Construction costs are currently skyrocketing

Just a small clarification regarding the elimination of the commuter allowance, since this has already been portrayed in various places in the forum as a horror scenario leading to a decrease in the attractiveness of rural areas.

1. In many situations – especially when using one’s own car – the commuter allowance actually saves the state money. The commuter allowance effectively assumes €0.15/km in actual costs, since it applies to both the outward and return journey. Furthermore, all related expenses, for example parking fees, are covered by this.

Note: If you consider the actual costs of owning a car, in many cases these would be well above €0.15/km (especially if you do not have a fully depreciated car (in the tax sense – new cars after six years, used ones after 3 years), very economical car).

2. Who actually benefits from the commuter allowance? As mentioned under 1., users of economical vehicles and people who actually use other means of transport to get to work at costs effectively below the already calculated €0.15/km.

3. Is abolition simply possible? The Federal Constitutional Court has already ruled once that the commuter allowance cannot simply be changed so that it only applies from the 21st kilometer, since the costs for the way from home to workplace effectively represent income-related expenses (“Werbungskosten sind Aufwendungen zur Erwerbung, Sicherung und Erhaltung der Einnahmen.” § 9 Abs. 1 S. 1 Einkommensteuergesetz). Politics would somehow have to come to the conclusion that these costs are regarded as zero going forward, otherwise one could deduct the actual costs for the ways from home to workplace, and in the end the state would probably have even less money than if it simply allowed the commuter allowance to continue.

So it’s not all as simple as it is propagandized in the media with a lot of half-knowledge (especially by politicians).

I would like to be exempted on this point. I would like to be exempted on this point. Even though I like driving a car, I prefer not to drive myself. And such small, autonomous call-taxis that might even fly a bit higher (i.e., above the other cars) in the near future, I would find great.

That demonstrates it perfectly! If there were autonomous vehicles, you would drive more(!).

That changes very quickly when no normal individual traffic is allowed in the city anymore and parking spaces in the city are abolished.

I also can't understand why Germans are so masochistic when it comes to driving. I always thought it was silly. You have to concentrate, otherwise you or others can die, you can't read, can't work, can't sleep... It's just a nuisance. Why people don't do everything to reduce that (like changing jobs), is a mystery to me. Just having to listen to someone say they "like shifting gears". I don't wash my clothes by hand anymore, so why do I want an extra task while driving? It has to be as simple as possible. I am waiting for Tesla-like automatic lane keeping + distance control and so many people STILL WANT to shift?!?!
So yes. As soon as I can give driving over to anyone, I will do it. Bring on all the new things!

Oh, and topic full cost accounting: I recently sold my second car and did a final calculation (with a website that tracks car costs and something to do with fuel on the monitor). It was a very cheap (2400,-) used car, only minor repairs, 8 liters of gasoline, mid-range - so really nothing special. In the end, the car cost me 89 cents per kilometer in its five years with me! I am so glad that thing is gone!!

Evaluate traffic flows and coordinate them sensibly.
Commuter traffic
Leisure traffic
Delivery traffic
How much does the parcel locker save compared to door-to-door service?
How many kilometers can you drive by car compared to the package? Honestly, I don’t know which is cheaper. 20 km one way to the next town or Amazon.
To put it somewhat exaggeratedly, "Is it enough to leave the rural population in the countryside or must the urban population also drive less? The S-Bahn to get bread also produces CO2. What does the CO2 burden look like in Copenhagen compared to Berlin?"

Hi,

You’re not thinking far enough: There will be no individual (or rather: manual) traffic in the city anymore. The transport modules will all be autonomous and networked and controlled on their own routes wherever possible, so traffic lights will basically be unnecessary (pedestrians and cyclists will use their own tracks/paths). No parking spaces are needed anymore, as the modules are basically always in motion. This alone greatly increases capacity.

It’s a nice vision, you can read it again and again in various "how will we live in 30 years?" articles since the 1950s. Unfortunately, it contains some serious logical errors.

[*]If the vehicles, after dropping you off, first cruise around to pick up the next passenger, they cause empty runs and thus additional traffic. So there will be more traffic than before. The streets cannot handle this, even if you convert all existing parking spaces into lanes.
[*]For the same reason, such a system will consume more energy than the current status quo. You simply generate additional traffic.
[*]Let’s not even start talking about the resource consumption for building additional, new routes. Such a concept would basically mean demolishing and rebuilding large parts of the cities.

You can only reduce traffic if you manage to have more than just one person in the car at a time. (This is a totally new and innovative concept, just invented by me, I’ll patent it soon… just need a name… how about carpooling?!? ;-) )
And you can save even more traffic if you manage to keep people’s butts at home. In other words, mandatory home office for companies with really harsh tax disadvantages for central offices. Then it won’t matter anymore if some overwhelmed "manager" wants to see his/her people in the office just to walk past the rows of subordinates every morning. Of course, this isn’t possible for every job, but certainly for 20-30%. And that’s quite a lot!
After that, one can gladly do some cosmetics like sensibly limiting car consumption. In other words, cars with more than 7-8 liters of real consumption simply won’t be approved anymore and you lower the limit by 0.2 liters every year. The size of a car and whether it is an SUV or not doesn’t matter to the environment, only the real consumption counts.

In the medium term, electric cars will prevail anyway, but it will take a while until they can cover all applications like long distances and special cases like heavy trailers.

Best regards,

Andreas