[fridental]

The 9€ ticket "success story" looks like a large hoax mainly created by green-friendly media.

1) The CO2 savings are nothing more than a wild guess rather than a scientifically sound estimation. The real numbers might be as low as 600000 tonns. And even these numbers are unsure because they include all those car drivers who have used this ticket only once during the 3-month test period, out of curiosity, and therefore can't be used for reliable prediction of what would happen if this kind of tickets will be introduced permanently.

2) At the same time, we don't know the real costs of this experiment yet. Some sources call it to be 10 billions instead of 2,5 billions.

3) Overall, only 10% of ticket users chose public transport instead of their car. Most of the trips has been generated by people who wouldn't travel at all if the ticket was not so cheap. And on the other hand, there are many news that people who usually commute using public transportation had to fall back to the cars, because the trains were so overcrowded and were frequently cancelled.

More scientific studies are needed to research the REAL effects of this experiment. We shouldn't make any political decisions based on the wishful thinking only.

[martin_a]

1) The 9 € ticket wasn't about CO2 reduction, it was about providing cheap(er) public transportation for the masses.

2) Even 10 billion is not really much money for a state like Germany. If the 9 € ticket, or a successor, would be rolled out permanently you'd expect savings in different areas which could make up for the additional cost of a subsidized ticket. Make the ticket 30 €/month and you'll only have a third of the costs left.

3) Sounds fine to me: People who would normally not be able to pay for a train ticket were able to do so, enjoy what they could reach by train and have a nice summer. I don't think there's anything bad in this, especially for people with a lower income.

What this "experiment" clearly showed is:

- Make public transportation easy and cheap to use and people will use it

- German public transportation massively lacks capacity

You might call it a "hoax" but it showed that we're just as bad in public transportation as we are in broadband internet access. Politics didn't do anything to improve this situation in the last 20 years because gas was cheap and everything else was fine, too.

[stjohnswarts]

What it didn't show is "name a price" so that the tax payer can know what they're getting back for the money.