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Sustainable urban mobility is inconceivable without public transport

Posted: 17 February 2012 | Dr. Peter Ramsauer, Federal Minister of Transport, Building & Urban Development, Germany | No comments yet

Mobility in our towns and cities is unimaginable without efficient public transport. In Germany, fixed-track local transport is the backbone of local public transport. Its planning, organisation and funding are the responsibility of the federal states.

The Federal Government’s share of local public transport funding is currently approximately €8 billion a year. Together with the money provided by the federal states and local authorities, this means that substantial state funding is available to make fixed-track transport in Germany more attractive. One of the major funding instruments is the Federal Government programme that operates under the Act on Federal Government Financial Aid to Improve Transport at the Local Authority Level, which provides financial assistance to largescale projects in urban areas and their hinterland that involve eligible costs of at least €50 million. The programme is organised by the Federal Government in consultation with the federal states and provides funding totalling around €333 million per year.

Mobility in our towns and cities is unimaginable without efficient public transport. In Germany, fixed-track local transport is the backbone of local public transport. Its planning, organisation and funding are the responsibility of the federal states. The Federal Government’s share of local public transport funding is currently approximately €8 billion a year. Together with the money provided by the federal states and local authorities, this means that substantial state funding is available to make fixed-track transport in Germany more attractive. One of the major funding instruments is the Federal Government programme that operates under the Act on Federal Government Financial Aid to Improve Transport at the Local Authority Level, which provides financial assistance to largescale projects in urban areas and their hinterland that involve eligible costs of at least €50 million. The programme is organised by the Federal Government in consultation with the federal states and provides funding totalling around €333 million per year.

Mobility in our towns and cities is unimaginable without efficient public transport. In Germany, fixed-track local transport is the backbone of local public transport. Its planning, organisation and funding are the responsibility of the federal states.

The Federal Government’s share of local public transport funding is currently approximately €8 billion a year. Together with the money provided by the federal states and local authorities, this means that substantial state funding is available to make fixed-track transport in Germany more attractive. One of the major funding instruments is the Federal Government programme that operates under the Act on Federal Government Financial Aid to Improve Transport at the Local Authority Level, which provides financial assistance to largescale projects in urban areas and their hinterland that involve eligible costs of at least €50 million. The programme is organised by the Federal Government in consultation with the federal states and provides funding totalling around €333 million per year.

In the case of local authority projects, the focus is usually on upgrading and expanding the existing – in some cases extensive – tram, light-rail and underground networks. In addition, however, more and more mediumsized towns and cities are planning to extend their local rail networks and add more lines. It is also apparent that there is an increasing trend towards linking local light-rail networks with the heavy rail network in order to create a local public transport system which, through the use of dual-system vehicles, enables passengers to travel from the urban hinterland into the city centre without having to change.

Sections of line used for both long-distance and local services frequently reach their capacity limit when local passenger rail services are to be expanded. The result of this is that there is now a desire to segregate local services from longdistance and freight services on some lines and provide dedicated lines for local services.

Implementing these measures will make a major contribution towards improving transport in cities and conurbations. The Federal Government programme for improving transport at the local authority level has acquired additional topicality because it is also a tool that can be used to tackle climate change – because the funding provided under this programme is used exclusively to promote electric mobility. Something that is new in private transport has been around for more than 130 years in local public transport: trams, undergrounds and electric buses have been operating in our towns and cities for decades without producing pollutant emissions in densely populated areas. In addition, they are far superior to private motorised transport in terms of economical land take.

In Germany, 86% of all passenger kilometres travelled in the heavy rail sector are on electric trains. In local public transport, electric undergrounds, rapid transit systems, trams and trolleybuses account for 60% of all passenger kilometres travelled. The rapid transit system in Hamburg and the trams or light-rail systems in Darmstadt, Dortmund, Erfurt, Freiburg and Krefeld are already running entirely on renewable energy.

Our aim is for Germany to become a lead market for and a lead provider of electric mobility. Public transport has an important role to play here. This sector, in particular, provides an excellent environment for the rapid trialling of innovative technologies. Thus, in the period from 2009 to 2011 alone, the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development provided financial assistance totalling over €40 million to innovative electric mobility projects in local public transport. One example is the hybrid bus fleet in the electric mobility pilot regions, which comprises around 60 vehicles, thus making it one of the largest in Europe. In Augsburg, we have supported the construction of the first intermodal test track for trams and electric buses with contactless inductive energy supply. This technology makes it possible to do without expensive overhead lines. It could help electric mobility to become even more widespread in local public transport. In addition, current research topics include the develop – ment of a new generation of fuel cell powered buses and of the first hybrid diesel railcar in Europe. All these projects are designed to make local public transport even more environmentally-friendly than it is already.

We are thus focusing on much more than simply electric drive-trains for motor vehicles. Fixed-track and road-based local transport is playing a pioneering role in the field of electric mobility. This is key to reducing the climate change impact of urban transport and making it environmentally acceptable – because each means of transport should be deployed where it can fully exploit its inherent strengths. For this reason, there will continue to be no alternative to public transport in our towns and cities.