Nearly 52 million tickets have been sold, in addition to 10 million people who already have a subscription. In rural areas, success has been less due to short supply, but a study showed that many new travelers used public transportation.
About 20 percent indicated that they “seldom or never use regional transport”; 27 percent of customers indicated that they used to take a bus or tram at most once a month.
10 percent of users said they now use public transportation at least once a week on a trip they would normally take by car, according to a survey of 6,000 participants who tracked their transportation behavior week after week. Day trips to the doctor or supermarket were particularly popular, with 52 per cent of travelers using the €9 ticket. It is also used by a third of passengers to go to work.
But many new train users don’t necessarily mean (relatively) fewer car trips: some people are simply starting to take the train more, in addition to their car trips. In the end, about 10 percent of public transit trips could have replaced the car trip in August, which is more than previously thought. “During those three months, we saved as much CO2 as we would by imposing a general speed limit for an entire year,” says Oliver Wolf, CEO of VDV.
