First, it will start on 1 May in Germany....you can buy a monthly ticket for bus and train transportation.....with no use of ICE (high-speed rail) or inter-city trains.
The law says that 2023, 2024 and 2025 are covered by a government 'contribution' (figured to be around 1.5-billion Euro a year).
Any real statistics to say this will be a 'roaring' success? Well....they seem to think that the summer period of 2022....where the monthly ticket was sliced down to 9-Euro for the whole month....showed that the public is ready for maximum use of the cheapo ticket.
My general perception? I will offer 3 points:
1. If you take out inter-city and ICE railway options....you could still travel around the country....but on a lesser speed situation....using regional trains only.
2. Over-crowed trains? That was a big issue in the summer of 2022, and it'll repeat. If you want a miserable experience....be one of 300 people on a 200-seat train heading to Heidelberg.
3. I will just suggest this will be a fad....with the hype dissolving in six months.
2 comments:
Politicians always seem to use the term 'Government Funded' when, actually, it is 'Taxpayer Funded'.
When you get down to it...probably 1 out of 3 Germans will buy the 49-Euro ticket...but all three will finance this...but the other two haven't figured this out yet.
If they hadn't done this...the real ticket would have been in the 100-to-120 Euro range. The folks who won't be buying into it....mostly those in small towns, rural areas, or towns of 20,000 with marginal public transportation.
Even for myself...if you take out the intercity use or ICE train...I tend to question spending 49-Euro a month for this. I might only travel two or three times a month, and rarely go further than 50 kilometers. It also drives me nuts on boarding a 7:30 AM train that is 120-percent full and no seats left.
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