The planned 49-euro Germany ticket as a successor to the temporary summer model for a price of just 9 euros does not go far enough for parts of the Hamburg SPD. At a state party conference on Friday evening, a majority spoke out in favor of campaigning for a “long-term” 29-euro ticket. A few days after the most recent announcement by the Hamburger Verkehrsverbund (HVV) that the prices for buses and trains would increase by an average of 3.2 percent as of January 1, the SPD is also calling for a price brake. A majority of the delegates said that a further increase in ticket prices should not be possible before 2025 at the earliest.
In the discussion about ticket prices, Finance Senator Andreas Dressel warned of possible conflicts of interest in view of the financing required for cheaper tickets. He pointed out that the Hanseatic city had promised the “Hamburg cycle” by 2030. This is the plan to offer people anywhere in the city within five minutes bus, underground and suburban train connections or other mobility offers. In addition, local transport in the outskirts of the city must be expanded. “We have set ourselves ambitious expansion paths,” said Dressel, speaking of “orders of magnitude that we have not yet mastered”.
The Hamburg SPD chairwoman Melanie Leonhard also warned against downplaying the 49-euro ticket. “It’s not just about us here in Hamburg, it will be usable nationwide without tariff limits,” said Leonhard, who also belongs to the red-green Hamburg Senate. “What that means for mobility in our country cannot yet be measured.”
The Social Democrats had to work through an extensive catalog of more than 100 applications on more than 200 pages at their “Labor Party Congress” in Wilhelmsburg, which will continue on Saturday. It was also about current foreign policy. In view of the violent suppression of the protests in Iran, the delegates called for the Islamic Center Hamburg (IZH) to be excluded from the Council of Islamic Communities (Shura). In an application that was accepted with a very large majority, they showed their solidarity with the people of Iran. “We are also contacting the Hamburg Shura and asking them to exclude the Hamburg Islamic Center from the Shura.”
In a further resolution of the party conference, the Hamburg SPD members of the Bundestag are called on to work to ensure that “reservists and soldiers fleeing Russia can quickly and unbureaucratically receive national, humanitarian entry visas and be able to receive asylum in the Federal Republic of Germany”.
Mayor Peter Tschentscher had previously commented again on what he considered to be an “almost hysterical discussion” about the participation of the Chinese logistics giant Cosco in a container terminal in the port of Hamburg. He accused politicians at the federal level of deliberate misinformation. It would be good if the federal government checked “whether the participation of a Chinese shipping company in a Hamburg terminal is compatible with the foreign trade law or whether this results in critical dependencies or influence,” said Tschentscher. “It’s not okay if well-known federal politicians deliberately spread disinformation to damage the Port of Hamburg,” he added, without naming names.
