This approach is typical of Berlin: the German capital is a testing ground for mobility solutions. While the government has defined clear targets and adopted a plan to further reduce automobile traffic, it has failed, unlike other metropolises such as London, Paris or Copenhagen, to rigorously implement this plan. Politicians at the Bundesland and district levels are slowing each other down, and the administration is short of labour and resources. At the same time, this deplorable state of affairs gives business, local politics and science the opportunity to try new approaches – such as cycle lanes, for example. On some of the streets, there was a decrease in motor traffic and an increase in bike traffic, but not everywhere. What's more, a fatal accident on Frankfurter Allee has cast a shadow over the experiment. 

Andreas Knie, professor and mobility expert at TU Berlin and Berlin Social Science Center, praised pop-up cycle lanes as exemplary anyhow. “They are a good example of Berlin's potential,” he said. According to him, those bike lanes are there thanks to a form of “guerilla politics” during the pandemic. Regular projects currently being discussed on the other hand, such as the subway extension leading to BER airport, drag on for years. 

Innovations are mainly to be found where the government doesn't interfere. Car-sharing, bike-sharing and e-scooter sharing firms are in fierce competition with each other, while Uber and Bolt take on taxi companies. A group of scientists at TU Berlin is developing autonomous buses that, in the test phase, are supposed to drive through Berlin's Tiergarten district. And any self-respecting corporation seems to need an “innovation lab” in Berlin nowadays, ideally with a focus on mobility. Investors are loving Berlin, too. According to calculations by Swiss investment bank UBS, between 2018 and 2021, venture capitalists ploughed about USD 1.6 billion into Berlin start-ups that focus on mobility of the future. One of those is Vay, a firm that, largely unnoticed by the public, is working on an intermediate step on the way towards autonomous driving where so-called teledrivers remotely steer the company's cars through the city. The goal is to turn it into a car-sharing provider that picks up users at their homes and takes care of parking at the end. Such a service could conceivably also succeed outside the big cities. 

Even the conservative taxi industry is working to transform itself. The taxi guild is testing cars with batteries and fuel cells and is promoting a Chinese battery exchange system as an alternative to charging. Meanwhile, an initiative involving Thomas Mohnke, general contractor of Uber in Germany, is pushing for fleets to be switched to emission-free vehicles as soon as possible. All these companies benefit from the fact that the clientèle in Berlin are always ready to try new things. With the host of tech companies came a young, internationally-minded scene with people who wouldn't dream of owning a car and move around using Uber or rental bikes instead. In addition, there is a large share of single-person households and people who live close to their place of work. Commuters make up an almost negligible share of the population.