In June, I asked my followers on Twitter about their daily experience with the €9 ticket in Germany. The result was a nice little data set that got some attention in media, for example this interview I did with Finnish national radio.

In the meantime, the tone in the German media had changed quite a bit. The buzzing about chaos became quieter over the summer, while calls for a follow-up grew louder.

As the finale of the one-off offer on 31 August was nearing, I was curious what conclusions my followers would draw from the experiment. So I started another survey on Twitter. This time I asked not only about general satisfaction, but wanted to know more about the actual usage of the €9 ticket and its effects on mobility behavior.

For this purpose, I created a questionnaire of eleven individual polls. While the participation in June was already good, this time I was simply blown away. Due to retweets by some big accounts, all polls together gained a total of 36,565 votes.

Some results I find interesting:

• 76 percent of the voters were satisfied with the €9 ticket even after the entire period of validity.
• 93 percent would like to see a similar flat-fare mobility offer in Germany on a permanent basis.
• Perhaps most surprisingly, 27 percent of the car owners who participated in the survey would consider selling their car if there was a permanent €9 ticket.

It was also widely acclaimed how easy travel had become all of a sudden. With the €9 ticket, the infamous patchwork of German tariff zones collapsed overnight, and for at least one summer, travel was as easy as a walk in the park. It’s fair to say that the experience was mind-boggling for many, showing what public transport could look like in the future.

For a complete analysis of the survey with all the facts, figures and data, check out this thread on Twitter.

Once again, it should be noted that a poll on Twitter is in no way representative and may be biased in many ways. Nevertheless, I was pleased to see that my followers drew a more nuanced picture than what I grasped from some media.