The Sunita Narain Show: How did Hamburg pave the way for an integrated public transport system?

Hamburg is the second-largest city in Germany. It has city trains or metro systems as we call them in India. It has electric buses, ferries and bicycle tracks.

Hamburg is not the world’s best city in terms of modal share of public transport — Asian cities like Tokyo or Hong Kong score higher with some 60-70 per cent trips on public transport only.

It also has a way to go to meet its goal of 30 per cent modal share for public transport.

But what is impressive is how Hamburg has stitched together different modes of transport. It has brought them into an integrated system so that you can take a train, hop onto a bus, hail a taxi, or a bike, then take the boat to your destination. And you can do this on one ticket; you can do this on one app. And the beauty is that this does not mean that the system belongs to one operator. In fact, there are many operators. All working together.