> Farebox recovery ratios in Germany before Covid were around 75 %, so abolishing all fares would mean quadrupling the budget for operating subsidies
You aren't taking into account the money saved from eliminating all the infrastructure needed for collecting and enforcing the fares like OP mentioned..
Unless farebox recovery ratio already subtracts the money spent to collect fares? That's not my understanding though.
It's still pretty hard to defend them though; for some reason the bureaucracy is incapable of adding the new ticket in time to address this winter's energy crisis.
Of course, but if operating a train costs you $10 per seat and you start charging $5 it will never break even..
And the article says:
"€49 a month ‘Deutschlandticket’ has led to a 25 per cent rise in passengers on national railway company Deutsche Bahn's regional services"
and a daily (regional) ticket costs about €20-50 depending on area.
I mean obviously it might very well be worth doing this for other reasons but somebody will have to subsidize the lost revenue for various transport companies.
Not quite. Many people (eg commuters) have monthly train passes, almost all students have a "Semesterticket" (university enrolment is about 350 EUR every half year, but that includes all public transport in the region).
Now, the 9-Euro-Ticket is cheaper than those options, so out of fairness the holders of all those tickets are getting a refund of 3 months worth of their pass minus 3x9=27 EUR, which is a huge administrative burden for the public transport providers and universities. That substantial burden would not have been reduced by having the ticket for free.
As an example, the 1-month-ticket for Stuttgart for two zones is 92,20€ [0].
For those affected by inflation, the reduction from 90 to 15€ would already be noticeable, the additional 6€ would be neglectible to the consumer in comparison to the already offered discount (not to mention that these new tickets can be used in the entire country).
And those who will now leave their car in the garage will probably be saving even more. At least in my case it was always cheaper to use public transport to go to the city, at least if I also considered the parking cost. This for a 1-day ticket, which already costs a bit over 6€.
> Trying to understand how much more affordable this has become.
In Berlin I used to pay between 91€ and 114€ per month, depending on which how much of the metropolitan area I wanted the ticket to cover. Now I'll be paying a flat 49€ per month.
In Munich prices for monthly tickets currently range between 63€ and a whopping 243€. There, too, you will soon only need to pay 49€ per month, no matter how far you travel.
The semi-subsidized Deutschlandticket, valid on all transit that isn't a high-speed or mid-speed long distance train, is 49 EUR/mo, which I assume is less than it costs to keep someone for a day in minimum security jail.
It's a nice subsidy for those of us who were already or were considering paying 60-100/mo for commuter tickets in our regions, but is still too much for a lot of the people who couldn't afford that, much less car ownership, in the first place.
That money is going to be used to offset the loss of income due to all the people not paying their fare. They can't cover operating costs, how will they do this?
In Germany they recently did some experiments – while it has to be said that the comparison was only with a fare reduction and not a full-scale abolishment of fares, they found that service increases were more likely to attract additional users than fare reductions.
So unless service levels are already maxed out and really cannot be increased further without disproportionally large investment, I'd personally rather prefer that that money was spent on funding more frequent services instead.
My hope is that the political cost of cutting the Deutschlandticket (as in, let it go back to the previous situation) would be too high, so governments will find a way of making it fit in the budget and only bump the price a little.
As context, for people not in Germany: each transportation region sets their own prices, but the new (nationally subsided) €49 ticket is already cheaper than monthlies in most places. This is good and convenient for people living in downtown, but it is a godsend for people living in suburbs, because their distance-based monthlies were sometimes two or three times that. For people living in the edge of a region and commuting to another, it was even worse, as they needed tickets from both regions.
I believe the equivalent "legacy" ticket on Deutsche Bahn (all regional transport free) was something like €212/month. €49 is one hell of a deal.
As you can see, subsidies represent 54 percent of the STIB's revenue: Subsidies of almost 400M EUR. The figure you want is "traffic revenue": 225M EUR.
So now, the calculation is: Is ticketing and enforcement worth 225M EUR / year in Brussels? The answer on paper is yes, because we're not taking into account the costs I outlined above. Breaking them down by line item is impossible because the figures are not public, but going by related figures, it's not looking good for proponents of ticketing.
Let's just go with sibling comment's ticket gate price: 250MM EUR. They are replaced every 8 years roughly. So, 31MM / year. Now down to under half of the subsidies.
Externalities: Ticket littering + cleanup costs, inefficient purchases by customers (bought the wrong tickets/too many)
Time costs: Validation time, gate bottlenecking (especially at peak time), reduced opportunities for those who can't afford tickets...
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Okay, so let's say you do all those calculations, and you end up finding out they're all zero (they won't be, but w/e), and actually you're still making decent tax revenue from public transit (0.2bn eur). What is the lesson here?
The lesson, is that all these are insignificant compared to the investment that same city wants to make into public transport: 5.2 bn EUR. (ref. https://www.stib-mivb.be/article.html?l=en&_guid=0035aa30-f3...). Or compared to the costs of road maintenance (50-100bn EUR / year in BE). Or, or ...
Make no mistake, removing costs would increase ridership which would increase costs. But it would also increase national productivity output which increases tax revenue. This is not a simple calculation to run, and my girlfriend is using my parallel universe simulator right now so I can't check. Public transit should be free (AS IN PAID BY TAXES), because it's the right thing to do, when the roads are financed the same way.
I‘m German. The truth is, people who right now use a car won‘t switch to public transport because of that ticket. There’s already studies about that for the 9€ ticket we previously had. So it probably won’t make a difference in co2 outcome. Also, those who benefit from that ticket, they usually still complain as they like to have back the 9€ ticket. So 49€ is still too expensive for them. Also, you need to keep in mind who is actually paying for that. This is the middle class. If you are part of the middle class in Germany chances are high that you pay more than 70% taxes & charges overall (payroll/income, trade tax, 19 % vat, electricity tax, health insurance, pension fund where it’s likely you’ll never see the money again… and so much more, I don’t even start writing about the Handelskammer).
So those who work have to pay a lot to keep the system running. And those who don’t, they get - compared to other countries - much help, but they still complain. There’s something in a human that makes him unhappy which money alone can’t fix.
I’m not against the 49 € ticket. I like the idea. The current government is even with all it flaws still much better than the previous one. But all those who just see the bright side of the ticket should think about the downsides, too.
You aren't taking into account the money saved from eliminating all the infrastructure needed for collecting and enforcing the fares like OP mentioned..
Unless farebox recovery ratio already subtracts the money spent to collect fares? That's not my understanding though.
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