The second Transport and Climate Change (TCC) Week, which included the Climate Action in Mobility Conference (CAMC), highlighted the importance and need of a transformational change in the transport sector to limit global warming by developing climate-friendly solutions. It was hosted by GIZ on behalf of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) in Berlin from 24 to 28 September 2018.
This year’s event focused on digital mobility, new business models and innovative planning in the transport sector. Nearly 200 experts and officials from ministries, institutions and city authorities from 20 countries, many from developing and emerging economies, exchanged their experiences in shaping the transport sector and discussed how to achieve a paradigm shift in transport around the world.
The TCC Week started with a series of workshops on various topics in the field of sustainable transport, initiating expert dialogues with colleagues from around the world. Country representatives introduced the status quo of transport development and pointed out corresponding challenges in their countries. A large number of experts from private companies and research institutes also presented their innovative solutions for transforming the transport sector. These include applications in the fields of digitization and big data, blockchain, electric car and scooter sharing. During the CMAC, GIZ colleagues from around the globe together with international professionals in the field of sustainable transport shed light on the questions how to take bold decisions for clean mobility and how to drive and shape the mobility transformation worldwide.
In recent years, China has made great efforts in developing innovative and successful solutions to contribute to a transformational change in the transport sector. China representative at the TCC Week, Mr. Tang Wei, Senior Engineer at China Highway and Transport Society (CHTS), gave valuable insights into China’s and Beijing’s developments of bike sharing. In Beijing, there are more than 2.4 million shared bikes with around 11 million registered users. This large number of shared bikes aims to support the reduction of the heavily over-congested traffic in Chinese cities and especially contributes to solve the “last-mile problem”. However, the promotion of shared bikes also results in a high number of challenges, such as over-delivery, chaotic parking, blocked pavements and bike damage. Tang Wei pointed out that several measures are being introduced to effectively face these challenges. This includes, for instance, regulatory measures such as a ban on newly added shared bikes into the market or the introduction of virtual geo-fences for improving the parking of bikes.
Mr. Tang’s presentation can be found here.
Mr. Zhang Haitao from the Shenzhen Urban Transport Planning and Design Institute spoke on the electrification of Shenzhen’s bus fleet and presented impressive numbers to the audience. Shenzhen is a selected pilot city in China for promoting the electrification of public transport. National and local governments developed promotion and financial support policies in order to transform the public transportation sector in Shenzhen. By the end of 2017, Shenzhen had a fully electrified public fleet of almost 17,000 buses. In the coming years, Shenzhen will continue its ambitious electrification plans by substituting the taxi and private car segment with New Energy Vehicles (NEVs).
Having observed the development of China’s transport sector for a long time, Mr. Sebastian Ibold, Project Manager in the project Sino-German Cooperation on Low Carbon Transport at GIZ in China, presented China’s transport and mobility innovations at the event.
Mr. Ibold provided an overview on China’s innovation eco-system and the resulting readiness for mobility innovations. Currently, China has 802 million internet users of which about 98% are mobile users. Of these, 80% are using WeChat, the Chinese all-in-one app, where users can access a variety of services within one platform, including mobile payment or on-demand mobility booking. Based on China’s mobile-affine netizens, companies like Didi Chuxing, the country’s ride-hailing king, were able to scale up their business models. Didi today has more than 450 million users across over 400 cities in China and holds about 85 % market share in China and accounted for a total number of 7.43 billion rides in 2017 – an impressive number compared to the 4 billion rides with Uber World in the same year. Another trend in the Chinese mobility eco-system is the further diversification of its service spectrum and value chain coverage. For instance, Didi aims to provide its Smart Transportation Brain traffic management platform to more than 24 cities, explores new business opportunities in the field of innovative vehicle purchasing and fleet management, operates more than 6 million shared bikes and is now operating its own franchise repair shop businesses. The company is further establishing cooperation with car manufacturers such as BAIC to start its own electric vehicle production.
Mr. Ibold complemented his presentation with giving insights on the latest developments of China’s autonomous vehicle development trends, new cross-industry alliances in the mobility sector and smart city trends. You can have a look at Mr. Ibolds presentation here.
The TCC-Week was a very successful event, not only providing an exchange platform for stakeholders and decision makers in the transport sector but making clear: The future is here! Let’s work together on innovative approaches in the mobility sector and ensure their contribution to low carbon and sustainable transport.
All TCC-Week presentations can be downloaded here.
More information on the Transport week can be found here.
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