Germany's Flat-Rate Train Ticket

Germany's Flat-Rate Train Ticket
The history of the Deutschland Ticket shows how complicated progress is in a country where pettiness is often the order of the day. And how, sometimes, politicians in Germany can find solutions that they weren't even looking for.

By Alexander Smoltczyk, Barbara Hardinghaus, Barbara Supp und Serafin Reiber
27.04.2023, 15.16 Uhr


(Der Spiegel) The revolution is arriving on schedule: On May 1, Germany's Deutschland Ticket will go into effect, offering a flat monthly rate for the use of regional trains and local public transportation all across the country. The ticket is only available by subscription for 49 euros a month. It’s a project that Hesse state Transport Minister Tarek Al-Wazir of the Green Party has called "the biggest revolution in public transportation" ever. City limits, regional borders, fare boundaries and even some international borders will no longer matter, he said. Simplicity will prevail. For now, the subscription is nicknamed the "49-Euro Ticket," but who knows how long that price will apply in light of current inflation.

As far as local transport fares are concerned, Germany is fragmented into principalities on a scale not seen since the Thirty Year’s War. There is no transport association to dictate fares and subscription prices across the country as a whole. No body that could be responsible for enforcing uniform prices. Instead, there are 17 transport ministers at the state and federal level, around 60 regional transport associations and about 600 companies in the local public transport sector. German unity is not reflected in the transport sector.

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The story of the Deutschland Ticket is one involving late-night negotiations that actually produced a great idea - a brainstorm that hadn't actually even been on the table. In recent years, Germany has earned a reputation as a country where great ideas are often talked to death, where visions are repeatedly shattered by vested interests. Large renewable energy projects, for example, frequently run up against residents who are disturbed by having the shadows of wind turbines in their yards or the silhouette of liquid natural gas terminals off the coast. So how did the Deutschland Ticket become a reality in a country where, all too often, pettiness prevails?

Berlin
Central Station

On March 23, 2022, senior members of the three coalition parties and a handful of ministers from those portfolios affected gathered to meet with the chancellor in the large International Conference Room on the second floor of the Chancellery. They were sitting in two rows around the table, all wearing masks when they got up due to the pandemic. Every now and then, some of those present switched between the first and second row so that no artificial hierarchy was created.

Chancellor Scholz opened the meeting in the early evening. There was food available, but the Chancellery was scheduled to leave soon because the meeting wasn't expected to be a long one. The chancellor hoped that a deal would be reached by midnight to help German citizens with rising energy costs. We need to show leadership, he told the group. Besides, he was also scheduled to fly to Brussels the next morning for a special NATO summit. Before long, though, there was no food left at the meeting but chocolate bars. Drinks, though, were plentiful, including alcoholic beverages. .............(more)

https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/germany-s-flat-rate-train-ticket-a-08c11e93-2ee2-42f9-8975-056872b7aa3e