For three months, Germans could use public transport buses and trains throughout Germany for nine euros. But the special campaign, which was intended to relieve citizens because of increased energy prices, ended on September 1st.
It can already be said that the project was a success. According to the Association of German Transport Companies (VDV), around 52 million nine-euro tickets were sold nationwide over the entire period.
“In addition, there are more than ten million subscribers who have automatically received the discounted ticket monthly over the campaign period,” it said. According to the VDV, one in five buyers has never used public transport before.
The federal government agreed on the successor to the nine-euro ticket
27 percent were so-called “activated customers” who previously used buses and trains less than once a month. In addition, around 1.8 million tons of CO2 could be saved by using the ticket, as the VDV further reports.
Nevertheless, there will be no more nine-euro tickets in the near future. However, the federal government agreed on a more expensive successor as part of the relief package. The new ticket will cost between 49 and 69 euros per month and will be valid from 2023.
Elsewhere, the traffic turnaround is more advanced, as a look at Austria or Luxembourg shows. And Portugal and Spain have also started pilot projects to make public transport more attractive.
Public transport in Luxembourg is free
Luxembourg is the first country in the world where you can board buses and trains for free. Since March 2020, citizens no longer need to buy tickets there and there are no longer any controls.
This also applies to tourists and around 220,000 cross-border commuters who arrive from Germany, Belgium or France. The Benelux state gives 607 euros per capita for them rail infrastructure and is therefore the front runner in Europe.
The offensive aims to get as many people as possible to leave their cars at home. Because especially in the capital, numerous traffic jams formed in the past.
Luxembourg is noisy “Eurostat” the highest car density in the EU: there are 68 cars for every 100 inhabitants. In Germany, on the other hand, there are 57. With the free tickets, car dominance is apparently declining, even if there is still a lot to do.
The overall concept has to be right
“The free local public transport is only a very small part of an overall strategy for a different mobility concept that we have been pursuing in Luxembourg for years now,” said Luxembourg Minister of Transport François Bausch in conversation with “ntv”.
Train stations and car parks are to be further expanded so that commuters can park their cars at least for the last few kilometers to the office and switch to trains. With 630,000 inhabitants, Luxembourg can be compared to a large German city, but the mobility turnaround provides important insights that could also be relevant for Germany.
However, there is one drawback: after the free tickets were introduced in Luxembourg, the country went into lockdown. “Only now are we slowly getting back to the figures for 2019,” said Marc Wengler, Director General of the Luxembourg National Railway Company “Time”.
It is currently difficult to assess how successful the concept actually is. Transport Minister Bausch also said: “If you make poorly organized public transport available for free, more people will not switch to public transport. It only makes sense if it is embedded in an overall concept.”
He advises Germany to use subscription models that are affordable for everyone and can still be financed by the government.
Austria: Travel by train all year round for 1,095 euros
Such a model already exists in Austria. With the “climate ticket” people there have been able to use buses, trains and trams for 1,095 euros per year since October 2021. In Germany, the Bahncard 100 currently offers similar services – but it costs 4,144 euros a year.
The “climate ticket” is so well received in Austria that at Easter even passengers had to be expelled from the trains because of overcrowding. “There has always been congestion when commuter traffic and weekend trippers want to travel at the same time,” explained Jakob Lambert, co-initiator of the climate ticket, in an interview “geo”.
“But only a few trains were really affected.” At the end of May, the Austrian Ministry of the Environment announced that 160,000 tickets had already been sold, while only 120,000 had been expected. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems.
In rural areas, the ticket is still not used enough because the bus and train services here have not yet been sufficiently expanded.
The Austrian government wants to change that and invest more money in improving transport links. Last year, 271 euros per capita were spent on rail infrastructure. This puts Austria in fourth place in Europe.
Spain makes buses and trains free
Germany, on the other hand, ranks ninth: Last year, the government spent just 124 euros per capita on rail transport. However, this could change with the introduction of a new ticket.
In the last three months, i.e. the time when the nine-euro ticket was valid, the trains in Germany were also overcrowded. Similar to Austria, many rural regions in this country are not well enough connected to local public transport.
In Spain, like in Germany, people are still in the experimental phase to make local public transport more attractive: There, citizens can temporarily travel by train free of charge from September to December.
In Portugal, on the other hand, the subscription tariffs for local public transport and train prices will be frozen next year. This means that the prices can no longer be increased.