Markets and strategy

The growth trend in local public transport continued in 2024. The Germany-Ticket has proven to be a popular ticket with about 13 million monthly users. In the fourth quarter of 2024, about 13% of journeys with a Germany-Ticket moved from other means of transport, thereof about 8% were from motorized private transport. A permanent financing basis with reliable planning is required for the long-term maintenance and expansion of the service.

An effective shift in the mode of transport to achieve Germany’s climate protection targets – accompanied by a reduction in motorized private transport – requires competitive, publicly accessible door-to-door mobility chains. These can only be realized on a broad scale if mobility is considered holistically and the limited public funds are used more efficiently. Numerous contracting organizations are already working on forward-looking concepts to plan transport 
services more intelligently, link them more closely across modes of transport and design the overall service in a more demand-oriented way.

We have started to expand our capabilities and portfolio to become a comprehensive “system provider” for integrated everyday mobility. We aim to offer greater customer benefits for an increasing number of passengers and thus achieve a greater shift in the mode of transport. By way of our two strong mobility pillars, rail and road, and integrated mobility services, we want to support the realization of the growth targets of the Strong Rail strategy, aimed at offering a reliable, seamless and demand-orientated service of door-to-door mobility solutions from a single source for cities and rural areas.

All of this led to the building block “Integrated everyday mobility” as part of the Strong Rail strategy. The building block is divided into three modules that are intended to contribute to DB Regional’s strategic goals:

• High-performance regional rail passenger transport: DB Regional Rail aims to improve its operational performance and thus reliability and quality for passengers with measures to optimize personnel and vehicle availability and to reduce operational complexity, among others, through digitalization. For example, a program for digital vehicle maintenance enables increased ve­hicle availability through continual monitoring and predictive maintenance. In addition, a new employee portal provides a real-time overview of the duty roster, regulates direct communication on personnel planning and scheduling and thus replaces handwritten entries by employees. As a reliable partner to the public sector, DB Regional also wants to transport more passengers with a resilient contract portfolio and drive forward the mobility transition.
• From carrier to road system provider: DB Regional Road aims to establish economically sustainable, integrated mobility services. To that end, regularly scheduled and on-demand services are to be combined using new technologies, in the future also including autonomous driving. As the market leader for integrated mobility services, the aim is to be a reliable partner in public road passenger transport.
• Market transformation and local public transport fi­nanc­ing: The module is aimed at targeted market development so that public transport is designed holistically, geared towards actual customer needs and along overarching mobility spaces. It is aimed at creating an attractive, adequately funded public mobility service that offers an alternative to private motorized transport.

In addition to its strategic relevance for Strong Rail and the mobility transition, the building block “Integrated everyday mobility” also aims to stabilize operations on rail, increase efficiency in local public transport (in particular through overarching planning and coordination) and establish long-term, secure industry financing and thus also in respect of the profitability goals of the S3 restructuring program.