At the beginning of June, Germany launched a program that allowed people to travel on regional trains, trams and buses with a monthly fare of 9 euros.

The monthly fare was valid during the summer of 2022, in June, July and August, and the decision to implement such a program came at a time when the German government is trying to save up on fuels and to step up its decarbonization schedule.

Now, the first results of this program came in. According to the date gathered by the Association of German Transport Companies (VDV), in cooperation with the national rail carrier Deutsche Bahn and the marketing research organizations Forsa and RC Research, cited by Clean Technica, a total of 52 million tickets were sold during the last 3 months. 20% of them were bought by people that usually don't use public transportation.

In accordance, the number of trips by automobile not taken by the 20% of riders who do not use public transportation on a regular basis resulted in 1.8 million fewer tons of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. Or to put it into perspective, the equivalent to the emissions created by heating German 350,000 homes.

According to the Germany federal environment agency, the environmental damage resulting from one ton of CO2 emissions is worth about 180 euros, which means the value of those avoided emissions was 324 million euros.