About us

Faced with megatrends such as climate change, limited resources, and the social and demographic change paired with scarce public coffers, the future-oriented design of mobility and transport will be a major challenge in the coming decades.

Public transport systems play a central role in terms of their efficiency and environmental compatibility, their impact on spatial structures, their importance for securing public service tasks, and their innovative potential.

Therefore, public transport systems need to be developed in a future-oriented way and their long-term funding must be ensured. At the same time, public transport should be able to absorb and exploit technical innovations and societal trends. In addition, public transport will have to be integrated more firmly into municipal and operational mobility management in the future.

Public transport is no longer confined to conventional public passenger land and rail transport carried out by e.g. buses, trams, and railways. New mobility services such as car sharing, car pooling, public bike rental systems, as well as smartphone- or app-supported mobility, which are developing at a rapid pace, complement the picture and must be understood as a cohesive entity together with conventional public transport – spatially, systemically and as regards to ticketing arrangements.

At our Chair for “Public Transport Systems and Mobility Management", particular emphasis is placed on the topics and challenges outlined above. This involves the planning, organization, financing, construction, and operation of public transport systems, their spatial and intermodal links with private transport systems as well as transport planning strategies and measures – both for classic public transport and for the new “smart” public transport.

Our Chair was founded by Prof. Joachim Fiedler and headed by the denomination "Public Transport and Transport Systems" (ÖVTS) until 1995. After that Prof. Carmen Hass-Klau took over the Chair until 2012 with the name extension “Public Transport in Europe” (ÖVTS-NE). Since 2015 the Chair has been headed by Prof. Ulrike Reutter, now with the denomination “Public Transport and Mobility Management” (ÖVM).

The Chair is part of the “Centre of Traffic and Transport” in the “School of Architecture and Civil Engineering” at the University of Wuppertal.