The total is large but has a dent in the countryside. The total is 52 million. This is how many monthly valid 9-euro tickets were sold in the discount campaign that started in June and ends at the end of August. Ten million more resulted from the reduction in the price of existing subscriptions for local public transport. But among the residents of rural areas, the proportion of 9-euro ticket holders was only half as high as among city dwellers.
The reason for this provincial dent “is an insufficient public transport offer,” says the most comprehensive 9-euro ticket balance sheet that was presented on Monday by the Association of German Transport Companies (VDV). This results in a task, said Brandenburg’s Infrastructure Minister Guido Beermann (CDU) at the balance sheet presentation, “that we have to get better in rural areas”.
And that makes it understandable why the debate about successor regulations is not getting anywhere, despite numerous proposals for a 29, 49 or 69 euro ticket: the federal and state governments, which would have to finance each model with grants, cannot agree on how the double task is to be solved. On the one hand, to create a cheap ticket that can be used nationwide as far as possible, and on the other hand to close the large public transport gaps in such a way that provincial residents also benefit.
According to the VDV-Bilanz, they were not enthusiastic about the discount campaign: Overall, according to the survey of 6,000 representatively selected people carried out weekly since June, 88 percent of the 9-euro ticket users were “satisfied” and 20 percent “completely satisfied”. . But the “least satisfaction” was “in the small town/village area”.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise: the fewer trains or buses there are, the less they enjoy a public transport discount. It is also not surprising how the federal states, which are responsible for local transport but are heavily dependent on federal subsidies, react to the 9-euro ticket balance: demanding. In more ways than one.
First of all, they are asking the federal government to come up with a concept for a permanently discounted ticket that is valid nationwide – and the money for it, after the federal government financed the 9-euro ticket in full with 2.5 billion euros. According to Bremen Transport Senator Maike Schaefer (Greens), the current Chair of the Transport Ministers’ Conference, the federal states are willing to share in the costs of a successor model.
But Schaefer did not commit to a 50 percent share, but explained that the federal government with Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) had a duty to create a permanently cheap ticket: “You can’t make people tasty,” said Schaefer in North German paraphrase of bringing up the appetite, “and then let the federal government starve to death on the long arm”. But Wissing does not make any financial commitments, and his party colleague Christian Lindner, as Federal Minister of Finance, spoke of a “free mentality” with regard to the ticket.
But that’s only part of the argument. The federal states want more, want to close the public transport gaps in rural areas and generally allow more buses and trains to run. “We need expansion in rural areas and a better offer overall,” said Baden-Württemberg Transport Minister Winfried Hermann (Greens) at the VDV press conference.
From this political goal, the state transport ministers made financial demands at their special conference last week: The federal government should increase the regionalization funds flowing to the states, with which it must finance local passenger transport by rail, by 3.15 in 2022 and 2023 billion euros and then further increase each year by 1.5 billion.
This is not only necessary for a better offer, but also because in public transport “energy and personnel costs are running away at the moment”, as Beermann said. If this is not compensated, there is a risk of restrictions on the offer. Hermann predicted that transport companies would go bankrupt, and Schaefer warned of the risk of sharp increases in regular tariffs.
But Wissing is so upset about the money requests from the federal states – he called the conference of transport ministers “disappointing” – that his willingness to finance a 9-euro ticket successor is becoming even smaller. In this way, one demand from the countries slows down the other.
A 9-euro ticket successor to the FDP could perhaps help avoid a speed limit debate. According to the VDV, the discount campaign resulted in numerous changes: Ten percent of the 9-euro ticket holders would have given up at least one of their daily car journeys in favor of public transport. That reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 1.8 million tons. That corresponds to the annual effect of a speed limit, which the liberals reject. So they might get the idea that a €9 ticket-style offer would help them declare a speed limit unnecessary.
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