Winfried Kretschmann was far away on Tuesday evening. The Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg is currently on a delegation trip to the USA. The Green was therefore connected via video to the conference of Prime Ministers with Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). After all, a lot was at stake. In the end, however, the disappointment on the other side of the Atlantic was great. Kretschmann was annoyed that the federal and state governments were too far apart, for example when it came to cheap tickets for local transport. “I would have hoped that we would put a button on it, unfortunately that didn’t happen,” he said in Pittsburgh.
The urgently awaited aid for the Germans remains vague in the serious crisis – even after the summit. Above all, the nine-euro local transport ticket is finally threatening to become a posse. After a direct connection solution to the discount ticket that sold millions of times failed at the end of August, the new planned start date of January 1 is now also in danger. Only three months remain to clarify the many open questions. It is still completely unclear what the ticket should cost and what it should do – but above all who will pay for it.
According to participants, it became clear on Tuesday evening at the summit in the Chancellery how far apart the federal and state governments are. Because the federal states only want to agree to the ticket and bear half of the total costs of three billion euros if the federal government also increases its local transport by a good three billion euros a year. But according to the participants, Scholz did not want to get involved in this trade on Wednesday under any circumstances. The countries received a rejection. With 1.5 billion euros, the federal government wants to continue to pay only half the cost of a new nationwide local transport ticket, which should cost between 49 and 69 euros. Additional billions in aid are not in sight.
Even transport ministers are puzzled as to how the dispute will end
This increases the anger in the countries. There is no point in introducing a cheap ticket if the states have to cancel trains at the same time because they don’t get enough funding from the federal government, warns Prime Minister Kretschmann. North Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) also interjected that bars should not be thinned out. The federal states fear that a deficit of 30 billion euros will accumulate by 2030. Bavaria’s Minister of Transport Christian Bernreiter alone expects to have to pay an additional 511 million euros for local transport in the coming year because of the many price increases – just to keep the current offer and the current frequencies.
The decision as to whether the new discount ticket will come at all should now be made at a new conference of transport ministers next week. Then the state ministers meet with Federal Minister Volker Wissing (FDP). But that means the negotiations are going in circles. Because the transport ministers had just hoped that their prime ministers and the chancellor could agree on more money for local transport. Wissing also rejects higher local transport payments. The dispute could even escalate. Because Wissing had recently warned that the start date in January could not be kept if the federal states were really opposed to the financing.
Does the ticket pop at the end? Even state transport ministers are puzzled as to how the dispute will end. Because even the countries are no longer in complete agreement with each other. City-states like Berlin and Bremen are pushing for at least the new local transport ticket to be introduced – if necessary without a special payment from the federal government. Area states such as Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, which suffer more from the high prices for energy, for example, continue to make the billions in local transport aid a condition.
In the provincial capitals, there are already fears that passengers will be upset if the range of buses and trains has to be restricted in winter. If a cheap ticket were to be introduced at the same time, there could be a risk of frustration on the platform. Then, says a minister in private, we would have one thing above all: “chaos.”