German Transport Minister Volker Wissing has committed himself to the possibility of following up the 9-euro ticket scheme with another discounted offer for public transport - and said that the new Klimaticket could go on sale as soon as the end of the year, pending an evaluation. 

9-euro ticket successor possible before end of year

With the 9-euro ticket coming to an end at the beginning of September, much talk has been devoted in recent weeks to a possible follow-up to build on the ticket’s success. Wissing told dpa that he was theoretically planning a successor scheme to start at the end of the year or the beginning of 2023.

He said this was necessary to enable the government to gather and examine data on the 9-euro ticket scheme, to consider which factors had had an impact on the ticket’s success - for instance the price, the Germany-wide validity, or the ease of use. “There’s a lot of speculation,” Wissing said, “but you don’t really know. That’s why we need the results of the evaluation.” 

Federal and state governments need to agree on financing of ticket

Several models for a 9-euro ticket successor have already been floated, including a 365-euro annual ticket and a 69-euro monthly ticket, but Wissing said he did not want to commit to one solution just yet, emphasising that the price-performance ratio had to be right. “It’s not the case that the lowest price also brings about the greatest satisfaction,” he said.

He explained that currently the main issue at stake was financing. “We need a model that fits into the budgets of the federal states and also into the budget of the federal government,” he said. 

The government is currently financing the 9-euro ticket to the tune of 2,5 billion euros - a sum that it cannot afford in the long-run. However, Wissing said that if the federal and state governments could quickly come to an agreement, it would be possible to get a digital ticket out “within a few weeks.”

So far, around 21 million 9-euro tickets have been sold, on top of the 10 million that were given to people with existing season tickets. “Public transport hasn’t seen that in a long time,” Wissing said.