It's a horrible mess - and still too expensive for people with low incomes. In hindsight, it is amazing that the 9 Euro ticket experiment last year worked at all.
- always need to buy a ticket: talk to a driver (who usually acts annoyed on behalf of the whole bus that you are holding up) or waste time trying to figure out ticket machines when you should be catching a connection;
- always need to carry cash (fun fact: there's a line from DE into NL with a big warning sign where there'd usually be ads, saying that in DE you can pay with cash only and in NL by card only, so come prepared!);
- need to check whether your ticket from city A to C is valid when taking a route that goes through city B where you'd like to make an intermediate stop (I called support for this once and could not for the life of me get a straight yes/no answer, she kept saying (iirc) wenn es auf dem direkten Weg ist which... is an intermediate stop direct ever? I'm pretty sure the answer for ticket validity is yes but she sounded like no, I'm still not sure 3 years later and I still commute between those towns, just usually via a different connection that doesn't stop in B);
- in many regions, you can't buy a ticket online via the national rail company, you need to separately deal with the local line operators to make your trip planning even more fun!
In NL I've got a chipcard plus a 2€/month subscription which gives me 40% off on weekends but, more importantly, lets me beep in and out of any mode of transport without wasting anyone's time and it automatically bills my bank account (instead of having to top it up prepaid, as is the default without subscription). I go where I please and don't have to deal with billing.
That's why I'll be getting the 49€ subscription straight away. I want to use public transport, but besides the limitations of the system (how fast you get from A to B), it's currently additionally a hassle to deal with billing. Even if the poorest aren't helped, everyone else now has less of an excuse not to use it. I'm much more okay getting an extra ticket for the long distant transport (intercity) that is usually just one leg and is not a spontaneous journey anyway.
I buy all my tickets online. That's largely possible in Germany. I can't remember when I last needed to buy a physical ticket.
The bus drivers are comically confused when I try to buy "einen Viererkahrte zu Aachen, drei Stück" so that I don't have to deal with it every other office day (this I can pay with a convenient 50€ bill and lasts about a month, give or take). Then I still have to stamp them per trip and will be last in line for a seat, but at least I don't have to bother the driver most days.
A regional operator where the ticket can't be bought online or via a smartphone should be really really rare in Germany by now. Which operator is it, which has no online payment option?
...which I guess is why I never looked further and saw they have an app now. Never heard of Naveo before, maybe it was introduced recently? Either way, that looks like it might now be possible! Why did no driver ever mention / did the buses/stations not advertise this before it's ripe for being replaced with the 50 euro subscription?!
I use it sometimes for the last bit of my long distance travel if I visit my parents (not directly in VRR region but in Regionalverkehr Münsterland (RMV)). It states that it works for all stops within NRW - which is annoying as one of the busses I could take actually goes to Osnabrück (Niedersachsen) and I cannot use - even though it's actually operated by the NRW regional transit provider.
Overall public transit is / was a mess in germany and 9€ Ticket really was an eye opener on how easy it could be to hop on and off of everything that's moving however you like.
On the other hand if you get a DB ticket across regions it might include local transportation at the begin/destination of the cross-regional route as part of the DB ticket. And this they are not allowed to provide you if your DB ticket isn't cross regional. E.g. if you buy a ICE ticket from one station in Berlin to another station in Berlin they can't offer that. (Most ICEs passing through Berlin stop at least at 2 stations in Berlin).
How nice or bad it is differs MASSIVELY depending on where you are in Germany (sorry for the caps).
E.g. in Berlin it works rather simple and straight forward. But then recently someone I know went to another city and Germany and was completely inable to figure out if a ticket they had bought to get from A to B also worked for A to C (close by B). That wasn't a stupid person but someone rather clever.
Similar in some areas the local public transport companies bounded together creating some kind of "common organization" (e.g. VBB for Berlin & Brandenburg) and in some areas you have a splinter network of many smaller local transportation companies.
It is still an interesting cultural observation that here in NL, even people who manually buy a ticket at the driver while struggling using the card terminal do not seem to get an annoyed response inherently even on a half-filled bus, whereas in Germany it seemed almost expected to get chewed out for not having exact change or taking more than 10 seconds to gather a pile of coins - in the pre-app era, of course.
¹ Pinnen existed before ov-chipkaart to they're okay with one form of electronic payment but don't even want to try out another... I'm waiting for the day where I am that old, probably then I'll understand!
Note that "rural" in NL means civilization is virtually always <5 minutes driving but there's still no public transport to speak of (a bus might come once an hour between 8 and 19 'o clock... going home after an evening of visiting family or going out? Tough luck).
(Rant: The bus companies keep reducing frequency, operating hours, and stop count due to unprofitability and, guess what? Line profitability keeps going down! It's surprising, really. When it's made so inconvenient to use mass transit, why would anyone choose to buy a car? It's beyond anyone's understanding..!)
Buy the ticket at the bus station or use your phone.
I don't know how often you do intermediate stops, that seem nice case to me. But even then, you just add 'via' when you book your ticket and that's it. Easy as pie.
> - in many regions, you can't buy a ticket online via the national rail company, you need to separately deal with the local line operators to make your trip planning even more fun!
Is this actually the case in Germany? That's crazy, we solved this long ago in Switzerland.
Sorry if I came across differently, indeed I don't think any of these are unsolvable or inherent with public transport. The Netherlands and Germany each have strengths (the former a more convenient and reliable system in cities; the latter better service on the countryside), so clearly it can all be done.
Practically for most areas in Germany it can be available from May the 1st as an in-app only ticket.
That is what matters.
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PS: No idea why anyone is discussion chip card, it's not an option. Every public transport system in Germany (should) have the capability to scan QR codes from APP or paper. Partially due to DB RE/RB/IC/ICE trickets having "include local transportation at start/destination" options. (And I think roughly that system was also used for the 9€ ticket.). Chip cards on the other hand can not be read by many public transportation systems and even if it would be a mess due to how such systems work, i.e. chip card systems (as used by public transportation) are generally not build to be accessed across disjoint independent systems and are much less flexible. They have their benefits, but non of the benefits matter for a person bound monthly fix price ticket in the context of how public transportation works in Germany. So integrating chip cards would be just a grate wast of resources IMHO.
It can be said about anything. 49€ per month for transportation in all cities is 5% of a low-income salary; Saying that this effort is not enough validates the theorem that no government is left enough for a leftist to stop saying “It’s not really left”.
In my area, lower-income workers still usually need cars. They spend at least this much on gas each month. There's a lack of reliable transit options which makes a vicious cycle of low ridership and fewer options. I wish we could build out the bus/rail system we need and promote it. The city's not that big and everywhere could be within 30 minutes if buses and trains were as frequent as they are in other countries.
I think the German transit authorities are looking at the situation and saying that there are a lot of people who currently drive that could be given a little incentive to take rail. Sometimes when you make something free, people stop valuing it. If the goal is to boost ridership, a nominal cost makes people want to get their money's worth by riding. But at free, they might continue to drive and keep the train just for days when the car is in the shop. People are weird like that.
Many with low incomes who do work have access to free or cheap transport tickets as part of social benefits.
I'm trying to identify which person is unable to buy a rail ticket who otherwise should have one. On whose behalf is the OP pleading?