High fuel prices: District supports transport companies with special payments

Created: 07/16/2022, 18:00

By: Veronika Ahn-Tauchnitz

Expensive fuel: The district will make a special payment of 860,000 euros this year for the MVV regional buses alone.

© Julius Christian Schreiner

Fuel prices have reached unimagined heights, bus companies like the RVO have their backs to the wall.

Now the district of Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen is helping.

Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen

– When the subject of local public transport is on the agenda, the district councilors know one thing for sure: it will be expensive.

This also applied to the joint meeting of the district and environmental committees.

The additional expenses are not only due to a planned improvement of the bus network.

In view of the drastically increased energy costs, the transport companies in the MVV, but also the RVO, need more support.

"The transport companies have approached the carriers all over the country," said Matthias Schmid, public transport expert at the district office, at the meeting.

That also applied to the MVV.

A similar situation existed during the 2008 financial crisis.

"At that time, the districts also gave one-time support for fuel," said Schmid.

"It wasn't that drastic back then."

Special payment of 860,000 euros to transport companies

All MVV regional buses operating in the district are diesel vehicles.

The maximum value per liter at the gas station was 2.32 euros - reached on March 11th.

Although the price has fallen again since then, it is still at a high level.

In order to compensate for this, special payments are planned for the districts involved in the MVV.

That would be 860,000 euros for Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen this year.

"From our point of view, that's justified," said Schmid.

Of course, every transport company has to calculate and bear its own entrepreneurial risk.

"But that's exceeded here." The district also needs these companies.

"We can be happy that we are in such a good position here."

The expenditure could be covered by unplanned income from the MVV annual accounts for 2020 in the amount of 690,000 euros plus a special payment from the Free State of 100,000 euros.

The rest has to come from the district budget somewhere.

And we'll have to see how it goes next year.

Mehner votes against compensation for fuel prices

Vice District Administrator Thomas Holz (CSU) swallowed.

"That's quite a sum.

860,000 euros is half a point of the district levy,” he says, looking at the future burden on cities and communities.

He wondered if half would not be enough.

Ingo Mehner (CSU) was also concerned.

“What other sectors are there?

If construction companies come to us now, will we do it that way too?” After all, this is a voluntary service.

In the end, he did not want to agree to the special payment either, but was alone in the environmental committee with this opinion.

There were two dissenting votes in the district committee – that of Mehner and that of Klaus Heilinglechner (FW).

According to the sums in the MVV, the RVO's request for help seemed comparatively cheap.

The district would have to contribute 190,000 euros by the end of the year.

Here, too, the committees voted in favor against the votes of Mehner or Mehner and Heilinglechner.

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You can find more current news from the region around Bad Tölz at Merkur.de/Bad Tölz.