Local transport hasn’t been cheaper for a long time than with the nine-euro ticket. Nevertheless, the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) sold tens of thousands of monthly and daily tickets in June. Monthly tickets have been sold “in the mid four-digit range” since the beginning of June, a spokesman confirmed for the daily mirror. The news portal “t-online” had previously reported about it.
Of the day tickets, which are expensive at 8.80 euros in the AB standard tariff compared to the nine-euro ticket, a number “in the middle five-digit range” was sold, the spokesman explained.
The BVG had already stated before the special ticket was launched that it would still be possible to buy tickets from machines and in the app during the period of the nine-euro ticket. A reprogramming would have been technically too complex for the short time. “By August at the latest, we should have reintroduced the option to buy the monthly ticket, because people are already buying their tickets for September,” said the spokesman.
The BVG rejects the accusation of having accepted that passengers pay too much. “We placed the nine-euro ticket prominently on the start screen of the machine and in the app.”
It is not known why people still bought the other tickets. It could only be explained with the day ticket. Up to three children between the ages of six and 14 could be taken along free of charge. Otherwise you would have to buy a nine-euro ticket each, the spokesman said.
Apart from these discordant tones, the sales figures for the nine-euro ticket at the BVG continue to rise. By Wednesday, 1.4 million of the special tickets had already been sold. More than 1.1 million of them for June and already “well over 200,000” for July. In addition, there are around 850,000 BVG subscribers to whom the special rate applies automatically.
This also leads to better used trains and buses. Compared to May, the utilization of the BVG fleet has increased from 80 to 95 percent of the value before the outbreak of the corona pandemic.
The Berlin S-Bahn also published pleasing figures on Thursday. The number of passengers on the trains has increased by ten percentage points and is now also 95 percent of the pre-crisis level. In total, the Berlin S-Bahn sold half a million nine-euro tickets in June.
“The cheap fare and the simplicity of the ticket demonstrably make local transport in Berlin even more attractive,” said S-Bahn boss Peter Buchner.
The new customers are also seeing more and more new or modernized trains. “All passengers who are now coming back or are new benefit from more and more modernized and new S-Bahn trains with more comfort and more space.” The latest generation of cars has also been rolling on line S46 between Königs Wusterhausen and Westend since this week .
From October, the new trains will also run on the S8 route between Wildau and Birkenwerder. By the end of 2023, the new series will increase the capacity of the S-Bahn fleet by around 25,000 seats.
