This "consideration" comes with a couple grains of salt.
First the regulatory-political climate: The pronouncement was stated days ahead of a court ruling regarding what measurements communities could take to reduce air pollution, as well as weeks ahead of a decision the EU will make about how to punish countries that repeatedly miss pollution thresholds, like Germany.
That means: The government is telling communities 'behave', dare not prohibit any type of cars (diesel) from entering your cities, you may get into our "free public transport program" instead.
That it is a crude plan is exemplified by the fact, that some of the "first tier" communities in the plan didn't knew about the plan at all and first heard from it in the news, most of them were just informed days before. So far, all communities criticize the idea.
The estimated costs for Hamburg alone would amount to 800-900 million EUR/year, paid by all the rest of Germany. And then there is the problem that public transit crosses community boundaries - the crude plan though as it is, would grant citizens of one community free access to the same transit system that the neighbouring citizens would have to pay in full.
Regardless of whether free public transit makes sense at all - The fact that it is brought up in such a crude proposal and the fact that it is a progressive idea taken "hostage" by conservatives it is an idea bound to fail and to be muted a long time afterwards.
This "consideration" comes with a couple grains of salt.
First the regulatory-political climate: The pronouncement was stated days ahead of a court ruling regarding what measurements communities could take to reduce air pollution, as well as weeks ahead of a decision the EU will make about how to punish countries that repeatedly miss pollution thresholds, like Germany.
That means: The government is telling communities 'behave', dare not prohibit any type of cars (diesel) from entering your cities, you may get into our "free public transport program" instead.
That it is a crude plan is exemplified by the fact, that some of the "first tier" communities in the plan didn't knew about the plan at all and first heard from it in the news, most of them were just informed days before. So far, all communities criticize the idea.
The estimated costs for Hamburg alone would amount to 800-900 million EUR/year, paid by all the rest of Germany. And then there is the problem that public transit crosses community boundaries - the crude plan though as it is, would grant citizens of one community free access to the same transit system that the neighbouring citizens would have to pay in full.
Regardless of whether free public transit makes sense at all - The fact that it is brought up in such a crude proposal and the fact that it is a progressive idea taken "hostage" by conservatives it is an idea bound to fail and to be muted a long time afterwards.