To share your car with others or travel a certain distance together with other passengers - according to a recent study by the digital association Bitkom, such concepts are of great interest to German citizens given the growing traffic in their cities.
It found that 90 per cent of people in Germany see advantages in schemes such as car-sharing or ride-sharing. But for such services to be established more widely, the groundwork has to be laid also legally, Bitkom said. It met with political and economic representatives in Berlin on Tuesday to discuss the steps needed.
Decade-old and innovation-adverse regulation often hinders new mobility initiatives. Bitkom is advocating for Germany's Passenger Transport Act to be modernized. It for instance would like to abolish an obligation for chauffeur-driven rental cars to return to their base before the next job, so that environmentally unfriendly empty runs can be avoided.
But full deregulation would not have the hoped-for consequences either, according to Green parliamentarian Stefan Gelbhaar. Car- and ride-sharing services must complement the transport sector in a sensible way.
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