Deutsche Bahn (DB) has started to sell Deutschland-Ticket (D-Ticket) from April 3, when passengers were able to purchase a EUR 49 monthly pass for unlimited transport services across Germany. The ticket is available from May 1st for local and regional services and can be cancelled monthly.
“Bus and train travel has never been so easy and cheap as with the Deutschland-Ticket which finally puts an end to the fares jungle in local transport. Above all, our customers save money: we take them back and forth across the country for a month – and that for the price of half a tank of fuel in a private car. This is an incentive to travel in a climate-friendly and uncomplicated manner,” Evelyn Palla, DB board member for regional transport said.
DB says that the quickest way to get a Deutschland-Ticket is using DB Navigator app, but passengers also can make their subscription on bahn.de and in all DB travel centres. The passengers who already have a local transport subscription with DB has received the offer to switch to the national ticket. According to DB, around three quarters of its customers can travel more economically than their previous subscription. BahnCard 100 is also valid as a Germany ticket from May 1st and currently more than 46,000 BahnCard 100 customers do not incur any additional costs for this. For Deutsche Bahn, this new ticket offers the opportunity to attract more people to the local public transport system.
“The ticket will open up new opportunities for many people to be mobile in Germany – in everyday life, in their free time or on vacation. The Deutschland-Ticket is modern, digital and simple. It brings noticeable relief, motivates people to switch to a climate-friendly environment and will make public transport more attractive in the long term,” Volker Wissing, the Federal Minister for Gigital and Transport said.
Public transport is supported by the federal government and states. This year, the states will receive more than EUR 10 billion to support the public transport sector and in addition, the federal government will spend EUR 1.5 billion annually from 2023 until 2025 for D-Ticket.
The Association of German Transport Companies (VDV) forecasts that around 11 million of the 12 to 14 million of holders of season tickets would switch to the Deutschland-Ticket. In addition, the association expects that the D-Ticket would bring 5.6 million new customers. “We are entering the next decisive phase in the introduction of the Germany ticket. It’s good that it’s finally starting for the passengers,” VDV President Ingo Wortmann said.
For the employees, EUR 34.30 is the cost of the monthly ticket, the employers covering the remaining value of the ticket, part of renumeration packages.
“We hope that this will give us a real boost in Job-Tickets, which are already among the best-selling public transport subscriptions. We know that the first large employers such as Bayer, Ergo Versicherung or Vodafone even want to offer their employees the Deutschland-Ticket as a very inexpensive public transport job ticket using this discount with additional company-internal co-payments,” Ingo Wortmann explains.
D-Ticket is the result of the EUR 9 ticket that was offered on a promotional basis in the summer months of 2022 and was introduced on the initiative of the federal government to relieve the burden on citizens due to the sharp rise in costs for electricity, food, heating and mobility. Its ‘great success’ and the climate-friendly effect made authorities and DB introduce this latest version as a permanent season ticket which simplifies local transport tariffs enabling the travel across different states and tariff zones. The offer was possible due to the third federal relief package in cooperation between the federal and state governments.
The ticket is not valid on trains operated by DB Fernverkehr or other long-distance providers such as FlixTrain (IC, EC, ICE, as well as RE operated by DB Fernverkehr AG). DB Fernverkehr is currently in talks with the German state governments and authorities about exceptions on certain sections of line.
In 2022, 2 billion passengers used DB’s rail transport services, a 40% increase compared to 2021. The long-distance services recorded a 61% increase in passenger numbers leading to an increase of the Y-o-Y revenues by more than EUR 2 billion, to EUR 4.8 billion. DB expects that in 2023 more than 150 million passengers will use its long-distance services. DB Regional achieved a revenue increase of almost EUR 1 billion. Volume sold in rail passenger transport rose considerably in 2022 year on year, growing by around 63% to about 82.6 billion passenger kilometers. This was partly thanks to the 9-Euro-Ticket, of which 52 million were sold in total across the German transport sector last summer.
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