This chance came suddenly.

When the federal and state governments decided on a local transport ticket at the end of May, which everyone can use to travel across the country for nine euros, that did not shock Berit Schmitz - unlike many others in the industry.

"For us, this was an opportunity to win back customers that we lost during the pandemic," says the managing director of the Mainzer Verkehrsgesellschaft (MVG).

Luke Fuhr

Editor in Politics.

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Apparently, however, even those who were shocked quickly switched to doer mode and organized within days what is usually turned back and forth for months in the transport industry.

How many more people would get on board from June?

Do you need extra trains?

Does the bus have to run more frequently?

From June onwards, the transport companies transported millions of people from A to B - a "huge success", praised Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP).

How did the transport companies deal with ramping up operations so quickly?

And could they carry even more people?

To answer that, you have to look at a system that hasn't previously been known for being overly responsive.

After all, what the local transport looks like locally is negotiated in a complicated network of companies, state actors and associations.

Since it's in the nature of things that it's not just about one place, but several, a lot of people quickly get involved.

The S-Bahn runs on rails that do not belong to it

But let's start at the beginning: If you board an S-Bahn in Frankfurt to Mainz to meet Berit Schmitz at the MVG depot, you board a DB Regio train.

This is a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn.

In 2011, it was awarded the contract to operate the S-Bahn lines in the Rhine-Main area for 15 to 22 years, depending on the line.

A contract worth billions, in which DB Regio undertook to travel 14.6 million kilometers a year on the S-Bahn network and to stop at specified stations.

If you use a tiny part of this gigantic commitment for the approximately 40-minute journey to Mainz, you have arrived in the network of the Mainzer Verkehrsgesellschaft, but not yet with Berit Schmitz.

The tram actually runs from the main station to the MVG depot, but there is a construction site right now.

So the transport company provides a bus.

When you finally see Berit Schmitz, you can have her explain to you that her MVG is a subsidiary of the Mainzer Stadtwerke – which in turn is a municipal company – and has been commissioned by the city of Mainz to operate buses and trams by 2044.

While the MVG itself is responsible for maintaining and expanding its own network, the S-Bahn runs on rails that do not belong to it.

The passengers should not notice anything of all the complexity - that's why both the S-Bahn and the MVG sell joint tickets, the income is then distributed according to a complicated key.

For most local transport companies, tickets make up about half of their income, and hardly any other company in the industry has more.

“Public transport will never be purely user-financed.

That will not do.

Period.” Why don't you raise the prices, Ms. Schmitz?

"That would be too expensive, because we would have even less demand due to the price elasticity." And that's why someone else has a say: the one who pays for local transport in parts, namely the politicians in the federal, state and local governments.

The 9-euro ticket now broke the well-rehearsed complicated agreements.

The federal government ordered, hundreds of local transport companies across the country made all available vehicles ready, and people in Germany got on in droves.

The demand for the rather spontaneous bargain ticket was enormous.

By the beginning of August, the ticket had been sold 38 million times, plus another ten million subscribers for June, July and August, whose school, long-term or job tickets were discounted accordingly.

How smooth can such a stress test go?