Do those who drive a car also travel by train? At least not at the same time. But even in chronological succession, he rarely or never does. If you drive a car, you drive a car and not a train. This was the case in the early nineties and it is still the case today. At that time, the new S-Class from Mercedes came off the assembly line (for connoisseurs: model W 140), a really cute little guy of just 5.11 to 5.21 meters in length and 2.16 meters wide, if you folded in the exterior mirrors, it was 1.90, and with a curb weight of 1890 to 2250 kilograms as light as a feather. Today, when SUVs have considerably more displacement mass, it seems almost like a miracle that the people in them did not get claustrophobia, apart from the fact that you don't even understand how someone with such a tiny car, which at most only had a ridiculous 408 hp, dared to go on the road at all. However, there was a serious problem with this touchingly modest car: it did not fit on car trains. The idea expressed on several occasions to simply widen the wagons of the Deutsche Bahn was not implemented. And so the poor S-Class owners still had to drive with the things, although they had only bought them, that was the sick logic at the time, in order to travel by train with them.
It's a good thing it exists
For this reason alone, it is good and right that the incumbent transport minister is from the FDP. Volker Wissing recently suggested that anyone who buys a car should get the 49-euro, not to say Germany-Ticket, which has just been introduced and, as you would expect, is getting off to a very bumpy start, free of charge and virtually on top, from the vehicle manufacturer. This is justified by how everything and everything is justified by this party, you can no longer hear it: flexibility, openness to technology, creating incentives, the tick invites you to use different means of transport. Wissing and his FDP can wait a long time. Anyone who buys a car usually does so because they don't take the train. This, of course, is far too plausible for the Liberals. So they have to come up with something again to help the car industry. Because that's what it's all about. The 49 euros would be more than compensated for by this economic stimulus package.
And a car on top of that
It certainly wouldn't have made more sense ecologically, but it would have been refreshing from the point of view of honesty, Wissing would have said, everyone who buys a Germany ticket gets a car. He could then, in all politically desired freedom of choice, reconsider every time whether he would not prefer to take the car in the end and leave the Germany ticket in the garage in God's name. If necessary, you have to proclaim a scrapping premium for the 49 euros, if necessary make it additionally palatable with another free car.