Inside and outside of the UITP Summit Hamburg 2025, there is plenty to explore in a city of innovations! Informing all the city’s projects is the Hamburg-Takt, a plan for the city’s climate transition. The headline target is for Hamburg to become a net zero city by 2050. And mobility has a big part to play – between now and 2030, almost half of the required CO2 savings will come from the transport sector alone.
In our report, The Future of Mobility is in Hamburg, we highlight 20 innovative projects transforming and decarbonising the city’s mobility. Check out the full details here!
Discover 5 major public transport innovations in Hamburg.
More and better metro for Hamburg
A metro train arriving every 100 seconds – that’s the vision for Hamburg’s U-Bahn! And it is already becoming reality with a partial automation in GoA2 on lines U2 and U4, maximizing capacity by up to 50%!
The new U5 will even add 24km to the current metro network and it will be fully automated and powered by 100% green electricity. The U5 is expected to transport 270,000 passengers every day. As well, new stations on the U4 will provide another 13,000 people with a local metro stop, in addition to a new stop on the U3 that will connect 10,000 more residents
100% zero-emission bus fleet
A fully decarbonised bus fleet means the replacement of over 1,000 diesel buses. Hamburg is making good headway, electrifying buses, depots, and ordering only emission-free buses since 2020. This has proven beneficial to recruitment and retention efforts.
“We have many drivers who say ‘I want to come here every day’ – they make 40, 50 minutes journey to get here – because we have 18 lines here, electric buses, the newest buses, big 21 metre buses. That’s the coolest thing about HOCHBAHN. You can pick your kind of job here.”
– Hugo Dominik,
Bus driver at Alsterdorf bus depot
hvv switch as a MaaS app
hvv switch is Hamburg’s one-stop-shop mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) app. With the app, citizens can purchase all kinds of transport tickets and rides through one simple and clean platform. From e-scooters to buses, ferries, on-demand taxis, and the Deutschland ticket, hvv switch centralises the whole city’s mobility offer.
On-demand services
Thanks to MOIA, Hamburg is leading the way in on-demand services. MOIA runs Europe’s largest ridepooling service with around 330 vehicles and over 10 million rides across the city. These services are key to the research and eventual deployment of automated minibuses. Booked on-demand, the service sees substantial usage among individuals with disabilities. Julia Wissel, the Director of Product at MOIA, notes that this “shows there was a gap that we fill with our mobility solution”.
Citizen participation
Using the online platform “Faster through Hamburg”, the city involves its citizens in decision making, which fosters acceptance early for projects. On the website, locals provide suggestions and ideas on subjects like lighting, parking, solar panels, sound levels, and more. In turn, HOCHBAHN responds to these suggestions and questions in information sessions.
