Germany’s unlimited €49-a-month rail pass to launch on 1 May

Pass-holders will qualify for unlimited travel by rail, tram and bus

Happy place: Hamburg’s main railway station, busy with passengers during last summer’s €9 unlimited travel promotion (Simon Calder)

Germany’s long-awaited unlimited monthly travel pass will be available from 1 May, with applications expected to open on 3 April.

The Deutschlandticket (“Germany ticket”) will provide unlimited travel by rail, tram and bus anywhere in the nation for €49 (£43) per month – equivalent to just £1.40 per day. The pass is expected to become known as the “D-Ticket”.

Passengers will need to take out a monthly subscription, which British travellers can do online at bahn.com or via the DB Navigator app.

There is no minimum term for the deal, so people wanting just one month of travel can cancel after they have obtained the first ticket.

The pass will be issued only for whole calendar months; a trip which straddles May and June, for example, will require two monthly tickets.

The pass is a permanent replacement for the €9 (£8) monthly ticket that was trialled in June, July and August 2022.

“The €9 ticket was introduced by the German government to relieve the burden on people due to the sharp rise in costs for electricity, food, heating and mobility,” says Deutsche Bahn (German Railways).

The offer led to a surge in travel by public transport through the summer. The permanent replacement, like its predecessor, will cover all but the fastest trains, plus U-Bahn and S-Bahn networks in the cities.

Any journey across Germany is possible using slower regional express trains. The offer will extend into Switzerland and Austria due to the location of Deutsche Bahn stations at Basel and Salzburg respectively.

In addition, it can be seamlessly combined with Luxembourg’s innovative free public transport strategy simply by boarding a cross-border train between Germany and the Grand Duchy.

The annual cost of the offer to the German taxpayer is estimated to be €3bn (£2.65bn), with central government putting up half the funding and the 16 Länder (federal states) providing the rest.