> We support the idea of the traffic light coalition to temporarily relieve not only drivers, but also the millions of public transport commuters in their mobility costs. It is a clear signal for local public transport as an efficient, climate-friendly and already inexpensive alternative to the car. The industry is working on a technical and entrepreneurial solution in the interests of passengers. The ticket is to be launched nationwide on June 1st.
> Wait, i suggest aligning it to the cost of a similar travel with a car!
I would wish they actually align their normal prices with a car.
It's absurd that it's cheaper for two people to travel from Karlsruhe to Frankfurt by car, than to take an ICE train. And that applies to almost any train connection inside a Germany.
> I would argue making it free and keeping it free would have been a cool move.
Here in Germany, there were many voices in favour of making the ticket completely free. What I heard about the reason for not doing so is that the government wanted to easily measure the actual demand in different regions for such a "free" ticket. So the price is low enough that anybody how wants to ride practically "for free" is buying it, but so high that most people who do not really use it won't buy it.
I expect that if the ticket is a success, it will be replaced by real free rides in the future. And the results of the test period could help determine how the costs should finally be shared between the different regions and local governments.
> I think a valid criticism is that it would still be good value at, say, 99 euros, or whatever
At 99€ it would have massively lower user numbers. It's already to a large degree a commuter ticket at 49€ - at 99€ alternative tickets would be the better choice for many.
The goal of these initiatives is to get people to choose public transport over cars. That includes making it attractive for tourists (foreign and domestic). A single ticket which allows you to just use any local public transport without having to figure out pricing and tickets beyond the basic rules of this ticket is pretty attractive.
The €9 ticket was a steal (I've used it myself as a tourist). This version is a bit on the expensive side, and not even that attractive for tourists (although certainly convenient).
> This is first and foremost a subsidy scheme to give public transit providers some more money - many people will buy the 9 euro ticket which before did not buy monthly tickets - and for each such ticket, the state will give the public transit provider the difference to a full month ticket, up to 200 Euros.
Do you have a source for that? Considering that the federal government considers 2.5 billion
Euro enough to cover the costs, this sounds false. As far as I'm informed the transport authorities will just get their current costs covered.
> One is underfunding, which causes a lack of reliability, and plenty of lines that are overused.
> The 49 euro ticket is a step in the right direction here, ...
Errm, you do see the contradiction here, no?
The 49 Euro ticket is actually heavily subsidized which means more tax payer money is wasted that could be invested into the infrastructure of public transport.
> claiming that 10% of those that purchased the 9€ ticket did without at least one of their daily car journeys. [...] But for a start, I think it is not so bad.
I don't know – I suppose you could say any car journey avoided is an improvement, but given the quite radical reduction of fares a figure of only 10 % avoided car journeys stills seems rather disappointing and to my mind rather confirms what was already known beforehand – while ticket prices should be reasonable and not outrageously expensive, the actual key to significantly reducing daily car usage (instead of mostly having people just make additional journeys using public transport) is by improving actual service quality and not by merely making tickets cheaper.
E.g. locally there was project where after a significant improvement in services (up to three departures per hour instead of only roughly hourly at best, plus direct connections into the city centre instead of having to change partway), 40 % of the passengers on that line were former car users!
That's what I'd call an actual success story, but unfortunately it seems that everybody has succumbed to some sort of "cheap, cheap, cheap" mania, and of course for politics slashing fares is an easier win instead of actually improving the infrastructure and somehow dealing with the evolving staff shortage [1] or the increasing planning bureaucracy [2].
[1] Not just drivers, even though that might be the most immediately visible to the general public – e.g. the local state government still doesn't seem to feel any sort of urgency in finally getting the now vacant chair of the railway department at my former university filled again, even though the former professor has been pensioned off already quite a few years ago and it's not as if we didn't also have a shortage of engineers for planning and construction, too.
[2] Instead of actual improvements, we only got a "Planning Speedup Law" ("Planungsbeschleunigungsgesetz") which in practice has hardly sped up anything at all, and sometimes possibly even made things worse (e.g. by having centralised the handling of planning enquiries at the Federal Railway Agency – but without actually correspondingly increasing staffing levels there). The only bright spot from the point of view of public transport in general and the railways in particular (though on the other hand it doesn't paint that good a picture for Germany as a whole) is that the transition of maintenance and planning of motorways from the states to the new federal "Autobahn GmbH" has been similarly botched up, and apparently the new Autobahn GmbH has quite rapidly managed to make itself rather unpopular, both as an employer for individual engineers, as well as as a contracting entity for the various individual construction and engineering companies that handle most of the actual serious work.
> I don't even spent €9 most months on public transit in Berlin
which means you don't really use the public transite net at all
because a 4-(one direction) trip bundle ticket cost already 10€, and that is AB only, i.e. excluding the outer areas of Berlin
or in other words if you use the public transportation so little and drive so little that it also doesn't cost you much you really are not the audience this ticket is meant to help
> OTOH, it is a nicely hidden subsidy for the train operators. Because for every ticket sold, they get to claim a certain amount from the federal government.
Well, if the government wishes to massively lower existing fares (including refunds for season ticket holders who already bought their tickets), it also needs to pay for it of course. 9 € per month for the whole of Germany is so low a price that additional ticket sales will never make up the loss of the regular fare income during these months, and in the meantime salaries, fuel/electricity and other operating expenses still need to be paid.
That's the part that makes a system like this subjectively unfair.
If my daily commute is a handful of bus stops and that guy's is a train for an hour from another city, then I am basically funding his commute by overpaying for my pass... even if it's cheaper to ride my bus with a pass than to buy a ticket for every ride.
Edit - I read the website as saying that this is going to be the only pass available in Austria. It looks like it's not, which, of course, makes far more sense in comparison.
Very unlikely, it was explicitly meant to only be a transition ticket until the thing which now became the 49€ ticket is ready. In a certain way it was a (expensive) publicity stunt of the local government.
Through for very low income people there is a separate even cheaper ticket, through only Berlin AB.
There is no way they will permanently reduce the price of the VBB Ticket below that of the 49€ ticket AFIK.
Ironically the reason the 49€ ticket is a thing and cost 49€ and not more is because they assume most people don't travel Germany too much and will buy the ticket from their local transportation provider and in turn the "use where vs. bought where" ratio will somewhat average out to a point where with a bit sampling when checking for tickets you can fairly handle the resource allocation (through then it not being a free market but a state subvention-ed one plays a big role, too).
> people who right now use a car won‘t switch to public transport because of that ticket.
Studies circulating in the media showed deviating results in this respect. For an opposing view: The Association of German Transport Companies (Verband Deutscher Verkehrsunternehmen, VDV) published results from one of their surveys in August, claiming that 10% of those that purchased the 9€ ticket did without at least one of their daily car journeys. 43% mentioned the avoidance of car journeys as one of their reasons for purchase.[1] Of course, this is only a sample of what is happening and is based on self-reporting by clients. But for a start, I think it is not so bad.
> For some reason, public transport is always priced in a way that makes it really expensive for occassional usage. If you go everday, then an annual pass is a good value.
At €1.32/l for gas in Vienna and 10l/100km this trip would cost you €63 in gas alone with an ICE car. This doesn't account for wear and wasted time so it's actually not that unreasonable at all and actually pretty cheap if you're going by yourself. With a family, I agree, it's more expensive. Although I'm starting to see the appeal that traveling by train has with a family, being able to walk around, entertain the kids more easily, etc.
> I would be happy to do it again but the cost is easily 5x what it would be to just drive and is far less flexible.
To me this is a huge part of the problem.
I've wanted to take the train many times in the US, but it also is wildly expensive here. Much faster and cheaper to take a plane in most cases.
I'd think the way to solve this is to tax driving a car appropriately, whether through parking or other methods, to encourage and subsidize train travel. If the cost comes down, I'm guessing many more people would do it.
Rail is heavily subsidised in many European countries. But a well-run and affordable rail service is such an essential motor of economic well-being that subsidies are generally accepted as essential by governments and most of the public.
For an example of what what happens when more and more of the cost of a ticket is shouldered by the commuter, look at the UK. We have some of the highest rail fares in the whole of Europe.
Below is research from the TUC (Trades Union Congress) in the UK who campaign against rail privatisation. Whether or not you agree with their stance on privatisation, the cost of a monthly season ticket in the UK is enormous.
Monthly season ticket comparison: UK vs Europe:
UK: Luton to London St. Pancras (35 miles) £387
UK: Liverpool Lime Street to Manchester Piccadilly (32 miles) £292
> However public transport isn't even close to being free. I fact it is quite expensive in addition to being heavily tax supported.
Oh boy is it expensive, in particular to the poor foreigners visiting without the half-price card. And for some reason if you're in the know, you can buy all-day whole country covering travel passes for 50 something chf. Something that the foreigners can never get without insider help.
There's absolutely no way it's ever going to be cheaper, the best one can hope is that the prices don't go up very fast. Still, it's cheaper than having a car somehow.
The ticket exist to relieve citizens due to rising energy costs
What a nice idea to double the price! i suggest to triple it, so they can make even more profits!
Wait, i suggest aligning it to the cost of a similar travel with a car!
Are you american by chance?
https://www.stoag.de/en/dialog/neuigkeiten/detail/9-euro-tic...
> We support the idea of the traffic light coalition to temporarily relieve not only drivers, but also the millions of public transport commuters in their mobility costs. It is a clear signal for local public transport as an efficient, climate-friendly and already inexpensive alternative to the car. The industry is working on a technical and entrepreneurial solution in the interests of passengers. The ticket is to be launched nationwide on June 1st.
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