The balance sheets sound good: With the nine-euro ticket, it should have been possible to save as much of the climate-damaging carbon dioxide within three months as you could otherwise only do in a year by driving 130 km/h on the motorway. Those are the raw numbers, but what about the feel? What was it like to be on the regional train? In order to answer this question, you don’t have to have traveled from Munich to Rügen with this ticket, which, as a colleague assures, should have been done in one long day. It is enough to measure the manageable distance between Munich and Ulm a few times to start thinking.
When the regional train stops in Pasing, there are still a few free seats, but when the train in Augsburg is divided into three and only the first third makes its way to Ulm, things get tight, very tight. And because it is becoming increasingly difficult to squeeze the passengers in, you have the opportunity to observe your fellow passengers during the almost two-hour journey. For example, there are the two Japanese who keep their eyes open. What if one drove the legendary fast and punctual Shinkansen whenever he wasn’t on vacation? And what if the other worked as a smuggler on the Tokyo subway? They had good illustrative material and wondered. How easily the Germans put up with an hour’s delay and how they voluntarily pushed themselves into the furthest corners of the carriage, where there was not enough air to breathe.
Somewhere, it could have been in front of a stop called Kutzenhausen, nothing works anymore. It is imperative for a wheelchair user to get on this crowded train. Either, according to the announcement, five passengers get off, or the police come to evacuate the train. Then, after a quarter of an hour of waiting, the saving idea: could a cyclist and his vehicle get off? One will have done it, because the journey then actually continues. The cyclist decides to pedal and saves the world a bit.
And what’s next with the ticket? So far it has cost nine euros, but despite Corona, this narrowness has been accepted. But what if it stays and maybe five times more expensive? Then the trains would have to be five times longer, and no more delays, please. That’s the only way we show it to the Japanese.