A German government pledge to strengthen the public transportation network is expected to cost the state a three-digit billion amount by 2040, according to a study commissioned by the Association of German Transport Companies. The study, reported by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, reveals that even a plan to maintain the current infrastructure with a focus on quality improvements would result in an average annual increase of 1.44 billion euros in government spending.
If the government aims to expand the network, the financial burden would rise by an average of 3.36 billion euros each year. Currently, the public transportation network in Germany is financed to the tune of two-thirds by the federal, state and local governments. In the past year, the network’s costs totalled 38.8 billion euros, with only 12.3 billion euros generated from ticket sales, the remaining 26 billion euros coming from public funding. The public transportation network is, therefore, already heavily reliant on state subsidies, a situation that is likely to worsen in the future, partly due to the Germany ticket, which, following the COVID-19 pandemic, quickly restored passenger numbers but also led to a decline in revenue for transport companies.
This issue will be discussed at a special transportation minister’s conference in Berlin on June 27, with the conference’s chairman, Bavaria’s Transport Minister Christian Bernreiter, calling on the federal government to take on the future additional costs of the Germany ticket. A compromise between the federal and state governments has yet to be reached.