The Germany ticket for the price of 49 euros for the entire local public transport (ÖPNV) in Germany will come - albeit later and with a cumbersome interim solution for all those who cannot or do not want to buy it on a smartphone.

According to the current status of planning, the start date will be May 1st.

"We can do it," says the Association of German Transport Companies (VDV), after politicians had hoped for the beginning of April for a long time.

Corinna Budras

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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But the implementation of a permanent nationwide ticket is more complex than the previous 9-euro ticket, which was rolled out surprisingly quietly within a few months last year.

This is also due to the claim to offer the new monthly ticket exclusively digitally in order to be able to better control traffic flows in the future.

It is now clear that a number of transport associations in Germany are not technically able to do this.

For this reason, millions of interim solutions in paper format are expected to be in circulation by the end of the year, comparable to the provisional Bahncard.

The customer data is then recorded digitally and temporarily documented using a paper printout.

"Otherwise we wouldn't be able to sell everyone who wants a ticket at the beginning,"

The introduction of chip cards, which are not yet offered in some transport associations, is causing difficulties.

They are part of the offer for all those who do not have a smartphone or at least do not want to use it to buy the new monthly ticket.

Some transport associations now have to purchase chip cards, as well as electronic readers, in order to be able to check the tickets.

"Climate protection goals cannot be achieved with the Deutschlandticket alone"

Apart from the initial difficulties, politicians and transport companies have high hopes for the new Germany-wide monthly offer, which at 49 euros per month is well below the usual prices in most transport associations.

Currently, they are often twice as expensive, and occasionally they are three times as expensive.

The VDV estimates that attracted by the new offer, around 5.6 million people could take out a subscription for local transport for the first time.

In addition, the association assumes that there will be around 11.3 million "switchers" who will switch from another subscription to the new offer.

However, this is associated with a considerable loss of income for the transport company, after all, the “willingness to pay” of the customers is not fully skimmed off.

The VDV has been criticizing this for a long time:

But politicians have now made this decision, and one can point to a number of successes in connection with the 9-euro ticket.

After all, it has ensured that public transport has overcome its Corona dent: After passenger numbers fell significantly during the pandemic, demand last year almost reached the record value from 2019: while people made 10.4 billion trips at the time graduated, according to VDV forecasts, it was 9.3 billion last year.

An evaluation by the association showed that 12 percent of Germans used local transport more frequently because of the three-month discount campaign.

Almost 30 percent of those who used public transport for the first time because of the ticket also used the bus and train regularly between September and November.

That was 1.8 million passengers.

Another 1.6 million people would have used local transport at least more frequently afterwards.

However, even this broad-based campaign did not have a lasting effect on climate protection.

After the ticket expired, the number of car trips increased again and returned to the old level.

So there is still a lot to do when it comes to shifting traffic from cars to public transport.

For the VDV, however, this result was within the range of what could be expected: Wortmann emphasized that hardly anyone changed their behavior permanently after three months.

His conclusion from the experience with the cheaper public transport ticket: "The climate protection goals for 2030 in transport cannot be achieved with the Germany ticket alone." As on previous occasions, the VDV insists on the implementation of the public transport expansion and modernization offensive that the traffic light government agreed in the coalition agreement.

In concrete terms, this means: higher frequency of buses and trains in the city, additional connections in the country.