Grußwort zur Veranstaltung Sustainable Mobility (englisch)

Mr Melsheimer,
Your Majesties,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am delighted to welcome you to the German-Swedish Seminar on Sustainable Mobility here at the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce. Greeting such a high-ranking delegation at a conference on sustainable mobility is a premiere for us and shows how important this issue is for both Sweden and Germany. We here in Hamburg are eager to exchange ideas with our guests from Sweden.

Globalization and technological advancement have made us face many questions about the future, and nearly all of them pertain to large cities. Cities often find solutions to some of these questions even before they arise in other areas. This is true of both Stockholm and Hamburg.

Stockholm and Hamburg have much in common. Both cities are growing, and welcome this growth. Both attract many innovative businesses and are pioneers in the area of modern city planning. Both cities are European Green Capitals, and both like to style themselves the Venice of the North Stockholm because of its islands, and Hamburg because of its bridges.

A green, fair, and growing city on the water this is the motto for our 15-year city planning strategy. Hamburg will soon reach a population of nearly 2 million. That is why we have begun our largest residential building program in 20 years. We are not only increasing the number of residential units, we are creating wholly new neighborhoods with a high quality of life. Like Stockholm, we’re in the process of transforming former port districts into attractive residential and working areas. At each of the building sites, one-third of the apartments are publicly subsidized, because we are committed to ensuring that Hamburg is a place of opportunity for all of its residents, regardless of income.

We know exactly how we want our city as a whole to develop. And that development includes specific demands on our mobility infrastructure: it must be flexible, reliable even during rush hours, and of course resource-efficient. You all know the bullet points: e-mobility, bike paths and bike sharing, public transport, networks, and smart systems.

We are testing many of the ideas in our Intelligent Transport Systems strategy, or ITS, in the Port of Hamburg, where traffic flow and the flow of goods must function together flawlessly. Truck drivers, for example, can use a special app to find the best route to a terminal, without having to stop at a raised bridge or to wait for their containers.

We’re also testing an intelligent street-light system, which amplifies the lighting when pedestrians or bikes approach. And we’re trying platooning traffic lights and vehicles communicate with each other to create extended green waves as soon as a truck convoy approaches a traffic light.

If we implement this system in the city, Hamburg’s 1700 traffic lights could transmit remaining green and red times to vehicles, so that drivers can adjust their speed and take advantage of green waves. Projects to put this system into practice are already running.

We plan to introduce smart-parking in order to reduce emissions and to optimize traffic flow. All parking slots will have sensors that inform drivers whether they are empty or not. Slots can even be reserved. We have begun a pilot project that will test the practicality of different technologies over the period of one year.

At the same time we’re building new subway and city train lines and modernizing the old ones. Like Stockholm, we will soon have driverless subway trains that can transport more passengers in shorter intervals. Buying tickets will become a thing of the past, as smartphones will automatically register where someone gets in and out, calculate the appropriate fee and deduct it.

First and foremost, however, we are linking buses and trains with car-sharing and rental car systems, bike sharing, and taxis. This project, combined with low-emission and low-noise engines, will make our city much quieter and our air so clean that we will soon be able to meet the European Union NOx emission requirements. To help us reach this goal, we have been using environmentally friendly hybrid buses, made by Volvo, for several years. From 2020 onwards, we plan to purchase only zero-emission buses for use in the city.

We are also modernizing our long-distance rail and auto traffic. We’re currently expanding the A7 motorway. And because the A7 goes straight through the city, we’re putting it into a tunnel and building a park on top, effectively burying the noise from 152,000 vehicles per day.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Sustainable mobility has many facets, and we want to use all of them. We want Hamburg to be a model city for environmentally friendly and intelligent traffic concepts. That is why we have approached the federal government for support for the ITS World Congress in 2021. Today we are on the way, step by step, to intelligent and sustainable mobility. In the future we hope to walk this path together with Sweden.

Thank you.

Es gilt das gesprochene Wort.