The nine-euro ticket is not fair, says Christian Lindner. It is a great success, says Transport Minister Wissing. And Germany is waiting for a concept of how things will continue from September. An evaluation of the ticket is surprising.
What is a great achievement? If the women’s national team reaches the final of the European Football Championship, that can probably be called a success. However, if a Bundesliga team in the DFB Cup goes 0-0 against an association league team at half-time, nobody there will claim that not conceding a goal is a “great success”.
And when Minister of Transport Volker Wissing (FDP) calls the nine-euro ticket a “great success”, one can take a critical look at this assessment: there may also be a little self-praise behind it.
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Wissing’s party friend Christian Lindner does not want to continue the supposedly successful nine-euro ticket in this form and has now cited a lack of justice as the reason: the people in the country who have no train station nearby and are dependent on the car would subsidize cheap public transport.
“I don’t think that’s fair,” Lindner said in an interview with the “Augsburger Allgemeine” over the weekend, sparking a discussion. The argument makes sense at first glance. However, some people ask to what extent this is not exactly what happens with the commuter flat rate.
City dwellers who cycle to work fund rural dwellers who drive. Apart from the question of the incentive for sustainable behavior, Lindner would then have to question the commuter allowance.
Lindner had previously said that the nine-euro ticket, like the fuel discount, was a temporary measure and that there were no funds in the federal budget for a continuation. The taxpayer could not permanently finance this “non-cost-covering offer in local public transport”.
From June to August, the federal government will pay around 2.5 billion euros for the nine-euro ticket. The CDU is also strictly against continuing the ticket for this price. The CSU proposes a public transport annual ticket for 365 euros. That is roughly the level that environmental organizations also have in mind and that is known from the city of Vienna, which is considered by many to be a pioneer in public transport. That should entail additional costs of around four billion euros per year, which someone will have to pay.
Transport Minister Wissing has announced a follow-up offer for the end of 2022 or beginning of 2023. He would like to wait and see how the ticket balance sheet turns out – not all the data is available yet.
The federal states have now said that they would provide money for a follow-up offer if the federal government submits a concept. Experts expect intensive discussions about how the costs are to be distributed. There had already been a dispute about this when the nine-euro ticket was introduced.
The Greens have proposed a two-part concept: It envisages a regional ticket for 29 euros per month and a nationwide ticket for 49 euros per month. To finance the company car privilege is to be curtailed.
In other words, companies would then no longer be able to deduct the costs for company cars from their taxes as they do today. But anyone who talks about the future should first assess what the cheap public transport service has actually achieved in the past three months.
In fact, it is difficult to judge whether the nine-euro ticket is “a great success”. A few figures speak for it, at least at first glance: 98 percent of Germans know the nine-euro ticket and it is a bestseller: a good 20 million tickets were sold in June and July.
In June, a good 40 percent more passengers were on the road than in the first quarter of 2022. However, there are likely to be several reasons for this, not least the better weather for weekend trips and, above all, the relaxation of the corona measures. In addition, there were long weekends with Pentecost and Corpus Christi, and the summer holidays started in many federal states in mid-June.
The Technical University of Munich wanted to know exactly and surveyed 1,000 users of the ticket in the greater Munich area. There was a “slight decline” in road traffic of three percent. The Berlin University of Applied Sciences (HTW) also only determined a displacement effect of two to three percent.
According to the Association of German Transport Companies, a good quarter of the journeys since June would not have taken place without the nine-euro ticket. As a reminder: the main purpose of the ticket was to reduce car journeys in order to reduce oil consumption. Added to this is the contribution to sustainability. In a survey, the University of Kassel found that many buy the nine-euro ticket as a political statement.
Is that a “big hit”? A radical change in daily behavior was not to be expected, said Klaus Bogenberger from the Technical University of Munich when the results were presented in July. He drew a positive interim conclusion. “The important result is that many have integrated public transport into their everyday lives.”
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There is no question that millions of people have become accustomed to the idea of using public transport. It is doubtful whether their experience was all that positive and gave reason for permanent use: the enormous and short-term mass influx has brought the railway to the brink of stress.
In any case, the group has to massively modernize its infrastructure. The many construction sites plus the increasing time for transfers lead to a rapid increase in delays. Many lanes were also full. The railway was only able to organize additional trains and personnel to a limited extent given the short lead time.
In order to evaluate the nine-euro ticket, two aspects are needed: Is the idea behind it right and how high should the price be? There seems to be a general consensus that 9 euros is too low, but rather 30 to 70 euros per month should be due. Practically all sides rate the idea of a simple, uniform and cross-association and cross-state ticket as good.
The problem is that it hardly helps those in everyday life who are crucial for achieving the essential goals of the ticket: people who drive a lot – and who would switch to public transport if there was a corresponding offer.
This requires a sufficiently attractive offer that can compete with the car in terms of money and time investment: in other words, reliable, well-timed local transport. Fewer waiting times at the platform, punctuality, more space for bicycles or scooters, space for a laptop – the list goes on.
It’s not impossible, as a look abroad shows. For many it is more important that the offer improves as quickly as possible – and not the question of whether a monthly ticket costs 29, 39 or 49 euros.
The article “Lindner railed against the nine-euro ticket, but chose the wrong argument” comes from WirtschaftsKurier.
