What to expect from June 1st

Frankfurt Those who will be using local transport next Wednesday should be prepared for the fact that trains, trams and buses will be a little fuller. The nine-euro ticket starts on this day. And the interest in the cheap ticket is great.

On the first day of sales alone, Deutsche Bahn sold around 200,000 tickets “over the counter” within a few hours. The municipal transport companies are also reporting a rush. The Dortmunder Verkehrsbetriebe, for example, sold 18,000 tickets on the first day.

With the idea of ​​being able to use local public transport from June to August for a flat rate of nine euros per month, the federal government seems to have struck a chord with the population. The fact that the ticket is a kind of emergency birth has long been a minor matter. In order to relieve citizens of the high inflation and sharply increased energy costs, the FDP insisted on a tank discount. The price for this in the negotiations with the coalition partners was the nine-euro ticket.

The rush for the new ticket is not surprising. In fact, the ticket has some advantages. For one thing, it’s extremely inexpensive. In metropolises such as Frankfurt, a simple return trip on the S-Bahn from the outskirts costs more. In many cases, the nine-euro ticket quickly paid for itself. The ticket is attractive even for citizens who do not yet know exactly how often they actually use local transport. Converted, a day ticket costs less than 50 cents.

On the other hand, it is a ticket that is valid nationwide – and thus solves a problem that passengers have been struggling with for many years: Different rules and price models apply in each transport association. If you want to buy a ticket for local public transport in a foreign city, you often stand at a loss in front of the machine and have to struggle through the logic of the respective zone system. “I don’t need to think anymore. I have a ticket and I can get on any local transport system, any subway,” says Jörg Sandvoß, head of DB Regio.

Public transport simply: one ticket for everything

Public transport has probably never been so easy. The ticket thus offers the opportunity to get people on the trains, buses and trams who have previously avoided local transport.

The problem: In many cases, the new standard ticket could also cause considerable frustration among passengers. Because it is a “huge experiment without a blueprint”, as DB manager Sandvoß puts it.

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Experienced railroaders still remember the weekend ticket introduced in 1995, with which passengers could use all regional trains at the weekend for 15 euros. At that time, people crowded the aisles, and some passengers had to stay behind on the platform. The nine-euro ticket could overwhelm the Bahn system again.

The biggest problem is the infrastructure. Because of the many construction sites, the German rail network is already overloaded and is on the verge of collapse. Bringing additional capacities onto the track will be tricky. Nevertheless, DB Regio intends to do just that. 70 additional trains are to roll for the nine-euro ticket. “We are expanding everything to the maximum,” says DB Manager Sandvoß.

Martin Burkert is therefore concerned about the infrastructure. The deputy chairman of the railway workers’ union EVG has been at a congress of the European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF) in Budapest for the past few days. His colleagues from all over Europe are looking forward to the German experiment with excitement, he reports to the Handelsblatt in a video link from Budapest: “We want the ticket to be a success. It’s a huge opportunity. However, we see the danger that bottlenecks, especially on the tourist routes, have the potential to scare people away.”

Things could get tight in several places in rail operations over the next three months. First there are the trains. “When all the material is on the rails, there are no more reserves,” says Burkert. So if a train is canceled due to a technical defect, no replacement can be sent.

Then it can get tight at individual stations, not just because of the rush. There are also regional trains that only run with a driver, i.e. without staff. “If they stop at stations where there are no staff either, I see problems,” says Heike Moll, Chairwoman of the General Works Council of DB Station & Service: “We can’t expect the petite 70-year-old lady to carry her 25-kilo Heaving an e-bike onto the train.”

Train stations could be closed due to overcrowding

In the worst case, passengers could suddenly find themselves in front of closed train stations. “There are emergency plans that provide for the closure of particularly busy train stations, for example. The hotspots are known,” says Burkert from EVG.

In addition, the timetable could get confused. Sandvoß from DB Regio prepares its customers for delays as a precaution. “In these three months we will drive less punctually than in normal times,” says the manager. However, given the great opportunity offered by the new ticket, he considers this to be manageable: “90 percent punctuality doesn’t help me if people don’t use local public transport.”

But a delay in a regional train can quickly become a serious problem. “If the stopping time is exceeded by just five to ten minutes, this has serious consequences for the trains that follow,” warns works council member Moll. The risk of exactly that happening is great: “In the regional trains there are bicycle compartments for ten bikes. But if everyone wants to get on the train with their bikes at the same time, there will be a pushing and shoving,” says Moll. “And nobody believes that ten bikes can be loaded onto the train in just two minutes.”

Bahn manager Sandvoss wants to deal with such situations with more staff. 700 additional employees are to help on the trains and at the stations. The cleaning of the trains will also be intensified.

But Moll remains cautious: “We’re trying to find additional staff, but we don’t yet know whether we’ll get everything we need,” she says. In the meantime, discussions are being held with universities to acquire students for the time being.

And finally there is the passenger himself. If the train has to leave bicycles on the platform, there are long delays and chaos erupts – one or the other could lose patience. Trade unionist Burkert therefore has a big request: “We can only ask all travelers to show solidarity with the railway staff.”

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