I think it's great, but honestly, placing it at 15€ would have made only a little difference to the consumer, who is already getting a lot for the value, and helped the railway operators a good deal. As a compromise the age of kids who can travel together with their parents for free could have been raised from 6 to 8 years.
This is a matter of perspective. The ticket is not aimed solely at people with median income of a tech worker (or the typical HN crowd), but help out the general populace as a whole. Including those who can not even afford a car.
Now I think when the times comes (3 month from now) for the program to run out, we might see discussions about continuing it at a price that makes it a more sustainable, permanent offer. But that's my opinion speaking (I wouldn't even mind if it was mandatory like back when I was attending university, as long as it is affordable for people with low to lowest incomes).
Seems pretty unlikely that they'll be able to after a 3 month period of operating at a loss (for the government) and likely having more issues due to increased usage.
It is a political decision, whether the government wants to pay the costs out of the federal budget. If the government is serious about CO2 reduction and also shifting commute traffic from cars to public transport, this might be an surprisingly cheap option. As the high energy costs also mean increased tax revenue, it might not even be a large load for the budget (and compared to many other things, spending like €10B/year on public transport isn't really much anyway).
My crystal ball is broken. I think there is a good chance that what you say will happen. But collecting the data in this nation-wide experiment is already quite useful when deciding on future policy. Until now it was always "we believe" or "this doesn't fit our agenda" or "this is socialism". Plus, if it is sufficiently popular and if the obstacles can be identified and overcome, then why not? If the new administration wants to reconnect with the people then employing some positive populism is quite nice.
//edit: As I said, I didn't mind paying for the mandatory students ticket (most universities have that), even when I eventually stopped using. I'm in the "make public transportation free" camp, and think this is a good step in that direction; even if we end up with "affordable for all" instead of "free". But as I said, that's opinion, not knowledge.
They still have to check tickets in trains because this only applies to one class of train, and they already are paying people to check tickets and can't/shouldn't fire them all for three months only to bring them all back
What trains would that be? Street cars and busses are the only ones I can think of that don't have first class. Everything from the S-Bahn and "up" has a first class car or section.
In berlin neither the Sbahn nor the Ubahn has first class. The express trains (RE7, RB14, FEX) to the airport don't either as far as I remember and I don't see one when I check[0]. Similar for many other cities I believe, so I'd wager most travelers the 9e ticket is covering will be on vehicles that don't have first class anyway.
Officially, it is not free in order to gauge demand.
Personally, I think there is an ideological and pedagogical element. They don't want people to get used to the idea that something like free transportation is possible.
I heard an interesting talk a couple of years ago about university tuition fees. Germany has fairly low fees compared to other countries. At some universities it is more like a token fee, a couple hundred € per year. Many students get living expenses paid from the state anyway (BAFÖG). It is silly to then pay back some of that immediately. But the thesis of the talk was that the tuition fees were introduced for educational reasons, not to cover the actual cost of teaching. Students were supposed think of themselves as customers, and of education as a good. And they could back this with quotes from neoliberal think tanks. As the FDP (free market 'liberals') is in the coalition, I'm sure one precondition was that the ticket couldn't be free.
A free Android app attracts the worst kind of people and insults hurled at you on support channels. A $0.99 price is enough to make most support emails friendly instead.
0 EUR 2nd class (presumably fairly crowded) and ~market priced 1st (and potentially a car or two of 2nd at normal 2nd fares) might be an interesting experiment.
The infrastructure for selling tickets is already in place, the marginal cost of selling one extra ticket type is essentially zero,
don't have to check tickets in trains and reduce costs
Assuming you have to have at least one person working on the train anyway, for safety reasons if nothing else, having them also check tickets doesn't cost extra.
> Assuming you have to have at least one person working on the train anyway, for safety reasons if nothing else, having them also check tickets doesn't cost extra.
The trains are made of multiple cars without connecting doors, and the driver sits inside a locked cockpit. Tickets are currently checked by personnel that randomly patrol the trains, which are the only staff that passengers see.
It's actually rare to have your ticket checked, but the fine is ~10x the price of the ticket, so it's still worth buying one.
> Assuming you have to have at least one person working on the train anyway, for safety reasons if nothing else, having them also check tickets doesn't cost extra.
That’s actually wrong, regional trains (where this ticket applies) usually have only the Lokführer driving the train, but no additional staff. Checking tickets is done purely by patrols checking trains randomly.
It's also an experiment. They need to know how people react and change their behavior with this cheap ticket. And they still need to check tickets anyway. And the price also serves as a kind of barrier to animate people to at least thing a moment, whether they really need the ticket and can "waste" the monety for it.
Ticket checks are incredibly rare in most cities already, Germans tend to buy tickets because it's illegal not to, not because it's more economical given the fine you pay without one.
And selling tickets will be an extremely minor overhead, probably <5% including re-programming machines.
Germany has about 1000 railway locomotives operating 40k runs a day. A conductor job pays on average 50k€/yr. Most trains I've seen have more than one conductor, and you need to plan for weekends, shifts, time off, etc. but the lower bound should be easy to agree on 50M€/yr or 12.5M€ for the duration of the program? Then there is the entire infra to sell tickets online, in machines and in person.
At the same time there are about 2 million rail customers a day, so the 9€ ticket will bring 18M€. I'd say they probably break even.
Math is fun, but the entire point is a bit moot. Germany is a civilised country and if you laid off the entire staff for three summer months with no pay, the union would eat you for breakfast.
Most trains still need conductors even if they're not checking tickets. Having them check tickets when they're already there won't cost anything extra.
>Most trains I've seen have more than one conductor
At least in Berlin which this covers most trains/buses/trams have 0 people checking and there's a few people going on random ones to occasionally check so the ratio here is probably 1 worker to 50+ vehicles.
I'd also be curious for actual numbers, but certainly on the commuter GO Train in Ontario, it's basically a 3-4 person staffing arrangement, with one person at the back, one in the middle in the accessible coach, and 1-2 in the locomotive. Adding someone whose job it is to roam up and down the train checking tickets adds 25% to the personnel cost, which is why most fares aren't checked.
But quite apart from the person and their ticket-scanner, there's also the whole infrastructure associated with fare taking— fare-free advocates argue that if you get rid of the machines and websites and apps, and all the associated upkeep, it ends up being a wash. Of course this only counts if you're getting rid of all fares rather than doing a one-off summer special.
You don’t actually check any tickets, you just pretend that tickets will be checked at random, regularly. Put up signs to with heavy fines & travel bans for breaking the rules, run some fake newspaper stories of heavy enforcement etc. Make it socially embarrassing not to pay etc etc
This ticket only applies to regional trains. Regional trains usually have a staff of 1 (sitting in the locomotive, driving the train). Tickets are checked by random patrols, which don’t actually cost that much (in each given train at a given time you’ll have a chance of encountering them every few weeks at most).
Often, not even that much, as the check is just one of many jobs the personal has to execute. The other jobs won't disappear just because they might not check now.
> We support the idea of the traffic light coalition to temporarily relieve not only drivers, but also the millions of public transport commuters in their mobility costs. It is a clear signal for local public transport as an efficient, climate-friendly and already inexpensive alternative to the car. The industry is working on a technical and entrepreneurial solution in the interests of passengers. The ticket is to be launched nationwide on June 1st.
> Wait, i suggest aligning it to the cost of a similar travel with a car!
I would wish they actually align their normal prices with a car.
It's absurd that it's cheaper for two people to travel from Karlsruhe to Frankfurt by car, than to take an ICE train. And that applies to almost any train connection inside a Germany.
Same in the UK although unfortunately, the per-person cost is roughly linear on the railway and not in a car that will only need slightly more fuel per extra person.
I guess the only way round this is that the per-person cost should be so much cheaper on the train that a car only makes sense with, say, 4 passengers.
The thing is, most people already own the car so they don't consider tax/servicing as part of the cost of travel whereas on a train, this is all added to the ticket and the servicing is pretty extreme on the railways.
The secret is to order your ticket ahead of the travel and not to go for flex tickets, that way it's possible to get a massive discount and even travel first class ICE very affordably.
For example, Nürnberg - Berlin can cost up to 127€ for second class ticket, if you buy the ticket the same day you need it.
Buy the ticket, for the same connection, 2 weeks in advance, and suddenly its only 39,90€ for second class and 53,90€ for first class.
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€.
Why? Presumably they took into account their own financial situation when setting this price. Why would you want an organization to try and claw a few _more_ euros out of people when they've already agreed on 9€? I guess I just don't understand where you're coming from in terms of the purpose of this suggestion.
Maybe this time it's because of rising energy cost, but I remember there was very same deal for short time, little more than 10 years ago when I was visiting there. If one feels adventurous, I can highly recommend buying this ticket.
I'm an American who has lived in Germany, and it didn't seem like a personal attack to me. It's a reasonable thing to wonder when someone espouses a profits-first view in response to a social program.
Don't ask me how exactly they assign the tax money to the train companies, but probably they get a fixed amount per ticket sold, which would be another reason why it is important to "sell" those tickets.
