Ordinary Ledger: the occasional rider waits

The proposal was called “Bundesweiter elektronischer Gelegenheitstarif”, a nationwide electronic tariff for occasional riders¹. According to BR, citing people in the room, the Länder transport ministers took it off the agenda of their conference in Hohenschwangau on Wednesday by majority decision, because it had been submitted too close to the meeting¹.

What was on the table. North Rhine-Westphalia and Hamburg proposed a smartphone check-in, check-out fare: you register the start and end of each trip, the cheapest fare is worked out automatically, and in a month you never pay more than a Deutschlandticket^1,2. That ticket costs €63 a month and rises to €66.80 in January².

Who said what. Bavaria’s transport minister Christian Bernreiter, who chairs the conference, had said before the session that there was certainly no money for it, with billions already missing, for example to order regional trains¹. The association of German transport companies, the VDV, also rejected the idea¹. Social welfare associations welcomed it as cheaper mobility for poorer people¹.

The ledger. Desk arithmetic: the January step is €3.80 a month, or €45.60 over a year for a full-year holder². The proposed cap would have tied the occasional rider’s worst month to the same number. Tonight there is no such cap, and nothing has changed for anyone’s fare.

The constructive reading. A procedural reason is the cheapest kind of no. It says nothing about the merits and invites a better-prepared motion. The ministers stay until Thursday, mostly on funding, with low water in German rivers and autonomous driving also on the programme¹. If the money argument is serious, that is the room in which to put a euro figure next to it.