Popular But Expensive – German €9 Ticket
The idea behind Germany’s €9 public transport ticket was to combat inflation and climate change, reports NOS.nl. The offer ran for 3 months until 31st August 2022.
Around 52 million tickets were sold, in a country of 83 million people. They were available to locals and tourists alike.
€9 bought the right to travel anywhere in the country on public transport for a month, with only express trains between major cities excluded.
The German transport association VDV said that the offer led to a billion extra trips per month.
Large numbers of passengers did cause problems, especially during the Whitsuntide holiday. One train was so full that when the doors opened people fell out.
Some rural areas benefited less from the scheme because the public transport service there is not as good. The €9 tickets were half as popular in the countryside compared with towns and cities.
The tickets were used a lot for tourism, including trips to the coast and to the Alps. They were also bought by a wide cross-section of people by age, education, employment and gender.
The main reasons people gave for buying the tickets were low price and simplicity.
Only one in ten people said they used the €9 ticket for public transport trips instead of the car. Still, VDV estimates that the scheme saved 1.8 million tonnes of CO2.
Cost to the Government
The cost to the government of the subsidies was around €2.5 billion.
In future a new scheme might offer monthly tickets at €69, or yearly tickets for €365.
Other Countries
NOS says that in Luxembourg the train has been free since 2020, and in Spain short and medium trips by train will be free until the end of the year. In Malta, public transport will be free from 1st October 2022.
The Netherlands is investigating the extent to which such schemes grow the number of public transport users, as opposed to simply incentivising those who already use public transport to use it more.
Making public transport free in the Netherlands would cost around €4 billion per year, excluding the cost of any extra trains, trams and buses that would be needed.
In England the government has announced a £2 bus fare cap for single journeys, which will apply from January to March 2023 and cost around £60 million.