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Together against the train: long-distance bus lines lure with cheap tickets
Photo: Ralph Peters / imago images
The buses stayed in the depot for months.
Bus routes across Germany had to stop travel during the pandemic twice.
While market leader Flixbus added the first routes to the timetable in March, the competition is now following suit.
The long-distance buses of the French competitor BlablaCar, which so far has been known primarily for its car-sharing agency, have been running again since Thursday.
The company announced that there are around 30 percent more bookings for bus trips than at the last restart last year.
More and more people are vaccinated and the desire to travel is growing.
In order to prepare for the boom, for example, 75 trips per week would be offered on the Berlin-Munich route, twice as many as before the pandemic.
"We have great ambitions in the German market," company boss Nicolas Brusson announced in May.
The route network is to be doubled to 200 intercity connections in a year and a half.
Before the crisis, Flixbus had expanded rapidly for years since the market was liberalized in 2013, swallowed up competitors and most recently had a market share of 95 percent.
The company also offers rail travel under the Flixtrain brand and competes on some routes with Deutsche Bahn, whose ticket prices are often higher.
So far, the green trains have served 36 cities.
A price war with falling ticket prices could develop between Blablacar and Flixbus on some routes.
International, potent investors are behind both providers.
But they cannot settle the matter alone among themselves.
With Pinkbus, another provider wants to fight for market share.
The company offers direct connections between metropolises like Frankfurt and Munich without intermediate stops and advertises itself as the “fastest long-distance bus route in Germany”.
Another newcomer is the bus travel startup Roadjet, which is aimed at business travelers with more comfort such as wider seats.
What all long-distance bus lines have in common is that their biggest competitor is the train - and the car.
fww / dpa
