They still have to check tickets in trains because this only applies to one class of train, and they already are paying people to check tickets and can't/shouldn't fire them all for three months only to bring them all back
What trains would that be? Street cars and busses are the only ones I can think of that don't have first class. Everything from the S-Bahn and "up" has a first class car or section.
In berlin neither the Sbahn nor the Ubahn has first class. The express trains (RE7, RB14, FEX) to the airport don't either as far as I remember and I don't see one when I check[0]. Similar for many other cities I believe, so I'd wager most travelers the 9e ticket is covering will be on vehicles that don't have first class anyway.
Officially, it is not free in order to gauge demand.
Personally, I think there is an ideological and pedagogical element. They don't want people to get used to the idea that something like free transportation is possible.
I heard an interesting talk a couple of years ago about university tuition fees. Germany has fairly low fees compared to other countries. At some universities it is more like a token fee, a couple hundred € per year. Many students get living expenses paid from the state anyway (BAFÖG). It is silly to then pay back some of that immediately. But the thesis of the talk was that the tuition fees were introduced for educational reasons, not to cover the actual cost of teaching. Students were supposed think of themselves as customers, and of education as a good. And they could back this with quotes from neoliberal think tanks. As the FDP (free market 'liberals') is in the coalition, I'm sure one precondition was that the ticket couldn't be free.
A free Android app attracts the worst kind of people and insults hurled at you on support channels. A $0.99 price is enough to make most support emails friendly instead.
0 EUR 2nd class (presumably fairly crowded) and ~market priced 1st (and potentially a car or two of 2nd at normal 2nd fares) might be an interesting experiment.
The infrastructure for selling tickets is already in place, the marginal cost of selling one extra ticket type is essentially zero,
don't have to check tickets in trains and reduce costs
Assuming you have to have at least one person working on the train anyway, for safety reasons if nothing else, having them also check tickets doesn't cost extra.
> Assuming you have to have at least one person working on the train anyway, for safety reasons if nothing else, having them also check tickets doesn't cost extra.
The trains are made of multiple cars without connecting doors, and the driver sits inside a locked cockpit. Tickets are currently checked by personnel that randomly patrol the trains, which are the only staff that passengers see.
It's actually rare to have your ticket checked, but the fine is ~10x the price of the ticket, so it's still worth buying one.
> Assuming you have to have at least one person working on the train anyway, for safety reasons if nothing else, having them also check tickets doesn't cost extra.
That’s actually wrong, regional trains (where this ticket applies) usually have only the Lokführer driving the train, but no additional staff. Checking tickets is done purely by patrols checking trains randomly.
It's also an experiment. They need to know how people react and change their behavior with this cheap ticket. And they still need to check tickets anyway. And the price also serves as a kind of barrier to animate people to at least thing a moment, whether they really need the ticket and can "waste" the monety for it.
Ticket checks are incredibly rare in most cities already, Germans tend to buy tickets because it's illegal not to, not because it's more economical given the fine you pay without one.
And selling tickets will be an extremely minor overhead, probably <5% including re-programming machines.
Germany has about 1000 railway locomotives operating 40k runs a day. A conductor job pays on average 50k€/yr. Most trains I've seen have more than one conductor, and you need to plan for weekends, shifts, time off, etc. but the lower bound should be easy to agree on 50M€/yr or 12.5M€ for the duration of the program? Then there is the entire infra to sell tickets online, in machines and in person.
At the same time there are about 2 million rail customers a day, so the 9€ ticket will bring 18M€. I'd say they probably break even.
Math is fun, but the entire point is a bit moot. Germany is a civilised country and if you laid off the entire staff for three summer months with no pay, the union would eat you for breakfast.
Most trains still need conductors even if they're not checking tickets. Having them check tickets when they're already there won't cost anything extra.
>Most trains I've seen have more than one conductor
At least in Berlin which this covers most trains/buses/trams have 0 people checking and there's a few people going on random ones to occasionally check so the ratio here is probably 1 worker to 50+ vehicles.
I'd also be curious for actual numbers, but certainly on the commuter GO Train in Ontario, it's basically a 3-4 person staffing arrangement, with one person at the back, one in the middle in the accessible coach, and 1-2 in the locomotive. Adding someone whose job it is to roam up and down the train checking tickets adds 25% to the personnel cost, which is why most fares aren't checked.
But quite apart from the person and their ticket-scanner, there's also the whole infrastructure associated with fare taking— fare-free advocates argue that if you get rid of the machines and websites and apps, and all the associated upkeep, it ends up being a wash. Of course this only counts if you're getting rid of all fares rather than doing a one-off summer special.
You don’t actually check any tickets, you just pretend that tickets will be checked at random, regularly. Put up signs to with heavy fines & travel bans for breaking the rules, run some fake newspaper stories of heavy enforcement etc. Make it socially embarrassing not to pay etc etc
This ticket only applies to regional trains. Regional trains usually have a staff of 1 (sitting in the locomotive, driving the train). Tickets are checked by random patrols, which don’t actually cost that much (in each given train at a given time you’ll have a chance of encountering them every few weeks at most).
Often, not even that much, as the check is just one of many jobs the personal has to execute. The other jobs won't disappear just because they might not check now.
* don't have to sell tickets at all
* don't have to check tickets in trains and reduce costs
The overhead of selling tickets with the new price points might actually eat up all what's left of profits.