Berlin reporting: this is huge for anyone taking public transport.
Monthly ticket for the AB area alone was way above 80/€/month for the city only.
This is 49 for everything anywhere in Germany except for high speed long distance trains, flixbuses and flixtrains (the latter are private entities)
The student discounts you get isn't really worth it. The semester ticket for public transport though costs about 1€ a day. That is incredibly cheap compared to the regular tickets.
Other universities have the same problem though. In NRW you can practically travel through the entire state with a semester ticket at roughly the same price.
I am currently paying 70€ for a ticket for my city alone. Even at 49€ it's still essentially free given German standard of living. Combined with the unprecedented range it offers this will still make a huge impact on public transport in Germany for decades to come. Even a 10% increase in usage of public transport would make a huge difference in the long term. You must also consider that currently many local transport organizations force companies into a take it or leave it situation when it comes to offering tickets for their employees, students of universities and schools. All this becomes revolutionized by this, because it's out of their hands now. The price is almost secondary in that regard, because now the choice to use public transport instead of a car becomes significantly easier. There are still lot's of problems to be solved but this is a significant step forward.
edit just a personal anecdote to add to that. When I studied, my girlfriend moved two states over in Germany. At that time my university ticket only covered the state I lived in. Making visiting her cost me at least 84€ in total, while traveling for 8 hours per trip. I remember several times where I had to borrow money from friends and parents to meet her at all. With that ticket, I wouldn't have had to. And I am very happy for all the younger people after me that will not have to suffer through that bullshit because our politicians actually did something good for once.
That's absolutely false. I don't even spent €9 most months on public transit in Berlin, but at €9, I'd get it and probably use public transit more often (which is the point). There's no way I'd buy a €49 ticket. I primarily bike and drive, though I drive so little that I only have to fill up my tank every 2-3 months.
Public transport in Germany is losing money anyway. Even before the 49 Euro-Ticket, when people were paying multiple times that amount, public transport was usually receiving subsidies.
In Germany are about 1/3 people in prison because they used a train or bus without ticket. If you can't pay you will end up in prison. Imagine how much money this does cost.
To be fair, it's impossible to get anything close to resembling the NRW Ticket (flat fee for unlimited use of regional public transit in all of North-Rhine Westphalia) as a non-student.
The closest equivalents are either offered by the local public transit unions (which are limited to the region covered by that public transit union, of which there are a ton in NRW) or the BahnCard 100 (which covers all of Germany -- but not necessarily all local public transit -- and is ridiculously expensive).
With "usually" being an important proviso: In Germany, there are weekend tickets for up to 5 people. A student ticket (covering the entire state, included in the tuition fee of around 700 EUR/year) often allows the holder to take someone along after 7pm or on weekends.
Actually we have a Germany-wide ticket for public transport since last year. With 49€/month it is very affordable and entitles us to use public transport and regional trains as much as we want. The federal government funds the system with a few billions but it’s a great success so far.
Under $200? That’s pretty incredible. You have to pay three quarters of that to get from Munich to Berlin. That’s with a high speed train, but still — under $200, wow.
There needs to be a discussion. Public transport is horrendously expensive in some German cities. For example, it costs me 8.90 euros to take the U-Bahn into Munich and back. It's far cheaper to drive, particularly if you have a passenger.
What absolutely uninformed BS.Germanys public transit is organized in many small organizations making it basically impossible to understand what ticket you need to get from point A to point B in many cases. Due to this, a single ticket for Germany simply did not exist.For 50 Euros, this ticket only allows usage of slow public transport like buses and local trains. This is hardly cheap, yet due to it simplicity it makes it viable for a lot of people when the current tickets weren't before.
Deutschland-Ticket covers fares on all public transportation options in Germany, regardless of the city, plus on slower longer-distance trains (RB, RE, etc).
I live in Berlin, and the rest of the costs mentioned in the article seem somewhat accurate.
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