© dpa
For another month, passengers can travel throughout Germany with a 9-euro public transport ticket - and demand remains high in Berlin and Brandenburg.
So far, around five million of the special tickets have been sold in both federal states via the transport companies, a spokesman for the Berlin-Brandenburg Transport Association (VBB) stated upon request. Four million of these tickets were sold in Berlin.
The Berlin transport company BVG stated that it had sold more than 2.4 million 9-euro tickets up to and including Thursday. "Out of these, more than 1.1 million each were sold for the months of June and July and just over 200,000 for the month of August."
The great public interest in the 9-Euro-Ticket is also reflected in the utilization of trains, the VBB spokesman explained. Train utilization had risen by up to a quarter overall as a result of the cheaper ticket and was now almost back to the level seen before the Coronavirus pandemic. The BVG concurred: "According to the latest evaluations, passenger demand on BVG vehicles has reached the pre-Corona level of the summer holiday period."
Trains remain crowded, especially on routes to the Baltic Sea and to Schwerin, where many passengers changed trains from Berlin to Hamburg, said the VBB spokesman. In the meantime, however, passengers have become more accustomed to the situation. Accordingly, there were hardly any complaints in July. Some construction sites, which had slowed down traffic around Pentecost in particular, have now been completed. One problem for the companies and passengers is reportedly the high level of sickness among employees, partly due to the virus.