Germany is a land of automobiles. However, its national rail company, Deutsche Bahn, is behind an initiative to encourage commuters to leave their cars and ride a bike. Call a Bike is active in six major German cities and its future looks bright, as statistics show that alternatives to cars as a means of transport are becoming increasingly important.

The mobility market leader is now facing competition. Although over 42 million cars are registered in Germany and Germans use their cars for the vast majority of their everyday journeys, a trend is now emerging towards a mobility mix in which both public transport and the bicycle are becoming increasingly important. Today 83 percent of all German households have at least one bicycle. In 1988, the total was just 70 percent, while in 1969 only half of all households (53 percent) had a bicycle.

Enlarge image (© DB Bahn) The national rail company firmly supports this trend. The Deutsch Bahn helped kick start a system of convenient and highly flexible short-term bike rentals named Call a Bike. Call a Bike is up an running in six major German cities: Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Karlsruhe, Cologne, Munich and Stuttgart.

Using a system of authentication codes to automatically lock and unlock bikes, registered users can pick up and drop off bikes anywhere within a fairly large radius of the city centres (in Berlin and Sttugart at rental stations). Their use is billed by the minute, with a maximum fee of 16 Euro a day and 60 for a week.

Like all good ideas, Call a Bike is based on a really simple principle: the right solution at the right time and in the right place. The right place is the railway station where a commuter has just arrived. Or maybe a museum, shopping mall, office block, or trendy bar. The possibilities are endless because the bikes can be locked up at any main intersection in the city when the user is finished with them (for most locations) or back at the rental station. They then are registered online for a new user to borrow. Their distinctive red and white DB logo on the back makes them easy to spot.

Enlarge image (© DB Bahn) Call a Bike is just one example of the rise in alternative transport. This increasing importance of alternatives to the automobile is confirmed by a recent Federal Transport Ministry study on “Mobility in Germany”. In a comparison of the years 2002 and 2008, it ascertained an increase of four million journeys a day completed by bicycle. The number of trips completed on foot rose by five million, while public transport was used one million times more. Conversely, the number of journeys completed using motorized private transport – in other words, primarily cars – fell by two million.

Germany’s strong infrastructure supports flexible mobility. Bus and rail services profit from the dense network of over 230,000 kilometres of road and over 40,000 kilometres of track. Environmentally friendly public transport makes a particularly strong mark on cities. Timescout, a survey of youth trends conducted in six German cities in 2010, discovered that almost 80 percent of 20- to 29-year-olds said that a car was unnecessary in their city because of the well-developed public transport system.