The federal government rejects state demands for more money for public transport

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S-Bahn in Hamburg

Photo: Marijan Murat / picture alliance / dpa

When expanding public transport for local transport, the federal government rejects demands from the states for more money.

According to SPIEGEL information, there was no agreement on this point at the Prime Ministers' Conference (MPK) with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

The states had gone into the round with the demand that the federal government should not only provide 1.5 billion euros for a successor model of the 9-euro ticket, but also a further 1.5 billion euros for regionalization funds in order to expand and modernize public transport.

In addition, the federal states wanted 1.65 billion euros each for further regionalization funds for 2022 and 2023 - beyond a legal adjustment to the costs, which have risen sharply as a result of the energy crisis.

At the MPK, Scholz rejected almost all of these demands, as SPIEGEL learned from participants.

The federal government does not want to give out more than the 1.5 billion for the successor to the 9-euro ticket.

For the time being, it was agreed that the matter would be returned to the federal and state transport ministries.

They should quickly come up with a concept.

Local public transport is not the first topic of the MPK where the federal and state governments got stuck.

Previously, it had not been possible to reach an agreement on the question of covering the costs of housing benefit.

The states wanted the federal government to pay for this item alone in the future.

But that could not be done with Scholz.

After a heated debate, the item was removed, although the countries continue to maintain their request.

In June, July and August, the 9-euro tickets enabled travel on buses and trains in local public transport throughout Germany for one month.

The federal government financed the campaign with 2.5 billion euros to compensate for loss of income from transport providers.

Around 52 million tickets were sold throughout Germany.

Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) said at the beginning of September that the aim was to have a successor model at the beginning of 2023.

However, he left open how the cost distribution between the federal government, the states and customers should look like in concrete terms.

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