New initiative announced for urban mobility

KfW announced a new mobility initiative, called TUMI (Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative), at the International Transport Forum in Leipzig. TUMI was launched last year by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) to promote the expansion of sustainable transport systems in developing countries. KfW is financing new projects for the initiative on behalf of the BMZ with an annual volume of one billion euros.

The International Transport Forum is a specialised agency of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) which now has around 60 member states and positions itself as a platform for dialogue that aims to promote communication between high-ranking representatives from the economic and civil society sectors with regard to mobility. All of the member states meet once a year for a three-day conference in Leipzig. This time, the event was attended by 1,300 representatives from governments and from the economic, science and civil society sectors. The leading topic was "Governance in Transport", but the attendees also discussed other aspects of the transport of tomorrow in the several dozen panels and discussion groups.

The participants agreed that, after the changes in the energy sector, the transport sector is now on the verge of a turning point, not least because global warning cannot be limited to an acceptable level without new mobility concepts. Transport minister Alexander Dobrindt, who was in Leipzig with 40 other ministers, said: "Right now we are on the cusp of a mobility revolution".

The current system of individual motorised transport is approaching its limits, especially because cities all over the world are literally being smothered by their traffic. Without political change, the number of cars on the road is expected to rise from 900 million to around 1.7 billion in the next twenty years alone.

In Leipzig, the attendees discussed solutions which included heading towards sustainable (public) transportation, app-based traffic flows and so-called "sharing" practices.

KfW Development Bank is one of the international institutions which is promoting and supporting this change. Through TUMI, it is providing one billion euros per year to finance sustainable transport in developing countries and emerging economies, such as underground lines in Latin America, cycle paths in South Africa or bus systems in Kenya. Together with the BMZ and GIZ, KfW presented the initiative at a side event in Leipzig and explained KfW's funding policy.

Team Head Klaus Gihr said that in this instance, KfW is more than a financier; it is also monitoring projects with regard to their impact on people and the environment and supporting the preparation of projects. The partners' lack of capacity pose "a big problem". No specific technology is being financed as "there is no magic formula for sustainable transport". Instead, the aim is to find the best solution in each case.

Even before the actual conference in Leipzig, all the institutions involved with TUMI met at a workshop. As well as KfW and the BMZ, these include the World Resources Institute, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Development Bank of Latin American (CAF) and GIZ. Together, they all want to be the driving force behind a global transport change.