Germany’s uber-popular €9 nationwide transit ticket expires in a little over a week, with wide agreement that some sort of continued low fare is a good idea but no agreement on what it should be. And meantime, transit operators are planning price increases.
With prices of fuel and electricity, major expenses for transit, high and rising, transit operators have already announced increases of around 4-5% in Stuttgart, Nurnberg and Frankfurt, and more are meeting to assess their fall fares.
The cost of the three months of €9-a-month transit was largely carried by the federal government as both an inflation-relief measure and a way to lure more people off the road and onto public transit to lower traffic and pollution. Any further broad-scale reduction would also need federal support. Federal officials say they will consider proposals in October after assessing the summer experience.
Hamburg’s transit operator pushes for more monthly subscriptions by offering a €9-a-month rate for a year to one lucky subscriber in every 999.
Proposals have been offered for permanent reduced fares at various levels including €29 covering one region, €49 for national coverage. The Association of German Transport Companies has already proposed a permanent €69 monthly ticket that would apply to public transport nationwide. They estimates that this would cost the federal government around €2 billion a year.
But one transit official pointed to another issue. Knut Ringat, manager of the Rhein Main transit systems said “With the €9 ticket, we have regained the pre-Covid demand as quickly as probably no one expected. But the €9 ticket has also shown that more tracks and additional vehicles are needed so that more people can use public transport.”
With the price of gas increasing for German vehicles and the drop in the value of a Euro, a price increase of the transit tickets may still be a bargain.