* don't have to sell tickets at all
* don't have to check tickets in trains and reduce costs
The overhead of selling tickets with the new price points might actually eat up all what's left of profits.
0. https://flughafenexpress.deutschebahn.com/fex-en/Tickets-and...
Personally, I think there is an ideological and pedagogical element. They don't want people to get used to the idea that something like free transportation is possible.
I heard an interesting talk a couple of years ago about university tuition fees. Germany has fairly low fees compared to other countries. At some universities it is more like a token fee, a couple hundred € per year. Many students get living expenses paid from the state anyway (BAFÖG). It is silly to then pay back some of that immediately. But the thesis of the talk was that the tuition fees were introduced for educational reasons, not to cover the actual cost of teaching. Students were supposed think of themselves as customers, and of education as a good. And they could back this with quotes from neoliberal think tanks. As the FDP (free market 'liberals') is in the coalition, I'm sure one precondition was that the ticket couldn't be free.
A free Android app attracts the worst kind of people and insults hurled at you on support channels. A $0.99 price is enough to make most support emails friendly instead.
The infrastructure for selling tickets is already in place, the marginal cost of selling one extra ticket type is essentially zero,
don't have to check tickets in trains and reduce costs
Assuming you have to have at least one person working on the train anyway, for safety reasons if nothing else, having them also check tickets doesn't cost extra.
That’s actually wrong, regional trains (where this ticket applies) usually have only the Lokführer driving the train, but no additional staff. Checking tickets is done purely by patrols checking trains randomly.
The trains are made of multiple cars without connecting doors, and the driver sits inside a locked cockpit. Tickets are currently checked by personnel that randomly patrol the trains, which are the only staff that passengers see.
It's actually rare to have your ticket checked, but the fine is ~10x the price of the ticket, so it's still worth buying one.
And selling tickets will be an extremely minor overhead, probably <5% including re-programming machines.
At the same time there are about 2 million rail customers a day, so the 9€ ticket will bring 18M€. I'd say they probably break even.
Math is fun, but the entire point is a bit moot. Germany is a civilised country and if you laid off the entire staff for three summer months with no pay, the union would eat you for breakfast.
At least in Berlin which this covers most trains/buses/trams have 0 people checking and there's a few people going on random ones to occasionally check so the ratio here is probably 1 worker to 50+ vehicles.
But quite apart from the person and their ticket-scanner, there's also the whole infrastructure associated with fare taking— fare-free advocates argue that if you get rid of the machines and websites and apps, and all the associated upkeep, it ends up being a wash. Of course this only counts if you're getting rid of all fares rather than doing a one-off summer special.