There hasn’t been so much movement in the area of price development for public transport tickets for a long time. Maybe even a little too much. You don’t even know what the prices are now. For years, the cost of tickets in many Bavarian cities has climbed so high that some fare dodgers feel like the robber Kneissl. Then it suddenly hails price reduction proposals from all directions. First of all, an annual ticket for 365 euros is supposed to come in Nuremberg, but then it doesn’t come. Just like it didn’t happen before in Munich, although it was supposed to happen. Then it is said that because of the increased energy prices, a monthly ticket for nine euros will be introduced nationwide, limited to three months. How, where and when exactly? Everything is still in flux.
And suddenly, as if out of nowhere, the renegades of the Nuremberg transport company also lowered their prices for the semester ticket: from 207 euros to an incredibly low 2.07 euros. Finally a serious signal from politics that you want to push people lovingly and forcefully away from cars and towards rails? Or maybe a big gesture of deep gratitude to students who have dimmed their lives to a minimum in the past two years for the benefit of the rest of society and pushed long chopsticks up our noses for low wages? It would actually be nice. The reduction ex machina was more likely due to a software error.
In any case, word of the low price got around very quickly, and students stood in long queues in front of the ticket machines at the main train stations in Nuremberg and Erlangen on Monday evening. Apparently, many of them not only bought semester tickets for themselves, but even had others give them their matriculation number in order to get cheap tickets for their friends as well. Typical students, don’t just think about yourself! Nobody knows exactly how many of these tickets were sold before the error was corrected and whether they are now valid. However, the fact that it makes sense to relieve people of the costs of public transport under the impression of rapidly increasing energy prices has not only been clear since this onslaught.