As of: 12/03/2022 7:29 p.m
The wrangling between the federal and state governments over the cost of the 49-euro ticket continues. Federal Minister of Transport Wissing spoke out in favor of a quick start, but refused a promise of help in the event of possible additional costs.
Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing is promoting the launch of the planned Germany-wide local transport ticket, despite some financial questions that are still open. “Nobody knows today exactly what the introduction of the 49-euro ticket will cost next year,” said the FDP politician to the “Welt am Sonntag.” We won’t know until 2024, Wissing continued. “Then we want to talk about the ticket and further developments with the countries anyway.”
No concrete commitments
The background is a financial dispute over the planned nationwide ticket for buses and trains in local transport with an introductory price of 49 euros per month. It should come in the new year and build on the popular 9-euro tickets from the summer. At the end of November, the transport ministers of the federal states declared that they expected the federal government to split possible additional costs equally between the federal and state governments and to bear them jointly.
Wissing said in this context: “The federal government is providing 1.5 billion euros for the ticket and is also increasing the regionalization funds so that the federal states will have an additional billion euros available from this year.” The federal government will support the states where it can, the FDP politician continued. In doing so, the minister opposed demands from the federal states that the federal government should already agree to assume half of any additional costs.
The start date should be April 1st
In general, the federal and state governments had agreed to finance up to three billion euros per year in half to compensate for the assumed loss of income from the transport companies. The federal government also wants to increase its regular funds, which the federal states use to order services from transport providers.
The start of the nationwide 49-euro ticket, which should officially be called Deutschlandticket, was originally scheduled for January 1st. At the conference of transport ministers at the end of November, however, April 1st was targeted as the start date.