Danke for nothing
Berlin's 29-euro ticket is coming (again), and leave it to German Officialdom to make a nice thing as mediocre as possible.
In barely more than a span of a year and depending where exactly you live, people in Germany have been treated to a number of changing and seemingly arbitrary efforts to encourage public transit ridership. The intentions are good — a one-two-three punch against climate change and other environmental badness, city congestion, and fossil fuel consumption in an era of energy supplies under pressure from a petro-funded war in Ukraine, for which Germany was a primary sponsor. Oops!
The implementation is another story.
First came the for-a-limited-time-only, nine-euro ticket. Why nine euros, and not ten or one or zero? Not entirely clear. Did it encourage ridership and cut car use? Researchers disagree. By the time federal and state lawmakers — Germany is a federal system, after all, and public transport is largely Ländersache — went their rounds in the legislative ring, it was summer 2022. The immediate shock of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine had faded as had wintertime demand for getting around in the cold and dark. And the offer was over before the next seasonal grayness kicked in.
Still, who could say no to nine bucks a month? As my grandfather liked to say: For (almost) free, take! Plus, it was great watching punks make the most of the nationwide deal by going all the way to the fancy-pants, North Sea island of Sylt to ruin Porsche people’s seaside getaway from the mainland commoners.
Next came the what’s next. Another winter passed with lawmakers wrangling over if and what would replace the nine-euro ticket, and by how much. Berlin’s state government, which at the time included the Greens, were impatient and offered its residents a 29-euro stopgap option.
That covered the time until a nationwide agreement settled on a monthly, 49-euro idea for all local and regional transport. It came into force in the spring and looks to be sticking around. But for Berlin, now led by the Christian Democrats after an intervening re-do election kicked out the Greens, it wasn’t good enough.
The 29-euro ticket is coming back, baby!
The policy initiative comes as something of a pleasant surprise, seeing that the CDU at the national level is starting to sound increasingly like the far-right AfD, and at the Berlin state level the conservative party ran on a campaign of strangling bike lanes and appealing to the city’s many drivers. Even more delightful, the aim was to have the all-you-can-ride ticket ready by January.
Then the VBB — the regional, quasi-public company that runs transit for Berlin and Brandenburg — had its say. And they said: Yeah, right. Berlin can do what it likes, but any offer won’t extend beyond city limits.
So more wrangling ensued, and it’s come to this: Berlin will get its monthly 29-euro ticket, but only for within the city and as a full subscription that can’t be canceled month-to-month. So it isn’t 29 euros, but 348 euros. It won’t start in January, but once again when the weather gets nice again — subject to the transit people having their tech sorted out and actually being able to offer the option. We shall see about that.
OK, better than nothing — but would nothing have been better? Sure, as someone who lives within city limits it means the monthly fare pays for itself in fewer than 12, one-way rides. But if I need to get to the airport — another Berlin-Brandenburg co-production comedy that the two states are trying to promote — it will cost me extra, since it lies just beyond the boundaries that the forthcoming offer will cover.
More importantly, leaving out those who live beyond the urban center risks completely negating the whole point of the project: Encourage dumping cars in favor of mass transit. City dwellers already get around by train, bus, and tram. An extra incentive to do so is a nice-to-have bonus but hardly an essential carrot. For the policy to have maximum effect, you need to reach the people who both like and need cars more — the ones further out, many of whom then commute in.
Ironically, this is also where most of the CDU’s own voters live. Berlin already suffers from political polarization, and the agreement reached with the VBB is likely to widen the divide. In the culture wars between supposed urban-cosmopolitan Kermits and suburban/rural-conservative Grouches, transport policy has been a handy weapon of choice.
It is sure to get worse.
All of these offers cost the states and feds billions, subsidizing a policy that juices demand without increasing supply. If I lived in a less-connected area, I, too, would be unhappy that my tax euros are getting spent this way. I might be susceptible to the sense that, once again, liberal, urban elites are looking after their own on my tab. (Never mind the myriad ways city slickers without cars support ways of life they have nothing to do with, but those tend to be baked into the system so go less noticed.)
Concerns about division and cannibalization aside, once again German Officialdom has ruined a nice thing. It has a real knack for this — appearing generous, but acting asozial. We saw this in the pandemic, when state and federal officials handed out huge amounts of financial relief to people and small businesses, only to take most of it back in taxes. An institutional culture of guilt, shame, and obligation made sure to tie the aid to the sneaking suspicion that you would be hunted down as a tax-fraud fugitive if you checked the wrong box or, in the end, didn’t actually need it.
In this regard, the stimulus package that started under President Donald Trump and continued under Joe Biden in welfare-allergic America was far more generous, and far less complicated and threatening.
In the wake of the pandemic, so many people are working from home — or, as freelancers have long called it: working — that the government has been kind enough to update its limits on what you can deduct without painstakingly line-iteming costs. How much, broken down by day?
Effectively, about
five euros.
That maxes out at what was 600 euros and is now 1,260 euros for the year. Thanks for the coffee, Christian — a one-handed, round-of-applause for you and your liberal ambitions.
Welcome in Germany: The ganz OK country that is neither full-on welfare state nor let-’er-rip capitalist kingdom, but where middling, mediocre policy reigns, and no matter what …