Public transport: how data is changing local transport

To slow down the coronavirus, the New York subway shut down for the first time in 115 years in the spring of 2020. That meant: The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), its supervisory authority, had to replace more than 1,000 kilometers of railway line with bus routes.

The pandemic has also slowed public transport in Germany. “The number of passengers has dropped dramatically everywhere,” confirms the Siemens company Hacon, which among other things created the “DB Navigator” app.

According to a previously unpublished study by the Berlin Science Center for Social Research, the break-in is only partly due to the fact that many people avoid buses and trains for fear of infection. Often the local public transport simply lacks “flexibility and product quality”, quotes the Spiegel from the study. The providers find it difficult to adjust to the changed world of work. “Anyone who works in the home office in the morning and only wants to go to the office in the afternoon, for example, quickly notices how thinned out the connections are in many places outside of the morning and evening rush hours,” says Spiegel.