In the first half of 2024, the number of people travelling by bus and train increased by around six percent, the Federal Statistical Office reported. One reason is the German ticket. When it comes to long-distance rail transport, the trend points in a different direction.
About 5.6 billion people traveled by public transport on buses and trains in the first half of 2024. This represents an increase of about six percent in the number of passengers compared to the previous year.
The Germany Pass, which was launched in May 2023, is likely to have contributed to this increase, the Federal Statistical Office announced.
More passengers on regional trains and trams
Statisticians noted the biggest increase in local rail transport: numbers rose by twelve percent to 1.3 billion passengers. Tram passengers increased by seven percent to 1.9 billion.
According to the statistics office, only a four percent increase was recorded in buses. However, statisticians point out that the increase here could actually have been higher because buses are rarely equipped with automatic passenger counting systems:
As empirical analyses show, bus companies with such systems already achieved higher passenger growth in 2023 than public transport bus companies as a whole – but this effect was not as pronounced for railway and tram companies.
strike related Decrease in long-distance rail traffic
But in long-distance rail transport, passenger numbers fell by five percent year-on-year. Statisticians attribute this primarily to strike-related failures in the first quarter.
In the first quarter, this resulted in a decrease in the number of passengers on long-distance trains by 11% compared to the same period last year. In the second quarter, there was a slight increase of one percentage point. The number of passengers on long-distance rail transport is 69 million, which is significantly lower than the number of passengers on local transport in general.
Bus companies profit from rail strikes
With five million passengers every six months, long-distance bus transport is relatively small. However, long-distance bus companies appear to have benefited from the strike-related cancellation of trains.
In the first quarter, long-distance bus passenger numbers increased by 12 percent. In the second quarter, which was not affected by the rail strikes, they fell by three percent.
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