Rhein-Neckar transport association

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Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar GmbH

logo
legal form GmbH
founding December 1, 1989
Seat Mannheim
management Volkhard Malik (Managing Director)
Branch Transport network
Website www.vrn.de

The Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar (VRN) is a transport association in the Rhine-Neckar triangle in the federal states of Rhineland-Palatinate , Hesse and Baden-Württemberg and was founded on December 1, 1989 . In addition, according to the Hessian public transport law, the VRN is responsible as the regional rail transport authority and local public transport organization in the Bergstrasse district.

history

Historical logo of the Rhein-Neckar transport association

The prehistory of the VRN goes back to the post-war period . Against the background of difficult economic conditions in the region cut up by the borders of the occupation zones, the first cross-border contacts arose within the framework of the "Rhein-Neckar Municipal Working Group" founded in 1951. The Rhine-Neckar Regional Planning Association, which emerged from this in 1970 , soon presented plans to create a transnational transport association and a high-performance S-Bahn system.

In 1973 the cities of Mannheim, Ludwigshafen am Rhein and Heidelberg, together with the Federal Railroad and the Federal Post Office, founded the “Nahverkehrsgemeinschaft Rhein-Neckar”, which can be seen as the first forerunner of the VRN. In the following years, concrete implementation concepts for S-Bahn traffic were developed. While their implementation was only progressing with great difficulty, the state governments of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate made decisive progress with the establishment of a fully-fledged transport and tariff association in 1981.

This is how the first transitional tariffs between the various transport companies came into being in the 1980s . The Riedbahn interim tariff introduced in 1985, for example, allowed passengers on the Riedbahn route to Mannheim to use the Mannheim tram with the same ticket. Community tariffs also existed between the OEG and the trams in Heidelberg and Mannheim. Another step towards a comprehensive network was implemented with the Community tariff for season tickets (GfZ) introduced on December 16, 1985 . On December 1, 1989, with the establishment of the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar GmbH (VRN), the long-awaited full network with the largely unchanged common tariff system emerged .

On April 1, 1992, the “60+ card” was introduced. In the same year the “Ticket 24 Plus” and the “Job Ticket” were added. With the job ticket, the employer concludes an agreement with the VRN, according to which the company pays between € 9.50 and € 11 per employee, depending on the size of the company; In 2016, around 600 organizations with a total of around 110,000 employees signed such an agreement, and around 40,500 passengers have such a discounted annual ticket. In October 1993 the semester ticket was introduced.

In 1994 the tariff area expanded to Landau, in 1996 the VRN area was expanded to include the Neckar-Odenwald district in the east and Kirchheimbolanden, Eisenberg, Hochspeyer, the district of Südliche Weinstrasse, Hinterweidenthal and the Dahner Felsenland in the west.

In September 1998 the "MAXX-Ticket" was introduced.

On April 1, 2003, the VRN was expanded to include the Main-Tauber district . On June 1, 2006, the eleven transport companies that had previously been part of the West Palatinate Transport Association (WVV) joined the VRN, thus extending the tariff area to the entire Palatinate.

In December 2003 the Rhein-Neckar-Ticket was introduced, which was proposed in 1997 by the Transport Forum 2000.

In 2012 Volkhard Malik became managing director of the VRN, who succeeded Werner Schreiner , who had been in office since 2005 .

As of January 1, 2013, however, the “Ticket 24” or “Ticket 24 PLUS”, a 24-hour card that was valid on Saturdays until 3 a.m. on the following working day, and up to four days on Easter, was replaced by a day ticket which is not valid for 24 hours, but only until 3 a.m., on Sundays and public holidays until 6 a.m., the following day. There is also a cheaper youth group ticket for passengers under the age of 18. It has the same conditions as the day ticket and is worthwhile for 3 or more passengers.

Since April 2018, companies with only 10 employees can also conclude a job ticket agreement; this means that around twice as many companies can use this offer as before.

From December 9, 2018, the on-call bus trips can be requested in some parts of the VRN via the central service telephone number of the VRN and via the VRN website. In the future, this should be made possible in the entire VRN network.

Tariff area and system

VRN ticket, price level 2, issued by RNV , validated in honeycomb 104 (part of the Mannheim / Ludwigshafen honeycomb)

After numerous expansions, the tariff area now extends from Homburg in the west to Würzburg in the east and thus extends far beyond the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region . In the north it extends to Stadtprozelten , in the south to Landau and Sinsheim . The French border towns Lauterbourg and Wissembourg can also be reached with the VRN tariff.

Overall, the tariff area covers an area of ​​9,967 square kilometers with around 3 million residents. As is typical for a regional tariff area, it is divided into tariff cells. The fare depends on the number of honeycombs passed through. The urban areas of Mannheim , Ludwigshafen am Rhein and Heidelberg , for which the so-called large honeycomb tariff applies, are an exception . In the city centers of some cities, a cheaper city tariff is used. Overall, 91.3% (as of 2008) of passengers have a season ticket.

Single tickets can be purchased as online tickets from DB, and have been using the DB Navigator smartphone application since 2014 . Since June 2013, some of the VRN tickets could be obtained via Touch & Travel . A VRN's own mobile phone ticket application and the mobile phone ticket function in the RNV smartphone application are available as additional sales channels exclusively for many smartphone users.

e-tariff

On January 1, 2015, the “eTarif” was introduced for journeys within Wabe 125 (City of Heidelberg) via Touch & Travel , where the cheapest between several possible tariffs is selected. Its price is made up of a basic price per trip (2015 and 2016: € 1) and a price per commenced kilometer as the crow flies between getting on and off (2015 and 2016: € 0.20). This tariff can only be used by passengers of legal age, first-class surcharge (+50%) and Bahn-Card discount (−25%) are available.

Even after Touch & Travel was discontinued on November 30, 2016, the VRN is still offering the eTarif via its own smartphone application in addition to the existing one. This application developed by a start-up has been available since January 27th . Previously, the application could be tested free of charge since the beginning of January. The tariff, now known as the "airline tariff", is valid in the entire VRN area. The basic price has been increased to € 1.20, all trips on one day cost a maximum of € 12 (for comparison: a day ticket for the entire network costs € 17.9), all in one month a maximum of € 90. Since January 2020, the regular basic price of a trip has been € 1.30, as part of the “Model City Mannheim” project, for trips beginning and ending within the Mannheim / Ludwigshafen area, it has been reduced to € 0.80 since January 1, 2019. From spring 2017, the airline tariff was also available via the ticket2go service , which was discontinued in December 2019. Due to the pricing of the airline tariff, however, it can happen that individual trips, especially in the Mannheim / Ludwigshafen area, are billed more expensively than a regular single ticket.

Key figures

S-Bahn in Ludwigshafen
City railway in Mannheim
Articulated buses at the Rathaus stop (renamed Stadtmitte in 2015) in Kaiserslautern.

The following table shows some key data on the development of the VRN:

year Area size (km²) Passenger numbers (million) Income (€ million)
1990 3600 114.4 74.4
1991 126
1992 131
1993 144
1994 163
1995 172.7 102.5
1996 5700 190
1997 211
1998 214
1999 223
2000 231.5 131.3
2005 267.4 175.4
2008 9967 314.2 242.0
2009 313.8 250.3
2010 313 249
2011 315 259
2012 316 268
2013 317 276
2014 313 283.7
2015 9967 310 291
2016 309.5 303.5
2017 309.1 311.5
2018 9967 305.9 318.1

Means of transport

In the area of ​​the VRN, trains of the Deutsche Bahn and other transport companies, the S-Bahn Rhein-Neckar as well as trams and buses run on a total of 460 lines with a total length of 11,103 km.

A total of 38 transport companies with 1,380 vehicles (excluding S-Bahn) are active in the network area. The largest include Rhein-Neckar-Verkehr GmbH (RNV) as well as DB Regio Mitte and the Rhein-Neckar bus service operated by Deutsche Bahn.

There are also 280 on-call bus routes in the VRN, with which around 440,000 passengers were carried in 2018. When the VRN was founded in 1989, there were already 70 dial-a-bus routes.

structure

Due to the change in legal provisions for local rail passenger transport, the company structure had to be changed on January 1, 1996 :

  • The federal states, districts and urban districts belong to the Zweckverband Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar ( ZRN )
  • The company Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar GmbH ( URN ) has the participating transport companies as shareholders
  • The Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar GmbH ( VRN ) has the ZRN as the sole shareholder and is linked to the URN through a cooperation and service agreement.

Local authorities in the ZRN

In addition to the three federal states, the districts and independent cities are united in the ZRN, namely from

Timetable areas

The following VRN timetable books are published and distributed by Verlag Reclam Print every six months:

  • Ludwigshafen / Mannheim (€ 1)
  • Heidelberg (€ 1)
  • Front / South Palatinate (€ 1)
  • West Palatinate (€ 1)
  • Alzey / Worms (€ 0.75)
  • Bergstrasse / Odenwald (€ 0.75)
  • Odenwald / Tauber (€ 0.75)
  • DB departure boards (€ 0.75)

The timetables can be ordered directly from Reclam-Verlag by email. There are no additional shipping costs.

Transport companies in the VRN

Mercedes-Benz O 407 of the Rhein-Neckar bus service in the Worms bus station

Neighboring transport associations

See also

literature

  • Helmut Röth: On rails between the Odenwald and the Palatinate. Photographs 1955–1976. Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Pro Message publishing house. 2006. 168 pages. ISBN 3-934845-18-5 . 297 old photographs.
  • Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar (ed.): In one line. Railway history in the Rhine-Neckar triangle. Ludwigshafen, Pro Message publishing house. 2004. 112 pages. ISBN 3-934845-17-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b http://www.s197410804.online.de/Zeiten/1965.htm
  2. ^ Frieder Zappe: VRN mobility services for mobility management. (PDF; 2.7 MiB) VRN tariff - innovative target group tickets. February 14, 2017, pp. 5–7 , accessed January 28, 2018 .
  3. ^ A b c Frieder Zappe: VRN mobility services for mobility management. (PDF; 2.7 MiB) VRN tariff - innovative target group tickets. February 14, 2017, p. 4 , accessed January 28, 2018 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Not a quiet minute: 100 million Good reasons for the S-Bahn. (PDF; 4.6 MiB) In: hinundweg - The customer magazine of the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar, anniversary issue 2009. VRN GmbH, URN GmbH, April 20, 2009, p. 14 , archived from the original on May 29, 2012 ; Retrieved April 14, 2014 .
  5. ↑ Pay please! (PDF; 4.6 MiB) In: hinundweg - The customer magazine of the Rhein-Neckar transport association, anniversary issue 2009. VRN GmbH, URN GmbH, April 20, 2009, pp. 6–7 , archived from the original on May 29, 2012 ; Retrieved April 14, 2014 .
  6. ^ Jürgen Heß, Herbert Hoffmann, Siegbert Luksch: No. 5: Looking back at 150 years of the Meckesheim railway location: 11: Chronology. (PDF; 568 KiB) November 29, 2013, accessed January 2017 .
  7. ↑ Ticket 24, Ticket 24 PLUS, 3-day ticket, weekly ticket - tariff 1/2009. (PDF) Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar, November 26, 2008, archived from the original on May 21, 2014 ; accessed on May 21, 2014 .
  8. ↑ Easter 2009 Ticket 24 and PLUS valid for four days. Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar, March 24, 2009, archived from the original on May 21, 2014 ; accessed on May 21, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Day tickets, tariff status 1/2009. Ticket 24 for individual travelers - Ticket 24 PLUS for groups. Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar, archived from the original on August 22, 2009 ; accessed on May 21, 2014 .
  10. ↑ New tariffs as of January 1, 2013 in the VRN. Day pass and city ticket complete the offer. Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar, November 22, 2012, archived from the original on May 21, 2014 ; accessed on May 21, 2014 .
  11. ↑ Michaela Roßner: In January farewell to the “Ticket 24 plus”. Mannheimer Morgen, November 23, 2012, accessed on May 21, 2014 .
  12. ↑ Michaela Roßner: Sharp criticism of the abolition of "Ticket 24". Passengers miss the weekend validity and denounce price increases. Mannheimer Morgen, November 29, 2012, accessed on May 21, 2014 .
  13. ↑ Job ticket now even more attractive for smaller companies. Rhein-Neckar-Verkehr GmbH, January 31, 2018, accessed on February 2, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Call taxis in the cities of Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg complete the bus offer. VRN GmbH, December 10, 2018, accessed on August 30, 2019 .
  15. ↑ a b c Ruftaxi - extended mobility in the VRN: 280 Ruftaxi offers supplement the public transport network throughout the network - now also digitally & centrally bookable. VRN GmbH, May 2, 2019, accessed on August 30, 2019 .
  16. ↑ VRN tickets now also available online from DB. VRN GmbH, June 27, 2012, archived from the original on July 29, 2012 ; Retrieved January 1, 1970 .
  17. ↑ a b Michael Löwe: Pilot test with eTarif in Heidelberg. (PDF; 2.7 MiB) In: ProBahn Hessen passenger newspaper, No. 107 (February 2015). July 28, 2015, pp. 27–28 , accessed October 21, 2016 .
  18. ↑ a b eTarif Heidelberg. Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar GmbH, archived from the original on October 21, 2016 ; accessed on October 21, 2016 .
  19. ↑ a b Touch & Travel of Deutsche Bahn is discontinued. VRN wants to continue to offer check-in / check-out systems. Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar, October 10, 2016, accessed on October 22, 2016 .
  20. ↑ a b c d eTarif is introduced - smartphone becomes a public transport ticket. Rhein-Neckar-Verkehr GmbH and Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar, January 27, 2017, accessed on February 1, 2017 .
  21. ↑ a b airline tariff. Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar, archived from the original on February 16, 2017 ; accessed on February 1, 2017 .
  22. ↑ eTarif - Model City Mannheim - Get involved! Retrieved January 3, 2020 .
  23. ↑ eTarif. In: vrn.de. Retrieved January 3, 2020 .
  24. ↑ https://www.ticket2go.online/
  25. ↑ SWK Stadtwerke Kaiserslautern - bus stops are being renamed. Retrieved January 13, 2020 .
  26. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa data and facts. Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Neckar GmbH, accessed on August 31, 2019 .
  27. ↑ Statistical adjustment of the number of passengers and the fare income