Anywhere at anytime: the formula for cheap subscription tickets

As more European countries introduce keenly priced subscription tickets to encourage greater use of public transport, Ben Jones asks if it actually works.

In this article:

• Germany and Austria’s subscription travel passes have spurred public transport use but face challenges with funding, coverage, and capacity.
• Deutschlandticket and Klimaticket offer affordable nationwide access but highlight urban-rural disparities and infrastructure limitations.
• Success hinges on integrated networks, reliable services, and political consensus to sustain long-term, climate-friendly mobility goals.

If you want more people to travel by train - and by bus, tram and metro - just make the fares too cheap to resist. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

Over the past three years, hundreds of enthusiastic articles have been written about Germany’s Deutschlandticket monthly pass, Austria’s annual Klimaticket, and similar schemes in the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and (most recently) Portugal.

Deutschlandticket offers the freedom of most urban and regional transport from the Baltic to the Alps for just €58 (£48) a month, while the Klimaticket is even better value, including everything from local buses and trams to 140mph Railjet long-distance trains anywhere in the country for around €3 (£2.50) per day.

For €20 (£16.60) a month, Portuguese residents can now ride as many regional, local and InterCity trains as they wish, although the country’s rail network is much less dense than Germany or Austria and other public transport modes are not included.

On the surface, if you want to encourage a significant shift in travel habits away from cars, it makes total sense to incentivise travellers with cheap, easy-to-use monthly or annual travel passes covering all forms of public transport.

Luxembourg has gone even further by making public transport free (at the point of use) for residents and visitors alike.

But, in reality, the picture has been mixed. Where the offers are available, public transport use has grown (and continues to grow), but perhaps not to the extent that might have been expected.

Arguments over ticket acceptance, the disparity between public transport offers between rural and urban areas, cannibalisation of existing ticket revenues, network capacity, and (most of all) who pays for it, continue to rumble.

Recovery

Launched in May 2023, Deutschlandticket was born out of the huge success of Germany’s 9-Euro-Ticket offer in summer 2022, which sparked a significant rise in local public transport use as the country emerged from COVID-19 lockdowns.

Surveys showed that 35% of participants used buses and trains more during the three months of the offer, while 3% used their cars less. A traffic survey conducted by Munich city authorities found that car traffic in Munich decreased by 3% from May to June instead of (seasonally) increasing by 3%.

According to an estimate by the Association of German Transport Companies (VDV), around 52 million tickets were sold in June-August 2022. This saved 1.8 million tonnes of CO2 - almost equivalent to imposing an 81mph limit on autobahn traffic for an entire year.

The cost of the offer was around €2.5 billion (£2.1bn), justified as part of Germany’s COVID recovery efforts. Its success prompted Green Party politicians to demand a permanent scheme priced at just €29 (£24) a month.

Unfortunately, the 9-Euro-Ticket period coincided with what many regard as Germany’s ‘Hatfield moment’ - a fatal derailment in Bavaria caused by crumbling concrete sleepers, which led to line closures, speed restrictions and mass cancellations just at the time when a struggling Deutsche Bahn (DB) needed to put on its best face.

Deutschlandticket is a remarkable achievement, but its future remains uncertain as Germany’s legendary post-war political stability crumbles. It’s far from a perfect product and has been criticised by various parties since its introduction in 2023.

Last September, the transport ministers of Germany’s 16 Länder (federal states) agreed to increase the price of the ticket to €58 per month from January 2025.

The €9 increase was a compromise aimed at quelling discontent from several states (including Bavaria, Germany’s largest) over the failure of the Deutschlandticket to cover its costs. Currently there’s no agreement on pricing or funding for 2026, and any decision will depend on the outcome of February’s General Election.

External forces threaten to derail a scheme that has been widely praised outside Germany, but its very existence is impressive in a country that is far larger and much more economically and politically diverse than other countries with subscription fare offers.

The challenges of a countrywide variation in public transport policy at state level should not be underestimated.

Reflecting Germany’s febrile political landscape of recent years, there’s a noticeable West-East and urban/rural split in attitudes to the ticket.

In the generally wealthier, more urbanised states of the former West Germany, support remains strong. But further east, in states such as Saxony and Thuringen, there have been repeated threats to withdraw support, potentially collapsing the whole scheme.

Sabrina Wendling, of German rail user group Allianz pro Schiene, explains: “There are more users in big cities than in rural areas - around 20%-30% compared with 6% of those outside urban areas, according to the VDV.

“That’s another reason why it is so important to offer a much better public transport in rural areas, as people are especially unhappy when buses or trains depart only once every few hours.”

While traditionally conservative (and wealthy) Bavaria is relatively pro-road, neighbouring Baden-Württemberg has been actively improving public transport for a long time, investing billions in new trains, electrification, and line reopenings.

There is also a lot of variation between states in terms of GDP, population density, and access to public transport. This complicates negotiations with the federal government over how the costs of the scheme are shared.

While just 7% of Berlin residents are without good bus and train links, that figure rises to 45% in neighbouring Brandenburg, and to 48% in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. The national average is 33%, according to Allianz pro Schiene’s 2024 national mobility study.

But it’s not just the cost of subsidising the tickets. Encouraging greater public transport use on networks that are already bulging at the seams requires major long-term investment in infrastructure and vehicles to increase capacity.

In recent years, DB has become notorious for poor punctuality and reliability, which has undoubtedly caused many potential Deutschlandticket users to stick to their cars.

In response, DB is undertaking a comprehensive restructuring programme, and has set out a number of goals to revive confidence in its services and to reduce infrastructure-related delays by 20%.

By 2027, it will refurbish 1,500km (932 miles) of track on its core network, replace 200 failure-prone signal boxes, and introduce new operational procedures to improve performance at its busiest hubs.

DB is significantly increasing capacity on long-distance trains, and state governments are increasing frequencies on regional routes while investing in other improvements such as more bicycle spaces on trains.

Unfortunately, while the €60bn (£50bn) Deutschlandtakt programme announced in 2019 promised more investment to unblock bottlenecks, build additional tracks, and refurbish unreliable, life-expired infrastructure to reduce congestion and delays by 2030, it has been hampered by political instability and could take decades to deliver.

But what does the travelling public think of Deutschlandticket? Has the simplicity of having just one ticket for all forms of local transport attracted new users? And is it popular?

Sabrina Wendling continues: “Deutschlandticket is very popular indeed, and the simplicity is the most important reason to buy it.

“It has already attracted 13 million users. Most people had some kind of other public transport ticket before, but once there is a long-term perspective for the Deutschlandticket, it will attract many more users who might still be hesitating to buy it.

“There has been a real, measurable modal shift. According to studies, 10.7% of journeys with the ticket are shifted from car trips, which leads to 433 million fewer car trips per year and 2.67 million tonnes of CO2 reduction per year.”

Does it have a long-term future, or will political arguments lead to compromises or even the end of the ticket?

Wendling: “Deutschlandticket was only introduced in May 2023. We still have political discussions concerning the price of the ticket, and (more worryingly) the future of the ticket.

“What we really need is an agreement between all political parties that they want and support Deutschlandticket - so no matter what happens after the next election, people can rely on it. No one will swap their car for public transport if they cannot be sure about its future.”

Allianz pro Schiene’s 2024 national mobility study reports that just 17% of Germans believe their public transport has improved over the last year, with 15% feeling worse off and 68% reporting no change.

One-third of Germans feel that their area does not have adequate public transport links, which inevitably has an effect on the take-up of subscription tickets, especially in states with smaller, more rural populations.

Conversely, in Germany’s major cities such as Berlin and Hamburg, more than 90% of residents are happy with public transport provision, pushing the national average to 67%.

Climate Ticket

Over the border in Austria, similar arguments rage between urban and rural areas over the value of the Klimaticket (Climate Ticket).

By any measure, it represents outstanding value for money for regular travellers, offering access to almost all the country’s public transport.

But what makes Austria’s Klimaticket different is its remarkably low price. Switzerland’s General Abonnement (GA) annual travelcard offers unlimited use of the Confederation’s entire public transport network, but costs three times as much. A similar annual ticket for buses, trains and metro in the Netherlands is priced at more than €3,000 (£2,490).

“One of the things I like about Klimaticket is that it is valid on all modes of public transport - a concept that should be replicated elsewhere as it removes the hassle of having to find and buy multiple tickets,” says European rail travel expert Andy Brabin.

“It is potentially revolutionary, removing some of the barriers to using public transport and making spontaneous trips much easier as you don’t have to worry about buying tickets, which can often be expensive at short notice for longer journeys.”

However, despite an initial boom in sales, fewer than 3% of Austrians subscribe to the annual ticket.

That figure climbs to more than 13% when the regional versions of Klimaticket and city passes are included, but most Austrians are still wedded to their cars for commuting and leisure travel, especially in rural areas where public transport is harder to find.

The journey towards Klimaticket was not a smooth or a quick one. Fifteen years after it was first mooted, 18 months of often-heated negotiations between federal and regional governments, transport organisations and providers eventually led to a last-minute deal.

Even the €3 per day cost was a compromise - the Green Party pledged to slash travel costs to just €1 a day within any region and €2 across any two regions.

Other stakeholders were concerned about the cost of subsidising the scheme, the imbalance between urban and rural areas, and the cannibalisation of existing ticket revenues.

In the years before October 2021, there was intense debate and criticism - especially where public transport density and usage is at its lowest, away from the big cities.

No less than €240 million (£199m) of federal government funding was agreed to support the new initiative, and ongoing costs are estimated at around €150m (£124m) a year.

Despite this, the ticket is regarded as central to Austria’s ambition to become climate-neutral by 2040 - backed by the European Union’s post-COVID ‘Green Deal’.

Opposition parties welcomed the introduction of the ticket, but said it was only a first step towards meeting climate goals.

Johannes Margreiter, transport spokesman for the liberal Neos party, said in 2021: “Price isn’t the reason why people do not switch to public transport. In many places, the problem is the lack of availability because of poor or absent connections.”

Austrians travel more miles by train every year than anyone in Europe except the Swiss. But according to official government figures only 16% of journeys in 2018 were made by public transport.

Whatever the reservations, a nationwide ticket removes one of the biggest barriers to using public transport - trying to figure out which tickets are needed for which journeys.

The Vienna region, home to 50% of the country’s population and 60% of its public transport journeys (around 300,000 people commute into Vienna on a normal weekday) was also late to sign up to the scheme, raising fears that the new ticket would be compromised from the outset.

Even so, the agreement pointed to remarkable levels of co-operation among Austrian provinces and their regional transport authorities, which have different political affiliations, different geographies, and different priorities. Add in the municipalities and numerous public transport operators (40 in the Vienna region alone), and it is remarkable that all the different parties managed to find common ground.

It’s also important to note that Austria has invested billions of euros in improving its national rail network and urban public transport over the past 25 years.

New and expanded main lines, interventions at key locations to relieve congestion, and a massive programme of rolling stock investment to increase capacity and improve quality has resulted in one of Europe’s best railway networks.

Austria’s 2030 Mobility Masterplan aims to reduce private car use from 70% of total annual kilometres travelled to 54% by 2040, at the same time increasing public transport’s share from 27% to 40% and doubling active travel (walking and cycling) from 3% to 6% of the total.

According to the Masterplan, a passenger on an electric train requires just 55% of the energy used by a battery electric car for the same journey.

Enormous savings in carbon emissions can be made even with a relatively small percentage shift to more sustainable modes of travel.

Austria has perhaps succeeded because it’s a relatively small country with a well-funded, cohesive and popular public transport system already in place.

It has invested heavily in building capacity on its main rail corridors so that it can accommodate an increase in the number of fast inter-city services as well as regular-interval regional services, frequent S-Bahn networks in city regions, and increasing volumes of freight.

At the periphery of the Austrian system, the story is less positive. Decades of rural rail closures have cut many smaller towns off from the national network, but on the secondary lines that remain there now seems to be more willingness to improve infrastructure, enhance timetables, and replace polluting diesel trains with electric or battery-electric trains.

Klimaticket could boost improvement prospects still further, especially when coupled with targeted investment in feeder bus routes and active mobility. Green campaigners have called for the offer to be expanded to include cycle hire and e-scooter rental, providing a wider range of car-free travel options.

Do subscription fares such as Deutschlandticket and Klimaticket have the potential to become a blueprint for other countries looking to drastically cut transport emissions?

The Netherlands has the integration, and it was the first country in the world with a national public transport contactless smartcard (OV Chipkaart).

It also has other advantages such as high-frequency services - either already in place or planned - that make it easier to convert car trips to public transport. The provinces have a good degree of control over regional public transport, and in a small, densely populated country they are facing similar transport challenges.

However, before the COVID-19 pandemic parts of the Dutch rail network experienced some serious capacity and overcrowding issues, particularly in the densely populated Randstad conurbation.

The Dutch were caught out in 2017 when discounted travel for students was extended and Netherlands Railways (NS) struggled to cope with the surge in passenger numbers.

Over in Portugal, different concerns have been raised about the new €20 (£16.60) per month Green Rail Pass.

ALLRail, the European lobby group representing non-state train operators calls the ticket “absurdly cheap”. In a recent press release, it said: “This super low price is clearly not sustainable - it will cannibalise every attempt to introduce market opening in long-distance rail in Portugal. It may not even cover one-third of its costs.”

ALLRAIL Secretary General Nick Brooks adds: “This is not the time for hesitation. This is the time for courage, for doing what’s necessary to create a fair, competitive market. Private investors will come to Portugal, but only if there are strong measures against cannibalisation by the taxpayer.”

Supporters of low-priced subscription tickets should be under no illusions that their success depends on far more than just slashing travel costs. Without adequate capacity and network density, and the seamless, reliable connections that truly integrated public transport can offer, easy-to-use low fares will create as many problems as they solve.

Are there any specific conditions that make a ticket offer such as this more possible in Germany and Austria than in other countries such as the UK?

Sabrina Wendling concludes: “Basically, any country can introduce an attractive national ticket for public transport. It is important to make it easy and also affordable for people to use trains and buses.

“But of course, to increase the benefits of such a ticket you also need to improve the public transport network and schedules.

“With both an attractive ticket and an increasingly attractive public transport we can make a difference for climate-friendly everyday mobility.”

Complicated as it is, Austria’s Klimaticket was easier to achieve in a small country with a public transport system that is already co-ordinated and well-funded.

In Germany, established local and regional tariff unions overseeing highly organised public transport systems made it possible to bring together all stakeholders to deliver Deutschlandticket in a remarkably short timeframe.

As it stands, the UK’s jaded, fractured public transport networks do not enjoy the same level of co-operation.

Although the new Labour government has promised to review public transport structures and work with regional stakeholders to improve provision across the nations and regions, there’s no consistent long-term, cross-party consensus on how, or even what, should be delivered.

And with HM Treasury reluctant to permit any changes that affect existing fare revenues or fund better integration between modes, it still feels like a very distant prospect for the UK.