When it comes to climate protection, Austria is fully committed to switching from cars to public transport. The new climate ticket has been available since October 26th – Austria’s national holiday: As with the GA, holders can use all local, regional and national public transport lines with one ticket – regardless of whether they are buses, trams or trains.
But the price is record-breaking. A year of public transport throughout Austria costs 1095 euros, the equivalent of 1160 francs – that is, three euros per day. For comparison: the Swiss GA travelcard still costs 3860 francs, the comparable Bahncard 100 in Germany costs 4027 euros (4264 francs). For a surcharge of 110 euros, four children aged six to 15 can travel on one ticket; younger travel for free. Those who decided early could buy the climate ticket from October 1st for a reduced price of 949 euros.
Vienna as a pilot project
This is the end of an almost ten-year discussion in Austria: such a ticket for the greater Vienna area has been available since 2012. Its success has been overwhelming; By 2019, 800,000 such subscriptions had been sold. At the same time, Vienna banned car traffic from large parts of the city center, massively increased parking fees and thus gave the urban space back to pedestrians. The Austrian Greens in particular have been calling for the tariff model to be extended to the whole of the country since 2013, with the price tripling. And now they have prevailed in the governing coalition with the conservative ÖVP. It was only shortly before the start, however, that the Green Environment Minister Leonore Gewessler managed to get the last three (Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland) of the nine federal states on board.
Bloss: How is this climate ticket at a dumping price financed? By subsidizing the public transport operators with an annual amount of 240 million euros. The government is hoping that the price incentive will bring many people switching who will use public transport to commute to work instead of the car. The Lower Austrian Workers’ Association calculates that commuting with the climate ticket will be up to 61 percent cheaper. At the same time, the government of Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg (ÖVP) hopes to achieve the EU’s climate targets by reducing car traffic. A nationally standardized cycle timetable from 2025 should also contribute to this.
Will the car become a public transport country?
Because Austria is considered a car country and had 2.65 tons of CO2 the second highest per capita emissions in the EU in 2019 – only Luxembourgers emitted more. The CO2– Road traffic emissions rose by 23.6 percent between 1990 and 2019, three times more than the EU average. Experts see the reason above all in the low diesel taxation and thus the high proportion of diesel engines in the vehicle mix – which is now falling significantly.
The climate ticket now seems to be a success: on October 28th, 100,000 tickets had already been sold.