Climate ticket: expensive, ineffective gesture toward wrong group

It sounds like music to the ears: unlimited travel by train, bus, tram, and metro for only 9 euros per month. Now that fuel prices are skyrocketing due to unrest in the Persian Gulf, political party PRO proposes introducing a “climate ticket” this summer. The goal is noble. We want to ease pressure on people’s wallets while simultaneously encouraging them to leave their cars behind. But international experience shows that this is an unwise solution that serves neither the climate nor society.

The core idea is that cheaper public transport lures motorists out of their cars. It is an assumption that sounds intuitively logical, but that collapses time and again when tested against reality. Cars and public transport are hardly vessels of communication. The ticket will certainly be used, but not as a replacement for the car.

Experiences in Germany confirm this. In the summer of 2022, people could travel across the entire country for nine euros per month using regional public transport. The Ifo Institute calculated that car traffic decreased by only a few percent, despite a government investment of 2.5 billion euros. Its successor, the Deutschlandticket of 49 euros per month, shows the same pattern. TU Munich tracked travelers using GPS and found that 35 percent of ticket holders traveled more often by public transport, while only 3 percent drove less. A ratio of more than twelve to one. What the cheap ticket mainly did was create additional, often recreational trips.

Pressure on infrastructure

What we did see in Germany was unprecedented pressure on infrastructure. Trains were overcrowded, punctuality fell into freefall, and transport operators' operational losses ran into the billions. Loyal travelers, who normally pay the full fare, suddenly benefit from a low price, or drop out because the journey became less comfortable and less reliable. Luxembourg went one step further, making all public transport completely free as early as 2020. Three years later, traffic jams were just as long as before. Here too, researchers discovered that, by far, the most new public transport users were people who previously walked or cycled. The car remained unaffected.

And then the climate argument. The ticket is supposed to be called a climate ticket, but if additional train trips do not replace car trips, there is no net CO₂ gain. In fact, the pressure on the rail system inevitably leads to calls for more trains, more rolling stock, more capacity. And in practice, those trains mainly run on grey electricity, no matter how green the certificates and marketing claims may be. The net effect on the climate of all that extra travel is negative. The name climate ticket is therefore misleading.

Distortion

The most problematic aspect is the social imbalance. For people who are hit hardest by high fuel prices, public transport is often not a realistic alternative. Where many people used to be unable to afford a car, more and more people today cannot afford to live without one. This group gains nothing from a cheap public transport ticket. The € 490 million that PRO wants to allocate for this by abolishing a tax benefit for investors does not reach them.

What then?

There are better alternatives. Focus policy on groups that truly need public transport, for example, through targeted initiatives such as the Onderwegpas, a social travel pass. Regrettably rejected by the previous government, but clearly deserving a second chance. And stimulate electric driving, because that is where the greatest climate gains lie for people who rely on cars. Look at France, where, through social leasing, electric cars are made accessible for about €100 per month to low-income groups. That hits exactly the group that currently has no alternative. The future of clean transport does not lie in cheaper train tickets, but in a smart interplay of targeted public transport policy and the electrification of road traffic.

The climate ticket sounds sympathetic, but it is extremely ineffective and expensive. The science is clear: cheap public transport leads to more public transport trips, but hardly fewer cars on the road. And ultimately, it is bad for public transport, for society, and for the climate.

This column was first published in FD and republished with permission.