can make, having two distinct perspectives to compare, not a judgment on America. Ugh. It's the whole "yet you participate in society" meme, or the "well, if you don't like it, why not go home?" argument, which could well both be logical fallacies I don't know the names of.
Anyway, more public transit for the people and all that.
I live in American suburbia and that's how I live. I can walk or bike whenever I feel like it, drive if it suits me. I sometimes wonder what the average European assumes American suburbia to be. Endless tract homes? Such places do exist, true. But that is far from universal.
I'd be curious what metropolitan area you live in for this to be true! If you're not comfortable sharing for privacy reasons, that's all right. But it seems like this is the case in inner-ring suburbs in the Northeast megalopolis.
It is though, like, 90-95% of suburbia, and why the US has close to 100% of car commuters ( https://vis.csh.ac.at/citiesmoving/ ). Even small cities like Rennes (or even Clermont-Ferrand, which has objectively mediocre transit) have less car commuters than NYC, which is insane.
Of course you can walk. But can you walk to your workplace, your kid’s nursery, your local bakery/supermarket, your doctor, your dentist, the pharmacy?
In most of my jobs in Europe(Austria specifically) I couldn't walk to my workplace because most tech companies in my current city put their offices in ugly concrete industrial techno parks outside the city where I don't want to live, meaning driving to work mostly as public transportation there is slow busses only every 30 minutes or one hour of biking. Similarly my GF needs to drive 40 minutes to work outside the city, to one of the few employers in her field. Not everyone lives and works in the city center to be able to walk to work.
So walking to work is such a weird and subjective metric since not all companies in everyone's' area of work will be clustered in your vicinity of your house unless you're lucky or you make active efforts to keep moving close to work which might be in undesirable areas for living.
>your doctor
My current one yeah, but she's terrible and to change her, the only one I found that accepts new patients is on the other side of town so no walking there either, unless I like walking for an hour each direction every time.
MY point is Europe can be highly spread out as well, with people and businesses fleeing inner cities due to space constraints and rent costs, leading to commute distances too long to walk economically. That's why you see traffic jams at highway ramps at rush hour. It's not like those people were too stupid to realize they could walk to work instead of driving if that was an option.
I mean even just perusing around a lot of metro areas on Google Maps its by far the norm. I know its by far the norm for just about every metro I've spent more than a week or two in.
Definitely not universal, no. And in some place the "norm" can be pretty different, even in somewhat surprising locales. But generally speaking? Yeah, pretty terrible experience for a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in US suburbia.
I mean, most places I've visited traveling around the US suburbia, bike lanes were practically non-existent, there was zero notable public transit at all, and sidewalks were usually an afterthought if they existed at all.
I already have the NS Flex free weekend subscription (with 1st class addition) and it's the only way for me to travel longer distances. It's also just about the only available public transport in the neighbourhood because I live in a polder.
Nearest train station is a 35 minute walk, nearest supermarkets are almost an hour walk. One advantage, before Covid and I had groceries delivered, mandatory walking back and forth three times a week to the village did wonders for losing weight.
That means you never leave your town of residence. I am Dutch too, and I walk and cycle (of course), but I have friend and family elsewhere too, want to visit other nature, cities and countries as well.
I mostly use a car since it's so much cheaper and faster than public transport, but I bought this ticket in order to do some longer distance journeys as well. I don't really like driving.
I work with a guy from holland. There, he lived in a condo. Here, he owns 40-acers, a couple horses and is trying to grow his own corn. He can play out his rural lifestyle dreams and still work a desk in a city, something that isnt an option without personal transportation. (I would say "car", but he rides an R1 to work most days.)
Note that 128€ is the monthly price for 100% discount, but 6€ is the monthly price for 40% discount. It brings the prices of rail travel in the Netherlands from "fucking ludicrous" to just "reasonably expensive".
Kids under 12 free, too. I don't look forward to having to pay for both of them. Utrecht to Amsterdam round trip for a family of 4 is €80 for a family of 4, or €48 with the discount.
> It brings the prices of rail travel in the Netherlands from "fucking ludicrous"
Haha I can't help but feel the Dutch firmly believe rail should be completely free
Isn't it fairly common for your employer to pay half to all of your commuting cost too...? (Almost unheard of in the UK for comparison, with people regularly paying £2,000-£10,000/year to commute)
And the Netherlands is like 10th in Europe for on-the-day return costs per km
Though to be fare I think it's some shorter journeys that are quite expensive right? Eg Utrecht to Amsterdam is 20 EUR return which is pricey. But paying €6/mo to save 40% seems a pretty good deal if you travel a lot off peak
To add to the list: Replacing bad wood, pest service, aging appliances, fence maintenance, septic emptying (depending on your location), flooring wear and replacement, grouting and caulking, pest control, exterior cleaning, etc.
It can occasionally feel like an endless stream of tasks.
Oof, that’s rough, especially considering that GitHub used to be a Linux shop. I wonder what happened to all the Rails folks who built the OG platform.
I pay for Copilot annually, and mostly for its code auto completion features. I use CC if I want to do anything agentic. Not sure if I want to pay more for occasionally-good-intellisense at this point.
But you can no longer amortize annually, which makes it even more a question of "is this worth it this month?" each month. Especially for personal accounts.
I'm similarly thinking about sticking with the auto-downgrade back to Copilot Free when the annual sub ends and then just yelling about it any months I hit the 2000 completion cap.
I wouldn't mind a plan between Free and Pro that is just "all I care about is code completion and next edit suggestions".
In hindsight, I think I underestimated the value of my OV card while I was a student: travel whenever, using all types of public transport, for free.
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