Germany’s second largest city is a showcase for innovation in transport policy, with ambitious targets to grow public transport
Hamburg has an extensive U-Bahn network of four lines with 93 station
The UITP Summit was held in Hamburg, Germany in mid-June 2025. Hamburg held the very first UITP Summit in 1891. This year’s congress had over 10 000 attendees from over 100 countries. The now annual event is a mix of conference sessions as well as industry exhibitions from over 400 participants.
A key objective of the summit is to continue to broaden the international representation within UITP and its events and to capture the successes and challenges of delivering public transport throughout the world. This also includes considering public transport in the wider context of complementary modes and delivering sustainable cities.
Hamburg is the second largest city in Germany with a population of 1.9 million, is a major global port as well as commercial and industrial hub. As is the case for many European cities, it is currently transitioning some of the harbour activities to other parts of the urban area and redeveloping former inner port lands as a new ‘HafenCity’. This ongoing major development is transforming the city and enabling significant employment and population growth.
The vast port area to the south of the city centre requires a substantial motorway network to support access. What is somewhat surprising in a contemporary European context is the remaining number of busy and multi-lane urban roads through the central area of the city. Plans are currently being developed to, for example, redesign some of the wide roads adjacent to the main railway station and more generally traffic calm many of the inner city streets. Non-motorway urban traffic levels have already declined 17% in the city since the millennium. While 29% of the population reported in 2022 that they “almost never” used a car. This is up from 26% in 2017. Comparable declines are occurring in the proportion of the population using a car “every day”.
Hamburg has an extensive U-Bahn network of four lines with 93 stations over 106 kilometres; a regional S-Bahn network which also provides inner city rail transit in certain areas over 68 stations at 147 kilometres; an extensive urban bus network of which one-third is already electric and which includes one of the busiest bus routes in Europe (Line 5 carries 60,000 passenger per day; water taxis); an electric vehicle charging network; mobility hubs; and shared bikes and e-scooters. The buses and U-Bahn are operated by Hamburger Hochbahn AG, which is fully owned by the city.
The city also contains Germany’s busiest railway station at Hamburg Hauptbahnhof which is used by over half a million passengers every day. The station is the predominate rail hub for the city region. It acts as a centre of national, regional, and local rail transport in the area. It also acts as a northern focus for the German railway network. The regional bus hub is also nearby. The demands on the station for train paths as well as the number of customers is intense and considerations are underway on how to increase capacity in a constrained site.
The modal split for transport in the city is remarkably diverse. Public transport is at 24%, while walking is 22%, cycling at 22% and car travel at 32%. The city has increased its spending per capita on cycling from approximately €11 to €49 between 2017 and 2021 and this has supported the growth in cycling which was at 15% in 2017. The aim is to have public transport rise to 30% by 2035 and have sustainable transport represent 80% of demand by 2030. Demand for public transport has already exceeded pre-pandemic levels and half of the city’s population have some form of public transport subscription ticket.
The national ‘Deutschland ticket’ – which was launched in its current form in 2023 and provides a subscription season ticket at a relatively low price of currently €58 per month to all local and regional public transport across Germany – was raised at the conference as a significant enabler of the growth in use of public transport. The national scheme has lowered prices, simplified fare collection and processing, and greatly simplified the ticketing offer for public transport. This is both in practice, but also in the minds of the public. The transport network in Hamburg, like most German cities, is completely ticket barrier free.
The summit was welcomed and hosted throughout by Dr Anjes Tjarks, Hamburg’s minister for transport and mobility transition. Opening plenary speakers also included Ulrich Lange the German federal minister of transport.
The aim is to have sustainable transport represent 80% of demand by 2030
Public transport expansion is underway to improve service and meet Hamburg’s stated goals of technological innovation, electrification of services to support decarbonisation as well as individualised and localised services supported by autonomous services. This includes new U-Bahn trains, a recent extension to the redeveloped port area, and eventually a new line – U5 – across the city which will be the first fully automated metro line.
While the UITP summit raised many important and noteworthy issues and reflections on Hamburg, Germany, Europe and the wider world, a few will be briefly explored.
Hamburg, within the German federal system, is a ‘Land’ or state equal to the other 15 states in the country. This densely populated city-state which covers the majority of the contiguous urban area around Hamburg provides coherent, consistent and integrated thinking and planning which is particularly relevant for transport matters. As a state the city is afforded significant national resources and the ability to take a long term view on these matters. Of course, Hamburg then works with the two geographically much larger states to the north and south of the city – Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony – as well as another nearby city-state, Bremen, and more distant state, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in the wider Hamburg city region regarding planning and policy matters.
Hamburg’s ‘Digital Mobility Strategy’ is, amongst other actions, using data sensors and data aggregation to offer traffic signal priority to its buses, but also offer alerts to bus drivers regarding nearby other road users. This data has also been used to develop an AI-based traffic forecasting model to look at near term congestion and enable traffic controllers to take informed decisions to manage the city’s streets.
From the opening plenary, throughout the event and brought out again in the closing plenary was a focus on autonomous public transport through smaller shuttles or ultimately larger buses.
Progress lies in meeting everyday passenger needs, not chasing the latest innovation
Hamburg sees these services as an evolution of its technical innovation and digitisation and eventually intends to offer these services in outer suburban areas where bus services are relatively weak and in more inner areas away from main traffic flows. They can make use of a relatively open street network within the city. The trials in Hamburg and demonstrations at the conference we led by Moia, a division of Volkswagen Group.
These trials were also mentioned by the German federal transport minister in his opening remarks. Germany sees such trials as useful in other contexts across the country and importantly as developing technical innovation in the German automotive and related industries. These vehicles are seen as one in a series of innovations that need to be considered.
The EU was represented at the conference by several attendees including Magda Kopczynska, EU director-general for mobility and transport. The industrial opportunities in autonomous vehicles as well as the potential to enhance the efficiency of shared transport were raised as issues to be considered. Furthermore, simply rejecting the proposition was deemed to be the incorrect approach to these innovations. Thus, the EU is using some of its funds to support such trials.
All of the speakers referencing autonomous transport also came to the issue of the challenges of recruitment of drivers of classic public transport services which is problematic in many areas of Europe, as well as other global regions.
The enthusiasm and inherent practicality of developing, scaling, pricing, customer acceptance and the ability of autonomous vehicles to work with other transport modes including walking and cycling in crowded European cities was, however, repeatedly raised during discussions on and off stage. The CEO of Wiener Linien in Vienna, Alexandra Reinagl, highlighted that amongst all of the tech developments in the industry and society; “progress lies in meeting everyday passenger needs, not chasing the latest innovation”.
Can these devices actually deliver mobility services that operationally scale at the level of mass transport in larger cities in order to support the sustainability agenda? Do they potentially divert attention from delivering customer focus on the core elements of the classic public transport mix?
A number of speakers chose to widen the debate on autonomy to simply the better use of technology as well as data to improve the level of service being provided to public transport users. This includes through better design and cost efficiency of services to outer suburbs, better data analytics to improve customer information and service reliability, as well as the technology and data implications from the roll out of e-buses.
The UITP event began with the re-election of Renée Amilcar as president of UITP for a second term. Amilcar is the general manager of OC Transpo in Ottawa, Canada.
UITP’s next summit will be in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in April 2026. In 2027 the summit will again return to Hamburg.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Giles K Bailey is a Director at Stratageeb, a London based consultancy assisting businesses think about their strategic vision and innovation. Previously, he had spent nine years as Head of Marketing Strategy at Transport for London.
This article appears alongside further coverage in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
DON’T MISS OUT – GET YOUR COPY! – click here to subscribe!
UITP Summit puts Hamburg on show
by Passenger Transport on Jul 10, 2025 • 2:17 pm No CommentsGermany’s second largest city is a showcase for innovation in transport policy, with ambitious targets to grow public transport
The UITP Summit was held in Hamburg, Germany in mid-June 2025. Hamburg held the very first UITP Summit in 1891. This year’s congress had over 10 000 attendees from over 100 countries. The now annual event is a mix of conference sessions as well as industry exhibitions from over 400 participants.
A key objective of the summit is to continue to broaden the international representation within UITP and its events and to capture the successes and challenges of delivering public transport throughout the world. This also includes considering public transport in the wider context of complementary modes and delivering sustainable cities.
Hamburg is the second largest city in Germany with a population of 1.9 million, is a major global port as well as commercial and industrial hub. As is the case for many European cities, it is currently transitioning some of the harbour activities to other parts of the urban area and redeveloping former inner port lands as a new ‘HafenCity’. This ongoing major development is transforming the city and enabling significant employment and population growth.
The vast port area to the south of the city centre requires a substantial motorway network to support access. What is somewhat surprising in a contemporary European context is the remaining number of busy and multi-lane urban roads through the central area of the city. Plans are currently being developed to, for example, redesign some of the wide roads adjacent to the main railway station and more generally traffic calm many of the inner city streets. Non-motorway urban traffic levels have already declined 17% in the city since the millennium. While 29% of the population reported in 2022 that they “almost never” used a car. This is up from 26% in 2017. Comparable declines are occurring in the proportion of the population using a car “every day”.
Hamburg has an extensive U-Bahn network of four lines with 93 stations over 106 kilometres; a regional S-Bahn network which also provides inner city rail transit in certain areas over 68 stations at 147 kilometres; an extensive urban bus network of which one-third is already electric and which includes one of the busiest bus routes in Europe (Line 5 carries 60,000 passenger per day; water taxis); an electric vehicle charging network; mobility hubs; and shared bikes and e-scooters. The buses and U-Bahn are operated by Hamburger Hochbahn AG, which is fully owned by the city.
The city also contains Germany’s busiest railway station at Hamburg Hauptbahnhof which is used by over half a million passengers every day. The station is the predominate rail hub for the city region. It acts as a centre of national, regional, and local rail transport in the area. It also acts as a northern focus for the German railway network. The regional bus hub is also nearby. The demands on the station for train paths as well as the number of customers is intense and considerations are underway on how to increase capacity in a constrained site.
The modal split for transport in the city is remarkably diverse. Public transport is at 24%, while walking is 22%, cycling at 22% and car travel at 32%. The city has increased its spending per capita on cycling from approximately €11 to €49 between 2017 and 2021 and this has supported the growth in cycling which was at 15% in 2017. The aim is to have public transport rise to 30% by 2035 and have sustainable transport represent 80% of demand by 2030. Demand for public transport has already exceeded pre-pandemic levels and half of the city’s population have some form of public transport subscription ticket.
The national ‘Deutschland ticket’ – which was launched in its current form in 2023 and provides a subscription season ticket at a relatively low price of currently €58 per month to all local and regional public transport across Germany – was raised at the conference as a significant enabler of the growth in use of public transport. The national scheme has lowered prices, simplified fare collection and processing, and greatly simplified the ticketing offer for public transport. This is both in practice, but also in the minds of the public. The transport network in Hamburg, like most German cities, is completely ticket barrier free.
The summit was welcomed and hosted throughout by Dr Anjes Tjarks, Hamburg’s minister for transport and mobility transition. Opening plenary speakers also included Ulrich Lange the German federal minister of transport.
Public transport expansion is underway to improve service and meet Hamburg’s stated goals of technological innovation, electrification of services to support decarbonisation as well as individualised and localised services supported by autonomous services. This includes new U-Bahn trains, a recent extension to the redeveloped port area, and eventually a new line – U5 – across the city which will be the first fully automated metro line.
While the UITP summit raised many important and noteworthy issues and reflections on Hamburg, Germany, Europe and the wider world, a few will be briefly explored.
Hamburg, within the German federal system, is a ‘Land’ or state equal to the other 15 states in the country. This densely populated city-state which covers the majority of the contiguous urban area around Hamburg provides coherent, consistent and integrated thinking and planning which is particularly relevant for transport matters. As a state the city is afforded significant national resources and the ability to take a long term view on these matters. Of course, Hamburg then works with the two geographically much larger states to the north and south of the city – Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony – as well as another nearby city-state, Bremen, and more distant state, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in the wider Hamburg city region regarding planning and policy matters.
Hamburg’s ‘Digital Mobility Strategy’ is, amongst other actions, using data sensors and data aggregation to offer traffic signal priority to its buses, but also offer alerts to bus drivers regarding nearby other road users. This data has also been used to develop an AI-based traffic forecasting model to look at near term congestion and enable traffic controllers to take informed decisions to manage the city’s streets.
From the opening plenary, throughout the event and brought out again in the closing plenary was a focus on autonomous public transport through smaller shuttles or ultimately larger buses.
Hamburg sees these services as an evolution of its technical innovation and digitisation and eventually intends to offer these services in outer suburban areas where bus services are relatively weak and in more inner areas away from main traffic flows. They can make use of a relatively open street network within the city. The trials in Hamburg and demonstrations at the conference we led by Moia, a division of Volkswagen Group.
These trials were also mentioned by the German federal transport minister in his opening remarks. Germany sees such trials as useful in other contexts across the country and importantly as developing technical innovation in the German automotive and related industries. These vehicles are seen as one in a series of innovations that need to be considered.
The EU was represented at the conference by several attendees including Magda Kopczynska, EU director-general for mobility and transport. The industrial opportunities in autonomous vehicles as well as the potential to enhance the efficiency of shared transport were raised as issues to be considered. Furthermore, simply rejecting the proposition was deemed to be the incorrect approach to these innovations. Thus, the EU is using some of its funds to support such trials.
All of the speakers referencing autonomous transport also came to the issue of the challenges of recruitment of drivers of classic public transport services which is problematic in many areas of Europe, as well as other global regions.
The enthusiasm and inherent practicality of developing, scaling, pricing, customer acceptance and the ability of autonomous vehicles to work with other transport modes including walking and cycling in crowded European cities was, however, repeatedly raised during discussions on and off stage. The CEO of Wiener Linien in Vienna, Alexandra Reinagl, highlighted that amongst all of the tech developments in the industry and society; “progress lies in meeting everyday passenger needs, not chasing the latest innovation”.
Can these devices actually deliver mobility services that operationally scale at the level of mass transport in larger cities in order to support the sustainability agenda? Do they potentially divert attention from delivering customer focus on the core elements of the classic public transport mix?
A number of speakers chose to widen the debate on autonomy to simply the better use of technology as well as data to improve the level of service being provided to public transport users. This includes through better design and cost efficiency of services to outer suburbs, better data analytics to improve customer information and service reliability, as well as the technology and data implications from the roll out of e-buses.
The UITP event began with the re-election of Renée Amilcar as president of UITP for a second term. Amilcar is the general manager of OC Transpo in Ottawa, Canada.
UITP’s next summit will be in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in April 2026. In 2027 the summit will again return to Hamburg.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Giles K Bailey is a Director at Stratageeb, a London based consultancy assisting businesses think about their strategic vision and innovation. Previously, he had spent nine years as Head of Marketing Strategy at Transport for London.
This article appears alongside further coverage in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
DON’T MISS OUT – GET YOUR COPY! – click here to subscribe!