Representatives of the cities and municipalities are calling on the states to provide funds for a nationwide Germany ticket for local public transport. City Council President Markus Lewe (CDU) told the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post” on Monday, September 5, that after the agreement in the traffic light coalition, the federal states would now have to move. The Association of Cities and Municipalities as well as the NRW City Association joined the demand.
In its third relief package presented on Sunday, the traffic light coalition agreed to provide a successor to the 9-euro ticket for regional transport that expired at the end of August. The price range is 49 to 69 euros per month. The federal government wants to pay 1.5 billion euros a year for this. The prerequisite for the ticket is that the federal states make at least the same amount available, according to the decision paper.
City Council President Lewe demanded that the funding should not ultimately be left to the cities. “And at the same time we have to invest massively in local public transport. We assume that the investment funds required for this will continue to be available,” said the mayor of Münster.
Thomas Kufen (CDU), the chairman of the NRW City Council, appealed to the North Rhine-Westphalian state government to finance this solution together with the other states and the federal government in the long term. The states would have to jointly provide at least the sum of 1.5 billion euros promised by the federal government, said Essen’s mayor of the “Rheinische Post”.
The general manager of the Association of Towns and Municipalities, Gerd Landsberg, called for investments in the infrastructure in addition to the financing of the ticket. The sustainable increase in investments in public transport, especially in rural areas, remains indispensable, he told the newspapers of the Essen Funke media group on Monday.
