Germany brings in nationwide ‘3G’ rules on public
transport
Sarah Magill
news@thelocal.de
@sarahschreibend
24 November
2021
12:06 CET
The reform
to the Infection Protection Law, which was passed on November 19th, comes into
force on Wednesday, introducing sweeping measures to combat the Covid fourth
wave.
This means
that national and suburban trains, buses and trams as well as buses and trains
operated by private providers such as FlixBus will be affected.
Exceptions
will only be made for taxis and school buses, children under the age of six and
schoolchildren who are tested at school.
How will
passengers be checked?
The new law
states that the carriers – for example, Deutsche Bahn or the local transport
companies – are obliged to monitor compliance with the regulation by means of
spot checks.
It is
therefore up to the transport providers to decide how they will implement the
controls. It’s likely that 3G proof will be checked together with tickets or,
depending on the means of transport, when boarding.
Deutsche
Bahn, for example, only wants to check 3G compliance on a random basis, and are
planning checks on 400 long-distance connections in the first few days. FlixBus
and FlixTrain have also announced that they will carry out random checks.
On local
transport, area-wide checks are simply not feasible and 3G checks may be
checked just as sporadically as tickets. Transport companies have to decide
whether to burden inspectors with this additional task, or simply to carry out
focussed checks together with the authorities, as has already been done to
enforce the mask requirement.
Munich
U-Bahn
Transport
workers check people’s 3G passes at the entrace of a Munich U-Bahn station.
Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Matthias Balk
Munich’s
MVG says its ticket inspectors will now also check 3G proof and the Hamburg
transport association has also announced that 3G proof is to be randomly
checked during ticket inspections.
Some larger
transport companies have their own security services that can provide support.
Berlin’s BVG, for example, wants to carry out checks with the help of its own
security service as well as with the authorities.
What are
the penalties?
The exact
cost for breaking the 3G rule on public transport is not yet known, though
according to the federal government’s website: “Anyone found without valid
proof will face a fine of up to several thousand euros.”
As with
other violations of the Infection Protection Act, each federal state will
decide on the level of fines for itself. Non-compliance with the mask
requirement, for example, will cost 150 euros in Bavaria and only 25 euros in
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. If a train is traveling between federal states
with different fine levels, then the guidelines of the federal state in which
the violation is discovered will usually apply.
If
passengers on a bus or train don’t want to show the 3G proof, inspectors can
ask them to get off at the next station, as it is usually stated in the terms
and conditions of transportation that passengers who endanger safety can be
excluded from carriage. If a customer refuses to exit the mode of
transportation, employees can call the police and police can initiate the fine
procedure.
Transport
companies would also have the option of including 3G in their conditions of
carriage. In this case, the employees themselves would be able to impose fines,
as they do for riding without a ticket. This is what some companies, such as
the Hamburg public transport association, have done with compulsory
mask-wearing. In the case of municipal transport companies, however, it can
take a while to change the conditions of carriage.
The idea of
including mandatory masks in transport conditions nationwide was rejected by
the state transport ministers’ conference in September 2020, seeing fines as
the responsibility of the police and the public order office.
This is
presumably how most transport companies will see it with the 3G rule too, and
leave it to spot checks together with the authorities.
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