ARD (public TV in Germany, Channel One) came up with a fair amount of information over this free transportation deal and how it's being stacked up.
The crisis driving this, is the threat by major cities in Germany to halt or forbid entry of diesel cars. In some ways, it's a major crisis and threatens several million cars....probably bringing a massive amount of anger and frustration to the general public. So to counter the diesel car crisis....the Merkel-led government is now discussing the idea of free public transportation. You would drive up to the city limits, park, and the bus/tram network would carry you freely to work. If you lived in the city itself, it'd all be free transportation.
So the first step that the government did...in a way of stalling this whole discussion....was to send up a letter to the EU to request 'permission' to provide such a service. This whole thing is designed as a test, and would be limited in the initial stage to five German cities:
1. Mannheim, population: 300,000. They actually have a fairly decent light-rail system, and the city lies along major autobahns.
2. Bonn, population 315,000.
3. Essen, population: 575,000.
4. Herrenberg, population: 31,000. Small town about 30 minutes outside of Stuttgart. No tram or light-rail.
5. Reutlingen: Population: 113,000. Significant city to the south of Germany.
If you look over the five, three have significant public traffic daily, and you would be bumping up the regional capability to handle probably twice the number of daily passengers.
Why the letter? Well....the EU is in a position of a threat to Germany. There's been a clean air issue brewing for more than a decade, and Germany has politically avoided the public discussion. This is one of the amazing stories that public news has avoided for the most part. So now, the German government wants the EU to back off on the threat of a court-episode, and just accept free transportation as the solution.
If the EU says no, and continues on? Well....it'd be in a EU court and Germany likely loses. Then there would be daily fines. No one says much over how much, but I'd take a guess that a million Euro a day would be the minimum (per day).
What happens now? The EU has to view this in terms of opening up a can of worms across all of the EU. If Germany offers free transportation, the EU court system might view this as the big solution and push everyone toward this.
Meanwhile, it buys time.
Let's be honest....once you start the test....there will have to be a team in each city which evaluates what to add, request the additional funding, buy, build, and evaluate success.
How long will the 'test' run? I would take a guess that you could be looking at five to eight years.
First, you'd have to go and determine where to building parking lots for cars on the outer boundary of cities. Then you'd have to have light-rail or bus networks that would transport you into the city itself. Additional capacity? In the case of Mannheim, you'd have to probably double the number of trams running around the city.
Second, the infrastructure money. Well....just for the test, I would take a wild guess that we are talking about a minimum of five billion Euro. I'm also guessing that Merkel hasn't been told the real cost and the whole crew will be shocked at the substantial amount that it would take to make a successful test.
Third, just how far will you take this? It's not just for free tickets for Germans, but for anyone visiting the country, or staying briefly. Will it include railway tickets from one major city to another? I kinda doubt that. There has to be a limit to the interior of cities.
Fourth, and the more curious aspect....a template. Once you finish this test, you will have a lesson's learned episode. Rather than reinvent the whole concept in all German cities and waste tons of money....you'd have a list of a hundred-odd features or issues that you could grasp and build a structure around.
It's a massive amount of funding to take this to the top level, and I just don't see the public blessing this kind of event when they figure out the actual cost. There's just no such thing as a 'free ticket'. Someone is going to pay for all of this infrastructure and daily cost.
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