In the first month after the introduction of the nationwide nine-euro ticket, the volume of travel by rail increased significantly.
This is the result of a special evaluation of mobile phone data by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).
In June, nationwide movements in rail transport were on average 42 percent higher than in the same month last year.
In May they were only 3 percent higher than in May 2019.
The data includes rail journeys of 30 kilometers or more.
Already in the first week of June, the number of movements in rail transport between 30 and 300 kilometers was on average 56 percent higher than in the same period of 2019. In the course of June, the gap to the pre-crisis level fell again somewhat, possibly due to the Congestion of trains on specific routes and how to report them.
"If we differentiate movements in rail traffic according to the distances covered, it becomes clear that since the introduction of the nine-euro ticket, there has been an increase in train journeys of less than 300 kilometers in particular," the statisticians said.
If the distances are broken down further, train travel on short routes (30 to 100 kilometers) was roughly up in the last week of May, but in the first week of June it was already 58 percent above the pre-crisis level.
A corresponding increase from 18 to 64 percent was observed for medium distances (100 to 300 kilometers).
Buyers of the ticket can use buses and trains nationwide between June and August for nine euros per month.
The ticket is valid for all local transport - i.e. in all public transport apart from long-distance trains such as Deutsche Bahn or Flixtrain.
According to Destatis, road traffic activities so far this year have mostly been slightly above the pre-crisis level of 2019. Since the introduction of the nine-euro ticket, there has been a “moderate decline”.