HVV's Switch app adds car sharing offers

"Apart from consistently expanding public transport and cycling, the smart city is also a core element of the mobility transition in Hamburg," said Anjes Tjarks, Senator for Transport and Mobility Transition. HVV Switch takes account of the passenger's view of the modern mobility mix, he said, adding: "The smarter and simpler the offers can be booked digitally and combined with each other, the more people will use them and go without their own cars to navigate our beautiful city in a climate-friendlier, faster manner." Hamburg will use the HVV Switch app, among others, to shine the light on the city as a "pioneer of digital and smart mobility" during the ITS World Congress in October 2021.

The aim is to make all of Hamburg's transport services available and accessible in a single application. The public transport system will be gradually expanded to include smart and demand-orientated services such as sharing and on-demand offers. The e-scooter provider, Tier, and the car-sharing provider, Miles Mobility, will be included in the app later in 2021.

Tests of the new HVV Any (check-in/be-out) function are presently underway. Customers check in quickly and easily on the app to travel on HVV immediately under the motto "Travel first, then pay". Transfers and check-outs are registered automatically. At the end of the day, the cheapest ticket is calculated from all of the combined journeys. This should make details of ticket types and fare zones a thing of the past. The service is expected to launch in late summer. "This great innovation makes access to public transport even more natural," said Dietrich Hartmann, Managing Director of HVV .

The app will feature a new transport budget function from late summer as part of the RealLabor Hamburg (RealLabHH). Ten sub-projects with over 30 partners in mobility, research and digitalisation focus on simulating transport in Hamburg in 2030 in live operation. As a sub-project of the RealLabHH, the project allows companies to help their employees switch to environment-friendly means of transport. Unlike job tickets or company cars, the mobility budget will allow employees to choose from the offers on the HVV Switch app.

Around 80 HVV Switch points in Hamburg, i.e. parking spaces at stops and in various districts make the use of car sharing services more convenient. An availability function will display free parking spaces from June. Last year, the app added HVV ticketing and the services of the ride-pooling provider MOIA. The app will again feature these services from June 1, 2021 after the pandemic forced a suspension of those operations. The app has been downloaded almost 80,000 times already, according to HVV.

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