Almost 16 million people live in rural regions throughout Germany. For them it is often a difficult task to get from A to B by public transport. After all, rural regions are at the back of the queue when it comes to expanding public transport. But why is the accessibility of these regions so poor and public transport hardly an alternative? How can it be guaranteed that people living in rural areas can also be mobile in a climate-friendly and cost-effective way?

Tijen Onaran is the founder of the company Global Digital Women. Here, she is committed to the networking and visibility of women in the digital industry. In addition, Tijen advises companies on diversity issues, publishes articles in well-known media outlets such as Manager Magazine and moderates various events on topics of current interest to her.

Don’t worry, in this article we will not refresh the basics of business studies again. Rather, we would like to examine the extent to which the theory, which may already be somewhat dusty but is still valid and authoritative, can be combined with our daily practice, the transformation of public transport.

Silke Höhl is a PhD student at the Research Lab for Urban Transport (ReLUT) at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences. The construction and industrial engineer won the «Best Idea 2019» competition at the Allianz Pro Schiene Innovation Award 2019. Her concept: an innovative parcel delivery service. Hereby, the idea is not to create a new transport infrastructure, but to use public transport that is already well developed in the cities. The idea: underground and tramways take care of transporting the parcels to the city centres and a load wheel takes care of the last few kilometres to the front door.

Mobility is often still a resource-intensive undertaking – in every respect: Too many cars on the road cause a high level of environmental pollution, loosely set timetables mean an immense loss of time and excessively large containers and empty runs – especially in rural areas and at off-peak times – take their financial toll.

Better air, blue skies and significantly fewer vehicles on the roads: The Corona crisis has given our planet a little well-earned rest. This is because of the positive effects in terms of lower CO2 emissions during the pandemic. A recent study shows that the restrictions on public life have also reduced global emission numbers drastically.

Not only in Germany is the mobility of the future a central topic which is constantly gaining knowledge and alternative solutions. Looking over to our neighbours such as Sweden or the Netherlands shows that new mobility concepts are developing and establishing themselves in different ways in Europe.

We are always on the run: After work to our favorite place in the city, in the middle of the week to a business appointment once across the republic, on the weekend a short trip to a European metropolis and in the Easter holidays family vacation in the mountains…

Green, environmentally neutral and connected – these are the demands on the city of tomorrow. At the same time, people’s quality of life is to be improved and the ecological footprint reduced. Experts from all over the world are thinking about the so-called Smart Cities. In all scenarios, one thing remains clear: everyone wants to remain mobile.

Whether socio-demographic or geographical data, information from travel diaries from household surveys or flows of people from mobile phone data – mobility-related data and information are available in large quantities in times of digitisation, but are still too rarely used to develop user-centred services and offers.

What began in 1977 in Friedrichshafen is today generally known as on-demand transport: In a large-scale experiment, the people of Friedrichshafen were the first in Europe to look for a solution to adapt the existing public transport system to meet demand – thus heralding the birth of the Rufbus.

Owning a private car has long since ceased to be the norm in cities. With good public transport connections, new forms of mobility such as e-scooters or ride hailing services such as Uber and Co., you can get from A to B flexibly, comfortably and quickly even without a car.