Digital in the countryside – Bavaria

Villages without life, hardly any buses, even less often a train – and a lack of bandwidth for video conferences at home: what sounds like a cliché about the country is still reality in some places in Bavaria. Digitization is opening up completely new ways of tackling old problems and creating equal living conditions across the board. However, the practical implementation is sometimes difficult. Four examples of how digital ideas can still make life in rural areas better:

care

Altenthann in the district of Regensburg has around 1,600 inhabitants and a problem that other communities of this size are also familiar with: if you need something, you have to go. When Mayor Harald Herrmann was a child, there were several grocery stores in town, as well as inns, bakers and butchers. That was once. The last grocery store, for example, “closed around 2005,” says Herrmann. Since then, the now 58-year-old and the other residents of Altenthan have always had to drive several kilometers to neighboring towns to go shopping. That is about to change: a 24-hour supermarket is expected to open in the middle of Altenthann in June; without staff, but with cash registers for self-scanning and chip cards that allow entry at any time. If the goods are running low, a computer automatically reorders. Only then do people move in to replenish the shelves. A company from Thuringia, which already operates a similar market there, takes care of the operation. The screw manufacturer Würth in the district of Neu-Ulm has tried something similar with handicraft supplies. In Altenthann, however, the shop should not only bring back everyday necessities, but at best also a bit of life: as a new meeting place for the village community, where you can meet up for a chat at the shopkeeper like in the past. Will it all work out that way in the end? “We’ll see,” says Herrmann. “The anticipation is great.” And the interest: In the meantime, mayor colleagues from all over Germany are calling him.

Networking

Many start-ups are drawn to the big city, to Munich or even Berlin, with their ideas for new apps and new business models. The non-profit participation initiative “Silicon Vilstal” from Geisenhausen in Lower Bavaria wants to prove that rural areas also offer digital opportunities. They see themselves as a kind of playground for innovative ideas, as a platform for trying things out and as a source of inspiration. Under the motto “Home for the New”, the initiative connects communities, companies and individuals with each other, organizes events and projects on education or creativity. “Our goal is to try out social innovations in our country,” says founder Helmut Ramsauer. His initiative, with the “Bauer sucht Start-up” program, provides young companies with space in the Vilstal to further develop their ideas or even try them out in pilot projects. In this way, for example, a mobile food order via app from regional bakeries was created. “Rural communities are much more agile than cities, pilot projects can be implemented more quickly here,” says Ramsauer, describing the concept. Rural regions must be seen as areas for innovation, not as a “development area that lacks digital equipment” and which must be enlivened by ideas from the cities. With an ideas workshop, the “Silicon Vilstal” wants to create awareness for new possibilities even among children. “The children should see how technologies can support them in the implementation of creative ideas,” explains the founder: for example how to digitize self-designed T-shirt motifs and print them later.

mobility

Open detailed view

Type your destination into the app, select the nearest stop, and off you go: It’s that easy to call the intelligent local bus “Omobi” in the Upper Bavarian communities of Murnau, Seehausen and Riegsee. For two euros, this mixture of regular bus and taxi takes its passengers to their destination. The idea behind it: to improve local public transport in rural areas. Because it often only runs to a limited extent in the form of trains and buses, if at all. “Digitization has enabled us to revolutionize local public transport,” says Clemens Deyerling, co-founder of the mobility service. Because “Omobi” does not follow a set route. Depending on where in the community someone wants to get on, the route is automatically optimized thanks to software. With more than 300 stops and two vehicles, the local bus is more flexible than the local bus, and the walking distances are shorter thanks to the dense network of stops. It can also be ordered spontaneously or up to 24 hours in advance. “We have a broad target group: Older people who want to regain their mobility in this way, or children who go to soccer practice,” says Deyerling. He is particularly pleased that thanks to “Omobi” people are also using local public transport for whom it was previously out of the question. From his point of view, the whole thing is “as close as possible to the car service”. However, not everyone in the region seems to be completely convinced of this: In addition to travel fees and subsidies from the Free State, the municipalities also have to contribute financially. The Murnau municipal council has therefore only extended the contract with the mobility service by one year. But Deyerling is certain that things will continue after that, and the district is also showing interest. “We have proven that our offer is technically possible and that the population accepts the local bus. Now it is up to politicians to continue to maintain mobility.”

infrastructure

In the Cham district, they had bad experiences with fiber optics in the past. As in other rural regions, Internet quality is poor in many places, but the attempt to have the network expanded by an Internet provider resulted in a dispute. So 37 out of 39 rural districts decided to simply lay fiber optics themselves. The district wants to bury 1,900 kilometers of this via its own subsidiary and thus connect 17,000 addresses that have so far been poorly supplied. The special feature: The lines remain the property of the district, the Internet providers simply rent them. A mammoth project. Nevertheless, according to his own statement, District Administrator Franz Löffler does not regret doing this for a minute, keyword public services. “If we want to have equivalent living conditions across the board, then we need fiber optics in every house.” The biggest challenge is finding experts who dare to plan on this scale – and construction companies who can implement them. The whole thing costs around 180 million euros, 90 percent of which is funded by the federal and state governments. The project could be completed in 2024. Even after that, the district office will probably not run out of expansion issues so quickly. Perhaps autonomously driving tractors sound like a dream of the future, says Löffler, but you need a dense 5G mobile network for something like this.