Cars out of the city – that’s so easy to say. One of those who says so is Henrik Falk, head of Hamburger Hochbahn: “I drive a car myself and I’m not at all dogmatic on the road. But from the city’s point of view, you have to be totally blunt: A mobility turnaround only works if I end up spending significantly less private car in the city.”
The master of Hamburg’s buses and subways transports more than a million people every day – and he has a bold vision: “If you get the mobility turnaround right, it will be a revolution. This would increase the number of car registrations in Hamburg alone by up to 250,000 vehicles.” Is that realistic now that car density has continued to increase during the pandemic? And will everything automatically get better when the 49-euro ticket comes along?
“The idea is that we should offer every citizen of Hamburg, anywhere in the city – whether in the city center or on the outskirts of the city – from morning to evening within five minutes,” says Falk, “that’s not a vision, it’s Resolution situation in Hamburg.”
Rail-bound means of mass transport play a central role here. Falk: “Through digitization and automatic train control, we want to bring more capacity to the existing infrastructure, i.e. increase the frequency of trains. Hamburg is also currently building the fully automatic U5 line, Germany’s largest inner-city local transport project.” The range of electric buses on the main tangents will also be expanded; After all, the Hochbahn should be completely climate-neutral by the end of this decade.
Whether above or below ground: Hamburger Hochbahn wants to further automate its trains.
(Photo: Jürgen Ritter/Imago)
However, the five-minute promise cannot be kept with that alone. There is no distribution traffic over the last few kilometers, i.e. from and to the subway or the fast-paced bus. This is exactly where Falk wants to convert: “We will no longer take the bus everywhere, that doesn’t make any sense if I’m seriously considering autonomous on-call buses.”
In order to convince motorists, passengers should be able to order shared taxis or small shuttle buses with four to 22 seats using a smartphone app in no time at all. However, this on-demand mobility is not economically viable. Not yet.
As a large-scale test this summer, the nine-euro ticket showed that in many places there is a lack of vehicles and, above all, drivers, when many people suddenly switch from cars to public transport. A further expansion of the line network seems to be completely illusory – if the technology does not change radically. “A close-meshed distribution traffic will not work as long as we have the driver in front, including the personnel costs,” emphasizes Henrik Falk: “That’s a hard truth, but it’s the way it is.”
The Munich transport company (MVG) is also working on the climate-neutral timetable of the future. Not quite as experimental as Hamburger Hochbahn, but the basic problem is the same. “We already transport more than half a billion people a year in Munich. If we want to win more passengers, we have to expand the range of services disproportionately,” warns MVG boss Ingo Wortmann. According to MVG studies, 75 percent more buses and trains would have to run to get drivers to switch and increase passenger numbers by a third. So the effort increases more than the benefit.
“In our simulations, we determined a need for 5,000 on-demand vehicles, but it could also be 10,000, then the supply is a bit better,” says Wortmann. In order to mann the vehicles in at least two shifts, a gigantic number of drivers is necessary: ”You can simply forget that,” the MVG boss clarifies.
The Hamburger Hochbahn therefore wants to push the technological change forward quickly: “We are now starting several projects with autonomous shuttle buses. Between 2025 and 2027 we want to reach 1000 such vehicles,” says Henrik Falk, “if that works, we want it relatively quickly We’re talking about 10,000 autonomous shuttles and a completely new mobility system between 2030 and 2035.”
Holon, a subsidiary of the automotive supplier Benteler, wants to launch its autonomous shuttles in Hamburg in 2024.
(Photo: Holon/Hamburger Hochbahn AG)
Clean megacities with quietly humming delivery trucks and driverless large-capacity taxis, that is the promise behind autonomous driving. Smart shared individual traffic without heaps of metal in the parking lot – and without long waiting for a bus. That dream is currently on the brink. It is not yet clear whether Amazon, Google and other Silicon Valley tech companies will continue to invest many billions of dollars a year in robotic cars that cannot completely replace human drivers in the foreseeable future.
With the recent failure of the more than five billion US dollar cooperation between Ford and VW, the high-tech dream has moved a little further into the future. The robot crisis also endangers the plans of the VW subsidiary Moia, which wants to roll out autonomous mobility offers in Hamburg. “When I sat in my office with the Moia managers for the first time in 2016, it was clear to everyone: in 2021, large autonomous fleets will be driving around in Hamburg,” recalls Henrik Falk, “realistically one has to say: in 2022 not a single autonomous vehicle will be driving here Vehicle.”
So far, robots have felt most comfortable with crash barriers – i.e. on directional lanes without bicycle traffic and pedestrians. Like almost all car manufacturers, Ford does not see a valid business model in shared autonomous mobility for the foreseeable future. The company now wants to concentrate on highly automated cars that only temporarily release the driver from responsibility – and certainly not in chaotic inner-city traffic.
“At the moment, this is nothing more than a bet and a vision,” admits Henrik Falk, but he remains optimistic: “Autonomous driving is one of the top three investment topics worldwide, and money is being pumped into it without end. This will enable us to to offer being driven at kilometer costs that are below those of a private car.”
Moia already operates 500 shared electric taxis in Hamburg – but currently with one driver behind the wheel.
(Photo: Christian Charisius/picture alliance)
VW takes the same line and does not want to let the Moia project in Hamburg burst. “We will set up a commercially viable business model,” assures Carsten Intra. The CEO of Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles believes that he will be able to undercut the operating costs of a taxi ride with his autonomous vehicle shortly after 2025. “We should reach the public transport level in the next decade.”
“At some point” Ingo Wortmann also wants the buses to drive autonomously: “But I see us more in 2040 than in 2030.” As President of the Association of German Transport Companies (VDV), he above all demands financial planning security from politicians: “We must not get into the ups and downs of budget funds with such long-term issues, but need long-term funds to deal with such important strategic issues regardless of the budget situation to be able to advance.”
You could also put it this way: With cheap offers like the 49-euro ticket, the local transport companies will not earn enough money to develop a uniform booking system, central online platforms and driverless buses, for example. Perhaps it would also make sense to first test the robots in city centers without traffic – with a kind of remote control just in case. “Our control center will become a center for drone pilots,” expects Ingo Wortmann, “from there our employees can drive the autonomous vehicles a little way.” Just wondering when.