Berlin plans strategic cooperation with Hamburg in local transport

Anjes Tjarks (l, Alliance 90/The Greens), Hamburg Senator for Transport and Mobility Transition, and Ute Bonde (CDU), Berlin Senator for Mobility.

Hamburg and Berlin want to work more closely together on local transportation in the future and drive forward joint projects.

This includes developing a joint transport and sales platform. The two city states also want to cooperate on topics such as autonomous driving and the electrification of the bus fleet, as Berlin's transport senator Ute Bonde (CDU) and Hamburg's transport senator Anjes Tjarks (Greens) announced in Berlin on Wednesday. They had previously signed an agreement to this effect there.

Cooperation in six areas

The agreement identifies six areas in which teams from the Hamburg and Berlin transport companies and associations are to work together in future. In the area of autonomous driving, for example, they want to develop joint standards so that self-driving buses can be integrated into existing transportation at some point in the future. Other points include safe and barrier-free local public transport - for example through new interior concepts for vehicles - as well as the use of artificial intelligence to control and monitor mobility behavior.

Joint project development

A welcome side effect of the cooperation is that each city no longer has to spend money on the development of parallel projects, emphasized Bonde. "In this respect, this contributes to the budget consolidation of both city states, but also of the transport companies and associations." The aim is to achieve something better with the same resources," added her Hamburg counterpart Tjarks. "Imagine if you only had to develop one app for two cities." However, those responsible are still a long way from achieving this.