The enthusiasm for the public transport flat rate of nine euros is undiminished, even if this means that you often have to travel in crowds on buses and trains. 31 million nine-euro tickets have been bought so far, and early data suggest that car traffic has also slightly decreased in many cities since then. Halfway through the offer, the question arises: How will things continue in autumn? After all, it is not foreseeable that the citizens will then need less relief in their wallets.
A new proposal from the Association of Transport Companies (VDV): Instead of nine euros, it should cost 69 euros a month if you want to use public transport nationwide. It quickly becomes clear who the association wants to address: “Drivers who are willing to pay” are named by the VDV in a statement as a “relevant target group”. In fact, especially for people who commute from the commuter belt to a big city, a monthly ticket for 69 euros can be significantly cheaper than the subscription offers of regional transport companies.
As a bonus, there would also be the option of taking leisure trips across the country on regional transport with this card, as is now the case with the nine-euro ticket. According to the VDV, even a price of 69 euros would not be enough to cover the costs of the transport company. “The climate ticket for 69 euros will entail additional expenses of around two billion euros per year, which will have to be borne,” says the association’s managing director Oliver Wolff. For comparison: the cost of a three-month 9-euro ticket is estimated at 2.5 billion euros.
A lot of money has to flow into the expansion of public transport – that too has to come from somewhere
So how could a follow-up offer be financed? And shouldn’t it be cheaper, for example a 365-euro annual ticket?
“Good public transport is not available for free,” says Valentin Abel (FDP), a member of the Transport Committee. One must now calculate which price is sustainable for the associations. After all, you have to tackle the expansion of local transport, while at the same time the costs for personnel and energy are increasing. All this costs the state a lot of money, but the users would also have to contribute to the financing. Abel advocates a model where people pay different prices depending on their income. In this way, one could specifically help those who need it financially. “We should promote with the pipette and not with the watering can,” says the FDP man. He welcomes the idea of the network ticket, as it shows: “People accept local transport if they don’t need a degree to understand it.”
The Greens are also learning their lessons from the summer’s low tariff: “The nine-euro ticket has shown that the price is decisive,” says Stefan Gelbhaar, the party’s spokesman for transport policy. Now there are two ways to proceed. Either you increase the fare income by continuing to offer cheap transport tickets in the future – and thus more people buy them. Or the money comes from the federal or state budget. A study was commissioned in the group in order to be able to argue on the basis of numbers. The Greens would also consider a three-stage model worth considering: one tariff each for the city, regional and federal levels. In this way, one could respond much better to the respective life situation of the passengers. The Vienna model, a 365-euro annual ticket, is also very attractive for city-states like Berlin.
However, the transport companies consider this concept to be unrealistic – especially as a network ticket. That would not even be half of the 69 euros calculated by the VDV, which is “certainly hard to imagine given the budgetary situation,” according to the association. In addition, one knows from the nine-euro ticket that almost a third of the journeys would not have been made without this offer, i.e. “more traffic” was produced. This is only desirable in moderation, given the climate policy goals of avoiding and shifting traffic.
A spokesman for Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) said on Friday that there was an agreed procedure, according to which the results of a federal and state working group on the future and further financing of public transport should be available in autumn. That doesn’t sound like a direct connection offer for the nine-euro ticket.