A follow-up to Germany’s immensely popular €9 (£7.90) monthly public transport ticket scheme has been given the green light in the Bundestag, in a move aimed at getting passengers to switch to greener forms of transport.
Parliamentarians on Thursday voted to approve plans to introduce a €49-a-month ticket covering regional rail, metro, trams and bus travel across Germany.
The vote in parliament cleared the way for the national government to cover half of the scheme’s annual cost of €3bn for the next three years, with the other half paid for by Germany’s 16 federal states.
If, as expected, the €49 ticket is given the seal of approval by the German parliament’s upper house, the Bundesrat, on 31 March, the scheme will come into effect on 1 May.
The transport minister, Volker Wissing, hailed the new ticket scheme as a “role model for the whole of Europe” that would boost public transport use. Wissing, of the liberal Free Democratic party (FDP), has been under fire over the transport sector’s failure to meet carbon reduction targets.
The original €9-a-month ticket scheme was put in place from June to the end of August last year to incentivise travellers to switch to greener forms of transport and give financial relief to consumers facing a cost of living crisis. With about half of Germany’s adult population having taking part in the scheme that the government subsidised with €2.5bn, the ticket was as popular as it was inexpensive.
Whether it had a significant positive impact on the environment has been questioned: most Germans used the €9 ticket to travel around the country for leisure, while there has been little statistical evidence showing that those who commute by car changed their transport routines in any meaningful way.
The new ticket – being called “Germany ticket” by the government – is hence designed to be most attractive to people who commute in and out of larger cities, where old subscription-based discount schemes are mostly more expensive than €49 a month.
The ticket, available in digital form via a smartphone app or as a chip card, will work on a subscription model that can be cancelled before the 10th day of each month, meaning it may still pay off as a one-off investment for some holidays or weekend trips.
Long-distance coaches and trains such as those on the high-speed ICE network are not included in the scheme.
Due to Germany’s decentralised political system, tickets bought in different cities or regions will come with different rules and add-ons. In the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, people travelling on a €49 ticket can also take a bicycle and a dog no bigger than a cat on the train with them for free.
In and around the southern city of Stuttgart, travellers can transfer their ticket subscription to friends, relatives or colleagues if they pay an additional €9.90. States such as Bavaria are offering discounts for students, trainees and those doing voluntary service, who will only have to pay €29 a month.
