Ten-minute intervals in Dachau's public transport: buses are slowly filling up again

Created: 02/21/2022, 20:00

By: Stefanie Zipfer

Unfortunately, many city buses, here route 722, have been driving around empty all too often or only sparsely occupied.

But the passenger situation is slowly improving, the municipal utilities report.

© Norbert Habschied

In the middle of the pandemic, the city of Dachau dared a courageous experiment: it massively expanded its local public transport.

So far, this decision has cost a lot of (tax) money, but the situation is improving, as the head of the transport company, Matthias Fay, assured the city councilors.

Dachau

– The city council has long been largely in agreement that a city like Dachau needs public bus services every ten minutes instead of every 20 minutes.

In May 2020, however, there was disagreement on the question of when this tight schedule on bus lines 719, 720, 722 and 726 should start.

For financial reasons and because the number of passengers in the entire MVV area collapsed at the beginning of the corona pandemic, the city administration, mayor and SPD were of the opinion that the public transport booster should wait for the time being.

However, a majority in the city council did not want to wait: in December 2020, the ten-minute interval was introduced on the four lines;

In advance, the city had purchased natural gas buses, hired drivers and also built its own natural gas filling station so that the new buses from MAN could also be refueled.

The works committee wanted to know from Matthias Fay, the head of the transport operations department at the Dachauer Stadtwerke, to what extent this around 10 million euro investment in the hoped-for traffic turnaround was worthwhile.

Not only many citizens, but also the SPD had crept up the suspicion last year: "Unfortunately, the city buses are empty."

The most important message in Fay's report: Yes, many buses actually run empty, but things are going uphill.

"It is becoming clear that the revenue is drastically below the revenue before the pandemic, but the values ​​​​are improving again since April 2021, at least compared to the previous year."

In figures: The difference in income between January 2019 and January 2021 is minus 44.68 percent;

between February 2019 and February 2021 is minus 50.26 percent, between March 2019 and March 2021 minus 38.54 percent.

In April 2021, the municipal utilities even took in 51.42 percent less than in April 2019. Nevertheless, April 2021 marked a trend reversal, since then - for the first time after months of dry spells - the comparison to 2020 was positive: 25.35 percent more income brought in the month of the municipal utilities.

Reason for Fay to say: "We are again noticing a continuous, albeit slowly growing, demand".

And the bus boss of the public utility had more good news: A driver shortage or difficulties in filling the bus driver positions was "not recognizable", according to Fay, the applicants would appreciate the advantages of the public service and therefore "willingly accept from the private sector change us".

Dissatisfied passengers or those who refuse to wear a mask are “not a major problem”.

In addition, there are “passengers who are satisfied beyond the normal level”.   

Councilors on the committee acknowledged that pre-pandemic ridership levels have not yet been reached.

The fact that the number of passengers on the ring lines has risen by 25 percent since the introduction of the ten-minute service was seen by the majority of the committee as a success.

Traffic officer Volker C. Koch (SPD) said: "Sure, the buses are not fully utilized, but the numbers are going up." should.

Gertrud Schmidt-Podolsky (CSU) emphasized that there are of course buses in which only “two to four people ride”, but elsewhere there are “15 to 18 people on the bus”.

The buses are "only apparently empty".

Together, the city council also “fought through” to “change the quality of how people move around the city”.

Undoing everything now and going back to the earlier 20-minute cycle is "not thinking enough".   

In view of the fact that many Dachau residents referred to the empty buses as "ghost buses", according to Richard Seidl (Greens), one should then please complain about the many "ghost cars".

Peter Gampenrieder (ÜB) countered that “this debate is useless: We shouldn’t play the individual modes of transport off against each other.

No one is worse than the other"!

The ten-minute intervals are well received and have done local transport good.

"However, it takes time for it to become established."

Only Markus Kellerer (AfD) did not want to take this time.

"We should stop riding this dead horse and get off." He simply doesn't see any permanent improvement in passenger numbers, "that costs all tax money".

Mayor Florian Hartmann also had to admit that the "true potential" of the increase in frequency can only be assessed "after Corona".

The question here is: “Will it be like it was before Corona after Corona?”