Germany: Mobility app for public transport to come

Thanks to the 9-euro ticket, public transportation is currently booming as perhaps never before. At any rate, rail travel has never been easier. The traffic light government now wants to pick up where it left off and is planning a nationwide mobility app for the whole of Germany. Fittingly, Deutsche Bahn wants to invest 13.6 billion euros in digitization.

Mobility app planned for Germany

As reported by the Stuttgarter Zeitung, the German government plans to make public transportation easier to use even after the period of the 9-euro ticket. It said it was now working on solutions for a Germany-wide mobility app that would make travel more convenient even beyond regional borders.

According to Green Party politician Matthias Gastel, the clear and simple rules of the 9-euro ticket will be carried over into the future. At the same time, they will “push forward a cross-provider digital booking and payment,” Michael Theurer of the FDP told the newspaper.

However, the new app is not to be developed directly by the Federal Ministry of Transport. Instead, one wants to create the necessary technical conditions and “oblige transport companies and mobility providers to provide their real-time data under fair conditions,” said Theurer to N-tv. A concrete timetable for the implementation of the mobility app and matching systems, however, was not named.

Since the beginning of June 2022, the so-called 9-euro ticket has been causing a real boom in local public transport. This is due, in addition to the fair pricing, but also mainly to the ease of travel planning and booking.

• Read more: In Lower Saxony, the first hydrogen trains are rolling

For ÖPNV chief executive Gerd Landsberg, it is also important to provide a nationwide public transport country permanently after the 9-euro ticket: “Therefore, we must think about it, to follow in perspective a nationwide valid, uniform and discounted ticket,” said Landberg to the Handelsblatt.