Title: Empowering Cities and Municipalities to Fund Public Transport Expansion
The government is considering granting local authorities the freedom to finance the growth of local public transportation systems through a local transport levy. With this proposal, urban centers and municipalities could institute a mobility pass, enabling them to generate additional revenue for public transportation upgrades. According to a draft of the state mobility law reported by Südwestrundfunk, this scheme could potentially revolutionize the way cities and towns fund their public transportation infrastructure.
Transport Minister Winfried Hermann (Greens) is advocating for municipalities with a population exceeding 20,000 individuals to have the flexibility to choose from four variants of the local transport levy. The first option involves charging all residents, the second option focuses on car owners, and the third option pertains to employers with ten or more employees, who would then be obligated to pay a certain amount per worker. The fourth and final option would entail implementing a toll, although it would not be applicable to freeways and primary roads. Ultimately, the municipalities would retain the power to determine the exact amount of the levy their residents would pay.
In exchange for this fee, citizens should receive a credit for utilizing local public transportation. This credit could be redeemed towards purchasing season tickets. To implement this program, the draft bill specifies that a reasonable public transportation alternative to personal vehicles must be available during normal traffic hours. Criteria such as frequency during peak times and distance to the nearest stop are considered when assessing whether this condition is met.
At present, the Ministry of Transport is coordinating the law between various state government departments. It is still unclear when the law will be presented to the state parliament for discussion and passage.
Additional Information:
- The possibility of implementing this local transport levy in cities like Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg was acknowledged by the draft of the state mobility law.
- Südwestrundfunk revealed that Transport Minister Winfried Hermann presented various options for the levy, which included taxes on residents, car owners, employers with substantial workforces, or tolls.
- In an interview with the press, Winfried Hermann, the Munich-based Transport Minister, emphasized that if citizens paid this fee, they should receive compensation for public transportation use.
- The aforementioned law is in the process of being harmonized among different state government departments and has yet to be debated and passed by the Baden-Württemberg state parliament.
[2] The Baden-Württemberg government has introduced a modified version of the land value tax (LVT) beginning in 2025, which taxes 1.3% of the land value annually. This modification includes tax reductions for specific land uses such as social housing, forestry, and cultural sites.
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