Wednesday, November 2, 2022

This 49-Euro Bahn/Bus Ticket Fading?

 Well.....here's the mess left to clean up.  After the summer experiment where 9-Euro a month was required for a full travel-as-far-as-you-desire ticket (buses and trains).....everyone seemed pepped up and wanted this to last forever (it was a 3-month program).

So we come to the issue....the only way that the 9-Euro a month ticket worked....was that billions of Euro were poured into the system to pay for the missing 'loot'.

There's a 16-state meeting going on this week in Hannover.  Basically, the states are telling the federal folks....you need to throw a lot more 'loot' into the pile....for the new gimmick....the 49-Euro a month ticket....to work.

Right now, the fed guys are promising the states 1.5-billion Euro to cover the missing cost.  

The state guys are saying that it's a hard sale to manufacture, unless they come up with more buses and trains to rural areas.  

You see....the rural folks figured out that most of the folks getting the big advantage.....all live in highly urbanized areas.  The folks in the rural areas won't participate in the 49-Euro ticket gimmick....if there is no 'gain' for them.

So they (the states) want 1.5-billion Euro EXTRA.....every single year.  The fed guys agree to just 1-billion for improving the rural public sector.

What will happen in the end?  To be truthful.....you could dump 10-billion into the rural structure yearly, and it'd still marginally improve things. 

I used to live in a village that had one single bus system to take you into Kaiserslautern.  The schedule....roughly 14 buses runs per day.  For most of the day, if you missed the run.....it was a full hour of waiting for the next bus.  If you walked over to the next village where they had a train station?  It was roughly the same deal.....maybe 14 train runs per day....each way.

Selling public transportation to rural Germans is just about impossible.  Most just laugh about the circumstances and the gimmick discussed.  

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