Public transport: 60 percent of citizens have difficulties buying tickets

Every day, millions of people in Germany use buses, trains and streetcars to get to work, into the city or to visit friends, despite many breakdowns and unreliable services. This is confirmed by a representative survey of 1001 German citizens conducted in July by the market research institute Infas Quo on behalf of Euro Kartensysteme. This company acts as a service provider for card-based payment transactions for German banks and savings banks.

According to the survey, three quarters (75 percent) of German citizens regularly use local public transport. More than one in four (29%) use public transport daily, with the figure rising to 37% among 18 to 29-year-olds. Buses are used most frequently (82 percent), followed by regional trains (75 percent) and suburban trains (66 percent). This can be considered a positive signal for the transport transition, even if there is still great potential for improvement.

The survey confirms various hurdles: 39% of participants consider it unlikely that they will switch from cars to public transport. The main reasons for this are insufficient frequency (57 percent), high prices (52 percent) and a lack of punctuality (50 percent).

Another major problem is buying tickets: six out of ten respondents have already experienced difficulties here. The most frequent causes of problems were faulty ticket machines (52 percent), the complicated selection of the right ticket (40 percent) and the non-acceptance of the desired means of payment (34 percent). In addition to cash, 54 percent of respondents use their Girocard to pay.

Advantages and disadvantages of check-in/check-out systems

The survey clearly shows what users want in this area: Above all, ticket purchases should be easy (87 percent), quick (84 percent) and at the best price (83 percent). Many transport companies are responding to this by introducing modern payment systems. So-called check-in/check-out models are considered a promising solution here: passengers hold their card up to a terminal – when boarding and alighting and the system then automatically calculates the best fare.

According to the survey, such an approach is convincing: 49% of citizens would like to use such simplifications, and this figure is as high as 54% among those under 40. The biggest advantages cited are simplicity (53%) and automatic price calculation (33%). 57 percent would like to be able to use their EC card for this purpose.

However, check-in/check-out systems rely on apps to record users' exact journey history. Various personal data is collected and processed for this purpose, such as location data (GPS), routes, time stamps as well as payment and customer data. The biggest challenge in this regard is the principle of data minimization in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Transport companies generally take various precautions to reduce data protection risks. These include pseudonymization and anonymization, limited storage periods, purpose limitation and transparency. Users should check the data protection provisions carefully and be aware of what information they are disclosing.

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