[fridek]

Germany has about 1000 railway locomotives operating 40k runs a day. A conductor job pays on average 50k€/yr. Most trains I've seen have more than one conductor, and you need to plan for weekends, shifts, time off, etc. but the lower bound should be easy to agree on 50M€/yr or 12.5M€ for the duration of the program? Then there is the entire infra to sell tickets online, in machines and in person.

At the same time there are about 2 million rail customers a day, so the 9€ ticket will bring 18M€. I'd say they probably break even.

Math is fun, but the entire point is a bit moot. Germany is a civilised country and if you laid off the entire staff for three summer months with no pay, the union would eat you for breakfast.

[dagw]

Most trains still need conductors even if they're not checking tickets. Having them check tickets when they're already there won't cost anything extra.

[Tenoke]

>Most trains I've seen have more than one conductor

At least in Berlin which this covers most trains/buses/trams have 0 people checking and there's a few people going on random ones to occasionally check so the ratio here is probably 1 worker to 50+ vehicles.