At the beginning of September, two events revolved around this question: Zukunft Nahverkehr (engl. “Future of Public Transport”) by DB Regio AG in Berlin and the IAA Mobility in Munich. Our mobility experts from ioki were present at both events and look back on days full of inspiration.
This time we’re off to the far north, or more precisely to the Hanseatic City of Hamburg. The port metropolis on the Elbe is a pioneer in Germany for digital, climate-friendly and flexible mobility.
Holidays without mobility are only possible on staycations, because no matter whether it’s a day trip, an annual holiday or a long-term trip: Travelling means being mobile. In order to achieve the climate protection goals and to advance the traffic turnaround, tourist traffic should also be critically examined, because Germans like to travel a lot.
For a long time, the company car was considered the non-plus-ultra and was often the only mobility offer employees could expect from their employer. In 2023, more flexible mobility solutions such as digital demand-responsive company transport, job bikes and mobility budgets are gaining ground. Rising energy prices, stricter environmental and climate protection regulations as well as greater sustainability awareness among employees are also contributing to the need for companies to rethink their corporate mobility management.
In the previous edition of “Mobility Turn, now!” we looked at the measures taken by the state of Hesse to enable citizens to travel in a climate-friendly way by local transport. This time we are taking a closer look at Baden-Wuerttemberg.
65 million tons less CO2 emissions till 2030 – this is the climate goal for the German transportation industry. More electric mobility, a modernized rail network and billions for the development of public transport are supposed to contribute to the effort of Germany becoming more climate friendly.
But which measures are being taken on a federal level to enable citizens to be sustainably mobile with less ecologically harmful traffic? What progress is being made in the efforts to expand public transport, to reactivate old train tracks and to install new bike lanes? We answer these and other questions in our new blog series “Mobility turn, now!”. We want to show pioneering mobility projects in each federal state as an example for a successful and sustainable mobility turn in Germany.
When you think of the future of mobility, you see young people racing through skyscraper canyons in futuristic robot taxis in your mind’s eye. In reality, most autonomous projects do not drive sleek robot taxis in German metropolises. Instead, ponderous-looking minibuses, so-called people movers, move through narrow alleys and across marketplaces in smaller towns and rural areas. This is the case in Bad Birnbach, for example. The small town in the Lower Bavarian spa triangle, which is known for its thermal baths, has been attracting not only wellness guests but also fans and experts of new mobility since 2017. The reason for this is a small, box-like vehicle with a top speed of only 15 km/h: it is Germany’s first autonomous public bus!
Good news for all those involved in the mobility cosmos: Since July 1, 2022, it has been one for all: one platform for the exchange of all relevant mobility data. This is made possible by the Mobilithek. This new central, uniform and user-friendly access point of the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport replaces the previous platforms “Mobility Data Marketplace” and “mCLOUD”.
Last September, the starting signal was given for the large-scale use of mobility data in transport planning. The Federal Council has agreed on the implementation of the German Mobility Data Regulation. The new regulation makes it possible to make German mobility data available on the so-called Mobility Data Marketplace. For companies from the mobility sector, the new regulation enables access to data sets which were not available before. Through the use of these data sets in the mobility sector, customers will benefit from new, data-driven mobility concepts that are precisely tailored to the actual mobility needs on site.
The desire for flexible, sustainable and above all contemporary mobility solutions is stronger than ever before. Digitalisation and the associated use of data are driving the further development of exactly these mobility solutions. Complex analytical models make it possible to link data from different sources, evaluate data quantities and obtain results in real time. Mobility and traffic data are thus the fuel for a demand-oriented, automated and above all customer-centric public transport system. But to what extent are digital and data-based applications changing the public transport sector?
What is behind the ioki API? “We are continuously working on our data storage and also on the connection and integration of our system into external systems,” says Andreas Schwarzkopf, Head of Backend Engineering at ioki. The Application Programming Interface, or API, can be used to integrate software into external systems. In the ioki case, this means integrating our operating system for digital mobility primarily into external Mobility as a Service (MaaS) platforms.
Whenever we talk about the transport revolution and the associated restructuring of public transport, we cannot avoid the term “Mobility as a Service”, abbreviated MaaS. But what exactly is “MaaS” and how can the digital approach help to sustainably advance the transport revolution?
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At the beginning of September, two events revolved around this question: Zukunft Nahverkehr (engl. “Future of Public Transport”) by DB Regio AG in Berlin and the IAA Mobility in Munich. Our mobility experts from ioki were present at both events and look back on days full of inspiration.
