The nine-euro ticket not only attracts crowds to the regional trains, but also brings new passengers – and old ones back – to the BVG, which has been hit by the corona virus.
On Tuesday, the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe published the results of a home-made market research on the offer. According to this, the state-owned Berlin company alone has sold around 1.25 million tickets, which exceeds “all expectations”.
The tickets are obviously being used actively: in June, the first of the three months on offer, the utilization of buses and trains increased by 16 percentage points compared to May from 80 to around 96 percent compared to the level before Corona. Pentecost Sunday was a clear peak day.
In a non-representative online survey by the BVG with around 2,500 participants, around one in eleven ticket buyers stated that they had not previously used local public transport. According to their own statements, three quarters of these new customers had previously mainly traveled in their own car.
This means that the group of those switching from cars dominates by a wide margin – well ahead of cyclists (nine percent), pedestrians (six percent), car sharing users (four percent) and car passengers (three percent).
These figures suggest that the nine-euro ticket is making the desired contribution to climate and environmental protection. According to the BVG, 15 percent of the tickets sold up to and including last Sunday are only valid in July or August. The proportion of tickets sold digitally – i.e. via apps – is exceptionally high at 37 percent. The BVG has published the results of the survey here as a PDF.
In addition to the mass of individually purchased tickets, there are around 850,000 regular customers, whose monthly tickets are automatically valid as nine-euro tickets, as well as customers from other member companies in the Berlin-Brandenburg transport association, such as the S-Bahn Berlin.
[In our People newsletters we report weekly from the twelve districts of Berlin – also about the traffic in the capital. Free and compact: leute.tagesspiegel.de]
According to the industry association VDV, at least 16 million nine-euro tickets have already been sold nationwide; in addition, there are at least ten million passengers with subscriptions or annual tickets.
At an event on Monday, Traffic Senator Bettina Jarasch (Greens) again brought up the idea of a pay-as-you-go, inexpensive ticket for all Berliners. A study commissioned by the Senate recommended such a levy two years ago to finance the expansion of local public transport. Critics reject such a “compulsory ticket”.
