On the con side:
- When people get something for free, they often don't value it as much and treat it worse. E.g. more pollution.
- public transportation being free also means that it will be used even in cases where it is both economically and ecologically a suboptimal solution. This is a problem because more usage means higher costs. E.g. someone now might take a bus instead of cycling.
- Less competition. This point is tricky, but essentially, other solutions such as private long-distance busses (which have a comparibly good ecological footprint) might go out of business. In general, market might develop suboptimal.
There are a lot of good points too, which makes it a difficult decision. But since you asked, those can be named as reasons I suppose.
That’s really reaching. Presumably people would do the thing that bear fits their circumstances after weighing the costs and benefits.
This is definitely the case in North America, but still likely the case in Germany despite Germany having a much more robust transit system.
The €9 ticket got you around without playing stupid games. The same freedom is either unavailable otherwise, or comes at absolutely unjustifiable prices.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/should-public-transit-be-fr...
Electric bikes make public transit much better.
An important thing to understand, is that public transit cannot be faster or as fast as cars. People need to change home.
That's why sobriety is important to talk about. You can't fight climate change without some sacrifices. It often seems like most consumers can't accept it, but it's a reality.
In cities of significant density metro very much is faster. Even some trams are faster in rush hours.
It also only benefits city-dwellers (see political impact of this by looking at, for instance, the yellow vest protests in France).
Of course, this assumes that public transportation is only available in cities, but that's not true at all. Many European countries have extremely effective rural public transportation.
Many people have bought tickets and made trips that they would never have made at normal prices.
The article quotes someone who travels from Bavaria to Rostock simply because it is cheap. Not because he has to. Here, CO2 is deliberately wasted out of boredom or pleasure, and then people pat themselves on the back for being so environmentally friendly.
Does anyone still remember the punks on Sylt?
https://www.24hamburg.de/schleswig-holstein/sylt-sommer-pfin...
[1] https://www.vdv.de/bilanz-9-euro-ticket.aspx
[2] https://www.vdv.de/presse.aspx?id=df893fc7-1759-497b-9488-ce...
From my experience, because most trains are at higher capacity due to the ticket, the marginal emission per person per train is greatly decreased too.
There is also a net benefit to the economies of small towns that depend on these tourists, so id say this is an overall economic as well as environmental benefiy
In fact, if they were alternatively sitting at home running air conditioning the overall CO2 output would probably have reduced by them sitting in the train for those hours instead.
"End of German 9-euro public transport ticket to be followed by even higher fares" - https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/end-german-9-euro-publi...
> Feld said it was clear more people were using public transport “but it was almost exclusively additional demand — there was no shift in traffic from road to rail”.
> “So environmental goals were not achieved,” he said.
The data behind the 1.8MTCO2 figure comes from a survey that explicitly asked about how people changed habits [1] and the CO2 figure is "Based on the journeys shifted from cars to buses and trains" [2] not total usage.
[1] https://www.vdv.de/bilanz-9-euro-ticket.aspx
[2] https://www.vdv.de/presse.aspx?id=df893fc7-1759-497b-9488-ce...
From what I've seen, this additional demand is a net positive for the economy and environment.
Most trains in general are already scheduled. There is close to zero marginal cost for an additional person to take the train.
There are additional emissions when more schedules are added, and this has almost certainly been the case in some of the more popular routes.
If someone is to travel, you will almost always want them to take a train. In addition, emissions from a single flight a person takes basically is more than emissions on multiple train rides on additional trains.
It's possibly also overall driven up domestic tourism, which is a positive for the economy and towns that depend on it.
The best way to see this would be that this 9 euro ticket has chipped away at the margins - primarily on the factors that people use to decide what mode of travel to use.
I've written a longer reply above based on my experience. It's not just the cost, though this is the primary factor.
I think the 9 euro ticket was absolutely what was needed when it was introduced.
I would not support continuation at that price - it's not sustainable as the train network itself can't handle the demand.
Maybe the demand will taper off if people realise it's permanent but also, I guess funding the rail network at 9 euro nationwide may be a bit optimistic
Economy yes. But how is it a positive for the environment? > Most trains in general are already scheduled. There is close to zero marginal cost for an additional person to take the train.
That's a good point but that's true for flights too.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/germany-9-euro-ticket-end...
It's still pretty hard to defend them though; for some reason the bureaucracy is incapable of adding the new ticket in time to address this winter's energy crisis.
The main reason is that there were many measures taken to make the government be a desirable employer and I am seeing many capable people entering the public service
Counting everyone who "would not have travelled by train", meaning "likely not at all" as saved emission is not very convincing.
On the hand, most coworkers tried the bus in the morning, or switched to bycicles, with the occasional bus trip when it rained. It was a huge success, people flooded the trains.
Do you have some evidence that it does not?
Can you please point out the part of the article supporting this claim?
If the 69€ ticket came to pass, it would still be more expensive than, or in the same ballpark as most one-off trips. People would make use of it, but the urge to take advantage of it while it lasts would be gone.
Is it the difference in tickets sold during €9 and prior to €9 * statistical distance travelled by a statistical German assuming that every surplus ticket sold was bought to substitute a car travel?
Subsequently, it would be great to have that number put in context right next to a graph showing gasoline and diesel sales in the same time period. Those were also cheaper for the same time period.
[1] https://www.vdv.de/bilanz-9-euro-ticket.aspx
[2] https://www.vdv.de/presse.aspx?id=df893fc7-1759-497b-9488-ce
Tldr: the truth on the ground is more convoluted than simple articles can tell. While the ticket was a success and the research bears truth, the criticisms are not unfounded.
I moved to Munich a month ago and so, as a foreigner, have had an interesting interaction with this system.
The main thing that gets missed in every article is how convoluted the whole transit system is. In Munich, there are 2 providers, overseen by an umbrella cooperative made up of these 2 companies. There is also a zonal system that dictates how much you'll pay for the ride, and every state then has some version of this system.
As you get out of the metro and into regional train travel, there are also various classes of trains (run by a single provider nationwide). For example regional trains vs regional express trains plus different classes in each plus the ability to reserve seats vs not. There is not a single monthly pass, but a variable one that depends on which zones you'll travel on. Of for one day you have to go to a zone not covered (such as a satellite town of Munich, you'll have to buy a ticket)
This makes getting a ticket expensive but also confusing.
It's confusing and expensive enough that it's sometimes easier just to rent a car.
Now Germany is a car producing nation, and car rentals here are extremely cheap, with car sharing startups funded and subsidised by almost every German auto manufacturer.
In Munich at least, cycling is also quite popular(why specifically is something I'm not knowledgeable enough to speculate).
What the 9 euro ticket did was not only make rail travel cheaper than other options BUT ALSO significantly easier to navigate in terms of ticketing.
(This argument may be refuted by some as they argue no one checks ticket purchases on the metro trains and so incentives to purchase wasn't really a thing within the metro. Not sure how common checking was before the 9 euro ticket but we were never once checked while taking trains in the metro area but almost always got checked when taking regional trains).
From my experience, people in general who don't regularly commute and tend to drive when they do still have a close to normal tendency to drive.
It's also not easy or economical to park within the city, so most people who live and commute within the city wouldn't have been driving in the first place.
That said, it changed the calculus for us(and likely for people who are driving neutral). We would have preferably rented a car to travel around, mainly because we can, but also because it's cheaper and more convenient for longer distances. We've travelled to other states and even to Salzburg in Austria with the train with this 9 euro ticket. We've probably saved 60 euro on a monthly metro ticket and hundreds for regional travel.
There is a cost to this value however. We had to give up time in return, as taking regional trains requires multiple train hops as well as taking slower regional trains.
Also, express regional trains are not included in this 9 euro pass
And so this is where the narrative deviates or muddies at the least.
Firstly, to reinforce the primary point. The ticket has proven to be extremely popular, basically more than anyone expected.
As the research proves, it has changed the calculus for a large subset of people on what mode of transport to take. And the reasons for this includes both cost and ease.
But commuting using public transport does require a time commitment, and so reducing price and complexity likely maimly chips away at the margins.
It would be easier to see this as elasticity in the demand curve. A 9 euro ticket is extremely cheap and extremely easy to grok mentally, hence pushing demand up.
It's also removed all complexity in dealing with tickets in each state, so together with price, had driven up demand to travel interstate.
Unfortunately, the demand was significantly higher than capacity. Regional trains in Germany are not built for capacity and the system has at many times been completely overwhelmed.
This likely has affected people who take cheap regional trains to travel between towns. It however has not affected business travel or people who already pay for first class or express regional.
It has made more people travel but the argument that more people are travelling and thus producing more CO2 are wrong because marginal cost for CO2 for a train is close to 0. Only when they add more trains does this calculus change. They have likely had to do so for more popular routes.
Germany has many towns that are dependent on tourism, and so this has likely increased commerce in these towns. This is a net positive for Germany, as domestic tourism is almost always a net positive to the economy.
In summary, the 9 euro ticket was a huge success, but it's not sustainable for a primary reason: the train network is not able to support that demand.
I personally would not support a euro ticket at 9 euros. I would definitely urge the authorities introduce one that is pricier but more sustainable (and also eliminates these complexity).
The benefits accrue beyond just savings on price: reduction of inflationary pressures on people, reduced complexity, reduced emissions and increased domestic tourism.
