Nine-euro ticket: Significantly more delays, slightly less car traffic
The nine-euro ticket, which came into force in summer 2022, has not attracted enough car drivers to public transport, the ifo Institute has found.
A picture from the summer of 2022: passengers board a regional train at Bremen Central Station.
(Image: heise online / anw)
The nine-euro ticket, which was available for public and regional transport in Germany for three summer months two years ago, cost a lot but only reduced car traffic slightly. The increased demand has also led to more delays in train services, according to a study by the Munich-based ifo Institute. It believes that political decision-makers should be cautious when considering heavily discounted public transport tickets to decarbonize the transport sector.
Although the low-cost nationwide public transport ticket has led to an increase in the use of public transport of up to 35 percent, car traffic has decreased by up to 5 percent, the institute writes. Demand was driven in particular by leisure use, with public transport being overcrowded and delayed. Commuter car traffic, on the other hand, seems to respond much less to these ticket programs, says the institute.
Moreover, not only regional trains but also long-distance trains were affected by the delays in rail transport. This points to a deterioration in the quality of the infrastructure.
430,000 more passengers per day
The Agora Verkehrswende interest group came to similar conclusions to those of the ifo Institute in August 2022, i.e. during the period of validity that ran until the end of that month. At the time, the heavily discounted ticket had no positive effect on climate protection, according to surveys, statistical figures and scientific studies.
For its study, the ifo Institute used mobility data from Teralytics, which was obtained from millions of anonymized TelefĂłnica O2 mobile phone movement data and extrapolated to the population. The Institute estimated causal effects using econometric methods designed to enable a counterfactual analysis. It compared the development of mobility before and after the introduction of the nine-euro ticket in 2022 relative to mobility in 2019.
This data showed that from the beginning of June to the end of August 2022, 430,000 more people sat on trains every day on journeys of 30 km or more than before or after. In contrast, the number of cars registered by traffic counting stations only fell by 1 percent. Without a nine-euro ticket, 14 percent of all trains were delayed, according to the analysis, while 18 percent were delayed while the ticket was valid.
Few nine-euro journeys on long commuter routes
As the 52 million tickets sold were only valid on regional trains, they were rarely used for very long commuting distances. Train journeys have increased at weekends. According to the ifo Institute, the study results also suggest "that a considerable number of people used the €9 ticket for additional, leisure-related train journeys". The increase in train journeys to rural vacation regions was particularly pronounced, with regional trains being particularly delayed at weekends.
During the classic pedal times in the morning and afternoon, car journeys had decreased particularly little. The fuel discount, which applied at the same time as the nine-euro ticket, may have had a distorting effect in that the reaction to fuel price changes is not particularly pronounced. For many, the fuel discount was not an option due to the short validity period, and the fall in public transport prices was greater than that of fuel prices.
(anw)
