In 2023, the growth trend in local public transport continued, after a collapse in passenger numbers during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Germany-Ticket has replaced the 9-Euro-Ticket in terms of its national validity. For the long-term maintenance and also for the expansion of the offer from 2024, a permanent financing basis with reliable planning is required.

The Germany-Ticket offers additional potential in terms of attracting new customers from among students, employees in companies with job ticket offers and subscribers of other products.

In addition to the ongoing trend towards the use of modern public transport offers in metropolitan regions and the increased influx of families to suburban areas, accompanied by professional commuting within the metropolitan regions, environmental and climate protection are also gaining in importance. Over the medium term, it can therefore be assumed that the trend of traffic growth in local public transport will continue.

In order to resume the short-term stabilization of local public transport through the industry solution of the Federal Government and Federal states in the Covid-19 pandemic, the annual dynamic rate of regionalization funds was increased at the beginning of 2023.

DB Regional, the largest provider, aspires to profit from this positive market environment. In addition to orientation towards the Strong Rail group strategy under the motto “regional and urban mobility,” DB Regional is in particular pursuing the vision of becoming a “comprehensive system provider” for integrated everyday mobility. For this purpose, DB Regional has overhauled its organizational structure in 2023 with its two strong mobility pillars rail and road, with the aim of offering a reliable, seamless and demand-orientated offer of door-to-door mobility solutions from a single source for the city and rural areas.

To implement the strategy, DB Regional is working on the following strategic areas of the Strong Rail strategy:

• More robust: To strengthen its robustness, DB Regional is working in particular on the fleet, employees and business model. The modernization and digitalization of the fleet are key factors for sustainable quality improvement and upgrades of regional rail passenger transport. For this reason, DB Regional is investing in a gradual expansion of its fleet strength and a consistent redesign of the vehicles. Sufficient and qualified personnel are an equally important success factor for robust operations. DB Regional is continuously working on the recruitment and qualification of employees and develops solutions to meet the challenges of the market. These include increased efforts to target group-specific qualification and recruitment, optimization of employee recruitment processes as well as the productive deployment of employees. DB Regional is responding to changing market conditions, for example due to the increasing fragmentation of transport contracts, with new business concepts and cooperation projects: with the expansion of offers for third parties, such as maintenance and pool and life cycle management, DB Regional is enhancing its capacity for cooperation and its competitiveness.
• More powerful: Stable processes are the basis for the impact power of DB Regional and for reliable provision of services. Quality standards and control capability are performance-critical indicators of operating quality. If this is not a given, the result will be concession fees and contractual penalties. This will have a negative impact on profitability. With the implementation of the DB excellence system, DB Regional is focusing on increasing operating quality and vehicle availability, thereby creating the basis for reliability and punctuality and therefore greater customer satisfaction. Automation, industrialization and digitalization as well as platform solutions and intelligently linked data in high quality and availability are the essential levers here.
• More modern: To modernize DB Regional, the focus is on developing new forms of mobility, creating digital platform solutions and strengthening the role of innovation driver in the industry. The development of new mobility concepts is becoming increasingly important. Cities, outskirts and rural areas each have different mobility requirements and make close integration between modes of transport and cooperation with partners imperative. Through the consistent further development of new mobility solutions, such as on-demand transport services, DB Regional intends to develop a seamless and needs-oriented mobility service for the city and rural areas: in particular, metropolitan transport services must be enhanced by the expansion of offers for a shift in the mode of transport and by increasing vehicle attractiveness and capacity. In order to inspire new target groups to take local public transport, sustainable, compelling concepts are needed, such as the implementation of large-scale model regions. Customer needs, user behavior and the emergence of new mobility habits and thus the effects of shifts in the mode of transport can be examined there on a large scale. The findings will make it possible to make more efficient use of funding in future.
• Greener: DB Regional is taking numerous measures for the purpose of climate protection. The use of electric multiple units achieves the highest levels of efficiency, especially when using 100% eco-power. The consumption of fossil fuels is continuously reduced by our traction unit drivers’ energy-efficient driving style and the use of supportive assistance systems. We are also testing the use of trains with alternative drive technologies. DB Regional is a technology partner in the industry for all options; it has gained initial experience and has already won tenders. One challenge is that the use of such trains requires a high level of investment and takes (lead) time. At the same time, DB Regional is committed to the use of biofuel HVO, which is used as a bridge technology. Since 2022, HVO has been used in several sub-networks in passenger transport operations. DB Regional undertakes its own inquiries to ensure that the alternative fuel is compatible with engines for vehicles in regional rail passenger transport. DB Energy ensures the necessary infrastructure as well as reliable procurement and supply of climate-friendly biofuels.