Together for valuable rural areas: Thuringian Mobility Forum addresses key topic

One subject area - many perspectives

Under the motto "Connecting regions. Moving people." the organizers offered a diverse program with lectures, discussions and a marketplace of ideas. "The large number of participants at the conference shows that this is a task that affects our society comprehensively," said Dr. Katja Böhler, State Secretary in the Thuringian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Science and Digital Society, at the opening of the event. The population decline and the ageing of the population are affecting rural areas in particular. But even those who commute to work or school every day are often unable to do without their car due to a lack of bus and train connections. In order to meet these challenges, practical implementation concepts for the development of public transport are needed above all, explained Maik Kowalleck, First Deputy District Administrator of the district of Saalfeld-Rudolstadt, in his welcoming address. Rico Chmelik, Managing Director of automotive thüringen e.V., emphasized that social acceptance of new mobility services is also crucial for rural areas:

How do we take people with us? And how can we get them involved? The best offers are useless if they are not used and accepted.

Five keynote speeches shed light on the mobility transition from different perspectives. Constantin Pitzen, public transport expert from the timetable company B&B mbH, emphasized the importance of integrally timed timetables (ITF), which coordinate the travel times of trains and buses at important transport hubs so that passengers can reach their connections without long waiting times but with enough time to change trains oder busses - and thus get from A to B without their own car:

They [integrated interval timetables, CoR] are a good incentive to use public transport and a good project to manage the mobility transition in 2030.

Anke Borcherding from the Berlin Science Center called for a fundamental reorientation of public transport services and outlined measures to cope with the density of private transport in the greater Berlin area.

David Gordon from the Munich Mobility Department showed how the attractiveness of public transport can be increased with combined scheduled and flexible, individual on-demand bus services. Urban and rural areas would need to be considered together:

As long as we can't get this right in rural areas, we won't be able to get to grips with our problems as a city either.

Christoph Mundri, development engineer at EDAG Engineering AG, presented the concept of the "citybot". The driverless vehicles, which can be used for a variety of municipal tasks, offer new approaches that will soon be tested on the apron of Frankfurt Airport.

Courage to change: Public transport and company mobility must evolve

In the afternoon, the Mobility Forum focused on regional challenges. In a keynote speech, Dirk Bergner, Managing Director of KomBus GmbH, described how his company is dealing with the Deutschlandticket and the latest legal requirements, how it is implementing on-demand services in times of dramatic staff shortages and how it is converting its timetables to an integrated cycle:

Our goal is to offer public transportation that leads to our citizens leaving their cars at home.

During the subsequent panel discussion with the keynote speakers and Kerstin Endrigkeit, Head of Human Resources at AWO Saalfeld, the latter emphasized the importance of mobility management that also takes into account the broad range of tasks and distributed working hours of social services.

Challenges such as financing new mobility services were also discussed. Constantin Pitzen:

We need to arrive at a form that is efficient not only for financial reasons, but also for climate protection reasons.

Like many other participants at the forum, he emphasized:

'The most important thing is to have the courage to change.

The Ilmenau pilot project P:Mover was also presented during the discussion as a technological beacon of hope for future public transport in rural areas, as well as the "Mobility Network for Valuable Rural Living Spaces - MOVEwell" project, which has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research for five years since September 2024. It brings together AWO Saalfeld, Zentralklinik Bad Berka and Stadtwirtschaft Weimar with the application partner Hi-Q and the research institutions at ThIMo and Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Together, they are developing expertise in inter-municipal real-world laboratories, from traffic planning and highly automated driving to social acceptance: "We are developing practical mobility concepts that take into account demographic change as well as environmental and economic policy conditions," says ThIMo research officer Dr. Carsten Schauer:

Our aim is to get pilot projects rolling that involve local authorities and - supported by the Thuringian State Development Corporation and the Ministries of Economics and Transport - should result in a model for future mobility in Thuringia.

Business meets science

The mobility forum was accompanied throughout the day by a lively transfer fair, where topics such as public transport, multimodal mobility offers, transport infrastructure, changes in the automotive and supplier industry or support offers for transfer, transformation and business development were discussed intensively.

"With the 'Mobility in rural areas' forum, we have provided impetus for new ideas that should help to develop Thuringia into a model mobility region," summarized conference director and ThIMo director at TU Ilmenau Prof. Matthias Hein:

In this way, ThIMo and its state-wide cooperation partners are fulfilling their social mission to accompany Thuringian companies and institutions through the mobility transition with research and innovation as well as the population with practical offers.

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