Germany will introduce a new ticket for travel in January. It’s a welcome follow-up to the 9-Euro ticket it launched during the summer. The nationwide monthly ticket – dubbed the “Deutschlandticket” – will offer unlimited travel on regional and public transport for just 49 euros per month. Here’s what we know about the 49-euro ticket.
At a summit between the federal government last week, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the state premiers came to an agreement over a number of financing issues, paving the way for the introduction of the ticket early next year.
Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing said that the ticket would help to make public transport a permanently more attractive option than driving. He added that, by offering nationwide access to public and regional transport networks, the ticket would help rid the country of the “tariff zone jungle” that exists across different regions.
The ticket will be offered digitally as a subscription that can be cancelled monthly, meaning users are not locked into an annual subscription, as is often the case with season tickets. It’s not clear whether it will also be available as a paper ticket from ticket machines, but the subscription model makes this seem unlikely.
As with the 9-euro ticket, which sold 52 million times over the summer, the Deutschlandticket will permit the holder unlimited travel on regional and public transport across the whole of Germany – including buses, trams, U-bahns, S-bahns and regional trains, but no long-distance trains.
For the moment, the 49-euro price tag has only been confirmed as an “introductory offer”, which will initially last two years
