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Throw in a little more on a regular basis: The prices for local rail transport have risen significantly more than the costs of driving a car in recent years
Photo: Inga Kjer / Photothek / Getty Images
Those who commute by train are climate-friendly - and are not financially rewarded for doing so.
In recent years, the costs have risen significantly more than those for drivers.
This is shown by an evaluation by the Pro-Rail Alliance based on data from the Federal Statistical Office, which is available to SPIEGEL.
Accordingly, passengers in local rail transport paid an average of 16 percent more last year than in 2015. Driving, on the other hand, was only four percent more expensive.
"Driving is currently cheap, even compared to the 1960s and 1970s, and that despite the CO2 tax," says Wolfgang Maennig, economist at the University of Hamburg.
Overall, driving a car has become increasingly affordable in comparison to traveling by train in recent years.
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This price development runs counter to the climate goals of the German government and the European Union.
Because emissions in the transport sector should actually fall - and public transport plays a key role in this, it should steal market share from the car.
So far, however, they have not really managed to break the dominance of the car - and more rapidly rising prices in local rail transport are making public transport less attractive to motorists.
Driving in public is regularly becoming more expensive
A long-standing trend is thus continuing.
According to a study by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), the price index in rail transport rose significantly more than the driver price index from 1991 to 2017.
The DIW researchers justified this with only slightly rising fuel prices, while the prices in public passenger transport rose steadily - more in local transport than in long-distance transport.
Measured against the price indices for transport services, the prices in public passenger transport have more than doubled since the beginning of the 1990s.
According to the authors, this was mainly due to the fact that the state wanted to generate more income from local public transport in order to reduce its deficits.
At the same time, many transport companies have not been able to work significantly more productively.
The managing director of Allianz pro Schiene, Dirk Flege, sees the figures as evidence of an urgent need for political action.
It is unacceptable "that the costs for climate-friendly local rail transport are increasing more than those for individual motorized transport."
Anyone who opts for an environmentally friendly means of transport should not be punished financially, said Flege.
Depending on where you live, the car is the more convenient means of transport for many people anyway because it enables door-to-door journeys.
Tax cut in long-distance rail transport as a model
The Pro-Rail Alliance is therefore calling for the railways to be exempted from electricity tax and the EEG surcharge for electrically operated trains to be reduced significantly.
According to the railway lobby association, a look at long-distance transport shows what consequences a tax relief can have.
There prices fell by 15.4 percent in 2020.
This is a consequence of the lower VAT rate of seven percent introduced in 2020 in long-distance rail transport, which the industry passed on to customers.
Economist Maennig would make public transport more attractive in another way.
You have to assign the real costs to driving a car due to accidents and environmental damage, so far it has often been cheaper than traveling by train.
"This gap is so great that it cannot be remedied with one or two cents more per liter and three percent cheaper tickets," explains Maennig.
He therefore considers the CO2 tax introduced at the turn of the year to be the right approach in principle.
As a result, however, fuel prices only rose by around eight cents per liter at the turn of the year - and despite the annually rising CO2 price, a liter of petrol or diesel will probably cost only 15 to 17 cents more in 2025 than at the end of 2020, according to ADAC.
City toll or mandatory ticket as a solution
Maennig calculates that to cover the negative environmental impacts of using one liter of fuel, a liter of petrol or diesel should actually cost more than two euros.
However, this is politically unenforceable.
The CO2 tax alone could not close the cost gap, argues Allianz pro Schiene managing director Flege.
In addition, the federal government has decided to increase the commuting allowance at the same time, so that driving remains attractively priced.
Economist Maennig therefore proposes additional measures for the CO2 tax, for example a city toll, the income of which flows into local public transport - but there is also another option: “Everyone who allows a car must have an annual subscription for the local one Buy local transport, ”says Maennig.
Drivers would use this ticket even if they hate public transport, according to the economist.
"You paid for it, the marginal costs are zero - that makes most people defiant and they get on the train." Not all motorists would then change, but you get them on the train more often - "and at the same time it makes it more expensive Drive".
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