The app “Mobil in Düsseldorf” shows connections and departure times of buses and trains of the entire Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr (VRR) and informs its users in real time in case of delays or cancellations. In addition, the app displays various offers for multimodal transport. For example, available rental bikes from the regional bike sharing provider “Nextbike” can be rented. The vehicles of the car sharing provider “car2go” are also accessible via the app. And the P+R seats in the greater Düsseldorf area are displayed on a map in the app.

On average, there are currently 1.4 passengers in a passenger car on all journeys in Germany. Especially during the rush hours in the morning and in the evening, one sees mainly vehicles with only one passenger on board. An integrated app that takes into account the P+R parking spaces should motivate these ‘individual drivers’ to switch to public transport. Closely interlinked sharing offers with car and bike sharing then help to bridge the last mile.

The digital application was developed by moovel Group GmbH, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daimler AG. With the Mobility-as-a-Service platform, moovel enables transport associations and companies to offer mobile tickets via app in their name and appearance and to integrate additional mobility services. Apart from Düsseldorf in Germany the cities Stuttgart, Hamburg, Karlsruhe and Aschaffenburg use the mobility as a service platform of the moovel Group GmbH. World-wide there are already 5.7 million users.

This is how the app in Düsseldorf works

The user can be localized or set any starting point on the screen and searches for the desired destination. All available mobility services appear immediately. They can be booked either directly via the app or by forwarding to the corresponding provider. Nextbike bikes and car2go vehicles are available directly via the “Mobil in Düsseldorf” app.

To use it, simply search for an available vehicle in the vicinity, reserve it and drive off. In the Rhineland, the car2go fleet consists of around 650 vehicles. If users decide to take the bus or train, they can buy the ticket in the app with just a few clicks and immediately have the digital ticket on their smartphone. Users can pay by Paypal account or credit card, which they deposit once when registering in the app. Single tickets for adults and children as well as 24- and 48-hour tickets for one or up to five people for the entire VRR area (price levels A to D) are initially available.

The display of the P+R seats is also very useful: when users click on a P+R seat on the map, it shows which stop is nearby, which lines run there and what the total capacity of the car park is.

Further functions are planned for the future, such as real-time display of capacity utilisation, booking of a seat or opening of the barrier. The app will be developed continuously. The next steps are the integration of the car sharing provider “stadtmobil” and the taxi app “mytaxi”.

With around 3,340 stops, Rheinbahn Düsseldorf is the largest transport company in the Rhine-Ruhr transport network. With a total of 735 vehicles on 132 lines, around 740,000 people travel on the Rheinbahn every working day. It thus makes an active contribution to climate and environmental protection. Without a functioning public transport system, the mobility problems of today cannot be solved. In particular, retrofitting and early renewal of the bus fleet and intelligent technology for accelerating buses and trains are important contributions to better air quality and a cleaner future.

“Mobil in Düsseldorf” can now be downloaded free of charge from the Apple App Store and Google Play. Travelling by App in Düsseldorf – that’s how modern mobility works today.

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