During the two year duration of the "Bremen 2030" project, Bremen city districts have been able to examine prospects for establishing mobility and time agreements and take their first steps in agreeing to time structures with male and female city residents, businesses, transit providers, and commercial enterprises. This included working on a guiding vision that encompasses international knowledge of the problems and prospects for city development and formulates guidelines for a time-oriented city policy. Combining both approaches facilitates understanding of the new "city time policy" and innovative ways to develop an informed opinion, with both male and female city residents involved in testing its applicability.

Bremen is a good example of a "a mature city with a disproportionate number of older residents." Demographic and social development is marked by an aging, generally decreasing, increasingly individualistic population – resulting in crises and degeneration of the social security system. There is more and more urban sprawl in terms of residential, business, logistical and trade structures, which is detrimental to Bremen's downtown and subcenters (business, social and cultural), bringing more roads and individual traffic to the region (with the well-known environmental consequences). This is accompanied by social polarization and deterioration (poverty, drugs, crime), which threaten the traditional image of the European city itself. Globalized and virtualized business has further accelerated these trends, affecting not only work life, transport and communication, but also leisure time and the basic nature of the family.

We are already aware of the division in function between living and working. But the function network can be further broken down: leisure time, consumption and education create distinctive spatial patterns in the city and make the transport of persons and goods through all these areas essential. In addition, this so heightens these traffic needs that road connections of necessity expand across our cities. Guido Martinotti has made an interesting observation in this area. Counter to the widespread theory that our cities are atrophying, he espouses an empirically well-supported opposing thesis. It goes like this: What in many of our cities is stagnating or even atrophying, is the number of inhabitants, that is permanent residents. Against that is a sharp rise in the number of people who use the city on a temporary basis: the commuter or "city user," as we now call him: the tourists and visitors who stream in from the outside - a product of the leisure society - and now the businessmen who in the age of globalization and international integration only visit cities for short periods of time, with very specific and sophisticated demands in terms of mobility, consumption and communication.

Two conclusions emerge:

• First: There can be no question that the city is atrophying - the composition of city populations only shifts from stable to temporary populations.
• Second: With the restructuring of our city populations comes a systematic increase and differentiation of mobility needs - the newly mobile permanent population is joined by the mobility of all those who are just passing through the city, and who use it at completely different times of the day and night. Meeting mobility needs will continue to be a central aspect of city development.

So the question is not just how to optimize socially and environmentally friendly means of transport technically and in terms of routes. We are asking what cooperation can be brought about among the city's main players under this mobility situation, making it more "intelligent" and socially acceptable than it is today. We place the emphasis on cooperation - as today the mobility situation has been handled in a mostly spotty and physically isolated manner. The 2030 City Project intends to bring about "mobility agreements": that is major enterprises, political representatives, residents, and traffic carriers in a district sit down together, exchange their views on current and expected future mobility requirements and attempt to develop workable solutions for everyone. We should also consider that such efforts always collide with mature city structures. Thus they produce very different possibilities and needs for change in individual city districts. Whereas, for example, East Bremen has too much –that is work and commuter traffic, national transit traffic, a concentration of local public transport, delivery traffic and residential traffic – North Bremen has too little. So the problem situations are different: in Vegesack and North Bremen, the point is to strengthen ties to the rest of the world, improve accessibility to shopping, leisure, work or residential areas. In East Bremen, we are faced with the problem of many different kinds of traffic that physically and temporally overlap and need to be linked to city structures.

Vegesack Mobility Center

The activities within the sphere of the "Bremen 2030" Integrated Project in North Bremen are aimed at improving local and regional development of Bremen's Vegesack district through local public transport. Vegesack lies about 17 km northwest of downtown Bremen, and the size of the district, as well as its comparatively large catchment area, gives it a physically-functionally special position in connection with its physically extensive, detached location on Bremen's outskirts.

This position is reflected in its assigned function as a nucleus in Bremen's structure of center areas, and especially in its locally central classification as a nucleus within the region. Over the course of history, its character as an independent small to medium-sized city was ensured through the far-reaching economic, infrastructural and institutional independence of Vegesack and all of North Bremen, but with the structural change of the last decade, this is proving to be increasingly precarious and unstable. Radical changes in the commercial structure such as the closing of the Bremen Vulkanwerft shipyard in 1996 triggered profound structural change in Vegesack. Until the end of the 1980s, shipbuilding was still the main economic focus of all industrial production, which had fundamentally marked the district, its independent position and the self-image of its inhabitants. After the loss of the then largest regional employer, there was a gradual shift to a heterogeneously structured, medium-sized trade and service location.

As an indication of its centrality as a shopping area, Vegesack's catchment area has had a continuously small radius of under 10 kilometers over the last two years. Even on traditionally crowded Saturday shopping days, residents of the more distant surrounding area do not seem to find this nucleus any more appealing than on regular workdays. Thus, the large visitor groups between 25 and 40 years of age, as well as young people and young men up to age 25, mostly stay away from Vegesack's retail trade and services and gravitate to downtown Bremen. The location also has little appeal for families. The cityscape is much more dominated by older residents. The "colorful mix" of visitors is missing, which also has a detrimental affect on the atmosphere. Even the concrete assessment of shopping opportunities offered in the pedestrian zone of Vegesack is negative for most visitors from North Bremen and the surrounding area. Contrary to its intended position as a nucleus in the polycentric structure of Bremen, all indicators point to a supply location with merely local relevance. The creative and functional improvement of the eastern edge of this district nucleus by building a shopping and entertainment center, the development of the old port area as a tourist attraction, and the construction of an international Bremen University, give a Vegesack's train station a "new spatial position" within the district. It has been pushed from the fringe to the district nucleus, into a functionally crowded area of shopping, services and recreational opportunities offered by Haven Höövt and the port. This makes it possible for this traffic infrastructure system to be integrated into the popular downtown area. In the course of the tertiary processes that have begun, there is a considerable need for a specially designed readjustment of the city's mobility options. Otherwise, the central weakness in developing this territory will continue to be the accessibility and quality of local public transport. Within the framework of North Bremen's mobility agreements, optimization efforts are concentrated on the Vegesack train station, one of the regionally important stops on the local rail transport and the mass transit system for the district and surrounding area. The anticipated improvement in the quality of mobility options and accessibility should help revitalize the Vegesack nucleus. In the process of structural change, the district center has seen a consequent loss of significance, which in the long run would mean a weakening of the Vegesack district and the whole North Bremen region as a functional working, residential and shopping location. On shorter travel routes that can be covered by mass transit, we should focus not only on improving the speed of means of transport, but also absolute travel time. This is because the amount of time required to reach one's destination from the point of departure accounts for only a portion of the travel time on the means of transport. A significant additional component includes transfer and waiting times, in particular for trips with a number of stages.

The speeding up and in a broader sense improvement of the everyday suitability of mobility options must therefore, on the city and/or regional level, focus on time-saving links and integration of transport options offered by mass transit rather than focusing exclusively on increasing the speed of individual transport connections. A starting point for improving the traffic interface is thus locally and regionally important transfer points in the city, such as, for example, stops on the local rail system. These function as mobility junctions and generally offer transfer possibilities for regional and local public transport, individual motorized traffic or even bicycle traffic.

The Vegesack station traffic junction shows serious weaknesses in the transport options structure and urban development situation. The following problem areas directly regard the mobility junction or arise there:

• narrow spectrum of offers in train station buildings
• unattractive bus station with long transfer routes
• outdated, unsafe bicycle parking
• information and sales structures of transport providers are not customer oriented (physical separation, communication-unfriendly equipment)
• lack of information, advice and service options for tourists
• insufficient frequency of regular service for the local rail transport connection

One reason why there are few structures suitable for daily use may be the inward-focused perspective of the respective transport enterprises and/or service providers, based upon which current offers are conceived. Hitherto, insufficient consideration was given to how facilities were used from the perspective of female and male users, who take advantage of different services at the train station. With the demand for time-saving, daily use-friendly mobility options, a change in perspective of the individual organizational unit therefore becomes necessary for the overall transport structure. Only under these conditions can integrated offer structures develop that are aligned with the behavioral logic of customers at this traffic junction and correspond to models of demand and/or needs.

Overall, optimization efforts should result in attentive handling of service providers in line with the time resources of city dwellers, as well as social and gender-fair opportunities for mobility. A prerequisite for this is to balance reasons for mobility and expenditure of time for traffic services and eliminate time-related disadvantages, which is especially important for primary caregivers in families.

Urban development reorganization of the station's functional levels should lead to a clearer, more open system of route configuration for customers, as well as overall shorter route distances. In particular, the main bus depot is a weak point in this regard. Suggestions for change have already been made in this area, and include a fundamental restructuring of bus stop locations. (see illustration 5). This not only shortens the transfer routes between buses, but also brings the bus depot physically closer to train station structures and the local rail stop.

Based on the "one face to the customer" principle, the new mobility center to be built within the train station offers information and aid through mobility services using a general business approach. Individual assistance and sales of local and supralocal tickets are ensured at Vegesack through both the DB Reise und Touristik rail travel center and Bremer Straßenbahn AG (Bremen's streetcar service). The main tenant is DB Reise und Touristik. The business would be run through employees from both enterprises. At first, the services in the traffic area would be limited to mobility options offered by the shared enterprise. The common ticket service can thus offer gradual, manageable entry to a mobility center, with comprehensive mobility assistance. Over time, transport assistance services should include all local and supralocal transport, which should go beyond mass transit (for example, ferry connections and individual motorized traffic). The mobility center could be further enhanced with additional functions such as reserving transport on request (carsharing, taxis) or information on the Vegesack district with its recreational and tourist attractions. As a response to unsafe, unattractive bicycle parking options and to help distinguish Vegesack in the area of bicycle tourism, efforts will be made to build a bicycle station. A bicycle station offers three core functions:

• safe parking that offers protection from the elements (and includes means of transport such as strollers)
• bicycle rentals
• bicycle service with breakdown assistance and maintenance services

In the future, the supporting mobility coordination that accompanies this process will have a guiding influence on local and regional offer structures. Its goal is constant adjustment to the needs of both female and male users through mobility options that change and grow with them. The resulting measures are once again based on an overall view of mobility conditions in Vegesack, with a structure that goes beyond optimizing the offers of individual enterprises. Among other things, this process includes the optimization of travel schedules and timetables, improvement of transport connections to places (routes, stops) as well as fine-tuning train and bus transport times.

East Bremen Mobility Coordination

East Bremen has developed into a modern inner city industrial and business location and is the most important industrial growth pole in Bremen, not least due to its travel-convenient location in the triangle between two freeways. More than one fifth of the processing factories of the city of Bremen are located here, and these businesses alone account for about 50% of female and male workers employed in the processing industries. But in addition, this large district also has a large and densely populated residential area, as well as important national service structures, including a large hospital and the largest shopping center in Bremen. For East Bremen, the socioeconomic structure and physical location of all these city function areas above all create the problem of unifying different types of transport and forms of mobility. In addition, the large new industrial areas on the relatively distant outlying fringe areas of the eastern district, which at the same time mark the edge of the city, also create the problem of accessibility of work locations.

Due to the dense agglomeration of city functions in East Bremen, this area contains large concentrations of mixed, overlapping industrial delivery traffic, residential traffic, local and long distance public transport, commuter and work traffic, shopping trips to large shopping centers and transit traffic. Overcoming the resulting social, temporal and spatial conflicts (bottlenecks, noise, traffic risks, lack of accessibility and competition for use) is both a city and traffic structure planning problem and a daily organizational problem for the people involved. Clearly, the gradual structural change in this part of the city encompasses a multiplicity of individual developments, planning and decisions. Everywhere, responsible experts from all participating institutions and organizations are planning: conventional road and traffic planning, factory planning, personnel planning, logistics of different industries, mass transit planning for local public transit carriers; city planning, and the like.

The common pursuit of innovative solutions to this array of problems undoubtedly requires great willingness and ability to cooperate for the persons and organizations involved - and new forms of social negotiation and communication. Against this background, mobility agreements are an attempt to use innovative networks of different players in place of rule-driven bureaucratic routines, and civil-social negotiations ("agreements") in place of power-based individual decisions.

The DaimlerChrysler plant in Bremen is of major importance here in several respects. This is so because of the very size of the plant, which with its approximately 16,000 employees alone accounts for a large portion of daily (and nightly) traffic in the surrounding area. The movement of persons that it produces consists of different components: the majority of employees work on a three-shift system from Monday to Saturday; for some production areas there are additional night shifts, and on the weekends there is a concentration of regular maintenance and upkeep work, so that travel to and from the plant - even with different peak traffic times - keeps up a regular, round-the-clock rhythm throughout the week. Obviously, the peak traffic hours are when 3500 persons leave the plant and the next shift arrives to start work. In addition, during normal daytime hours about 2000 administrative employees come in, as well as up to 200 customers a day, who make extra trips to take delivery of their new cars directly at the plant's customer service center.

Insert Hemelingen AVI Video

The situation in the area around the DaimlerChrysler plant in Bremen becomes clear through an animated city plan that was created by a working group at the Milan Politecnico. This city plan shows the temporal dimension through the vertical movements of structures over time. In this way, the different phases of activity of the various city functions areas can be seen: the plant (shown in purple) grows and shrinks in daily shift rhythms and the residential areas (shown in yellow) and the service and retail trade areas (red) move in part in opposite directions and in part parallel to it. The rhythm in which the district "breathes" becomes clear, as well as how different movements overlap during certain times of the day.

The coordination plan is directly linked to harmonizing the DaimlerChrysler plant and BSAG (Bremen's streetcar service), which occurs in any event due to changes in shift and work times in the auto factory and often leads to adjustments in the regular service times in the related suburban public transit lines. Nevertheless, the auto plant is particularly unsatisfactory for commuters coming in from surrounding areas. So far, train line connections in the surrounding areas can link to city buses and trains and the company's internal bus system only through repeated transfers and considerable expenditure of time. Thus, for some time now there have been discussions on how to improve the connection of the DaimlerChrysler plant with the suburban public transit system. The resulting required shift of bus and streetcar lines (possibly even onto the plant's grounds) does not, however, involve only the DaimlerChrysler plant and the city's suburban transit system. As a result of the concentration of industries, the needs of other workers need to be considered when changes are made in this area, as well as the interests of others who travel and live in the surrounding areas. Flexible work times and human resource allocation can increasingly individualize commuting mobility. We should keep in mind that the temporal and local flexibility of labor allocation has grown enormously in recent years for individual workers. In any event, flex time rules govern for office workers, and even in the production area creating carpools has become more difficult, since common, stable places of employment, as well as start and end times, are of less and less use as the basis for long-term, dependable private arrangements. Furthermore, all these private, group or publicly organized means of mobility methods thus have relatively narrow boundaries, so that about 56% of residential locations of DaimlerChrysler plant workers are distributed across large areas surrounding Bremen. These scattered residential areas are also part of the trends created by the almost inevitable increased individualization of work route mobility. It should spur us to respond with solutions such as more flexible public transportation concepts.

You now have a view of the many facets of the problems and solutions. The common thread is that better mobility solutions to this complex, multilayered array of problems only become conceivable when the difficult task of reconciling different interests is accomplished and when thematic and technical restrictions in technical planning are overcome. Conventional road and traffic planning, factory planning, personnel planning and mass transit planning must be coordinated. Too often this is not the case. To further complicate matters, the number of players with veto power in these planning processes is increasing. If solutions are developed only through technical planning, they may be noticeably impaired. Innovative solutions in this area also require new forms of social negotiation and communication.

As we pursue the goal of facilitating mobility by decreasing traffic, we should maintain normative standards. For example, we must foster variety in the city, variety in speeds, times, ages and needs. Then we must ensure discrimination-free forms of mobility. Thus we should not give adult male skilled workers the priority in the way we organize transport over whole other groups who make up the rhythm of the city.

We are thus faced with the need for integrated solutions to mobility problems. We should not consider mobility problems in isolated fashion and only from a certain perspective. Instead, we should look from a holistic perspective based on the viewpoint of female and male users, not the viewpoint of those offering the transport services.

Once we take this holistic point seriously, we come to the question of agreements. We then have the situation where protagonists who formerly have not communicated with each other can share their perspectives on transport policies. Then we can see whether there are possibilities - we call it the win-win scenario - where DaimlerChrysler, for example, need not be injured but can choose from possible logistical questions, picking the one that minimizes harm to or even helps others affected by this mobility situation.