The “Mobility in Cities – SrV” program is Germany’s long-standing urban mobility survey program, designed to provide municipalities with consistent, high-quality data on residents’ travel behavior. For rapidly growing cities and countries, SrV offers a replicable model for building mobility intelligence that supports evidence-based planning, fosters efficient public investment, and enables long-term tracking of urban transport trends.
Germany’s “Mobilität in Städten – SrV” (Mobility in Cities – SrV) is a household travel survey program that has been running for over five decades. Founded in 1972, the SrV was established as a “System of Representative Travel Surveys” to regularly capture the mobility patterns of urban residents. It is a time-series study, repeated roughly every five years, that provides continuous and comparable data on city travel behavior. By design, SrV focuses on the everyday mobility of the resident population in each participating city, gathering information on how, why, and when people make trips. Importantly, it uses a uniform survey methodology at each wave, which ensures that results are comparable over time and across different cities. This consistency has created a rich longitudinal database, making SrV one of the longest-running urban mobility surveys globally.
Timeline showing the survey years of the SrV. Since 1972, SrV has continuously provided mobility data for cities and municipalities.
Organization and funding:
The SrV is coordinated by the Chair of Mobility System Planning at Technische Universität Dresden, which provides scientific direction and quality control. Individual cities and municipalities opt into the survey as partners, often in collaboration with local public transport authorities or transit companies. TU Dresden develops the survey concept and materials and contracts a professional survey institute to carry out the fieldwork. The costs of SrV are shared among the partners, and this collaborative model yields significant economies of scale. In fact, “the more cities participate in an SrV survey, the lower the costs per city”, since many tasks (questionnaire design, data processing, etc.) are centralized.
Many German cities have recognized the cost-effectiveness and practical value of the SrV’s scientific approach, leading to growing participation over the years. Regional governments (states) in Germany even offer funding support in some cases to encourage municipalities to join. By pooling resources, cities obtain high-quality mobility data at a fraction of the cost of doing separate surveys, and they gain the ability to benchmark their outcomes against other cities of similar size or context.
Cities and metropolitan areas surveyed in SrV 2023, categorized by population size. The map shows participating cities across Germany, distinguished by population brackets, metropolitan regions, and state capitals.
Methodology and sampling:
Each wave of the SrV survey employs a robust methodology to ensure representativeness and data quality. A random sample of households is drawn from the municipal population register of each city. All residents of the sampled households (including all age groups, nationalities, etc.) are invited to participate, with no exclusions so that the sample reflects the full socio-demographic spectrum. Survey respondents provide information on their household (size, vehicle ownership, etc.) and personal attributes (age, employment, etc.), and they report all trips made on a given assigned day. The chosen travel day is a normal weekday (Tuesday–Thursday) during the school year, avoiding holidays or atypical periods, to capture typical travel behavior. Participants record each trip’s purpose, mode(s) of transport, distance, and duration, following standardized definitions (e.g. what counts as a “trip” or how to identify the main mode in a multi-modal trip). The fieldwork usually runs for a full 12 months to account for seasonal variations, after which the data are carefully weighted. Weighting factors adjust for socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender, etc.), spatial distribution, and temporal factors so that each city’s sample can reliably represent its entire population’s mobility.
Scale and continuity:
Over successive rounds, the SrV has grown in scale. The latest cycle, SrV 2023, involved about 500 German cities and municipalities participating simultaneously. By early 2024, more than 280,000 people had been surveyed in SrV 2023, making it an extraordinarily large dataset of urban travel behavior. This was the 12th iteration of the SrV series, which has consistently continued every five years in recent decades (previous waves took place in 2008, 2013, 2018, etc., in addition to earlier surveys dating back to the 1970s).
Each city receives a comprehensive report and dataset of its results, and TU Dresden publishes comparative analyses across cities and over time. The long-term continuity of SrV means that cities can observe how key indicators evolve – for example, tracking changes in modal split (the share of trips by car, public transport, walking, cycling) or in average trip rates over years and decades. Because the “SrV Standard” methodology is maintained, planners can be confident that observed changes reflect real shifts in behavior rather than inconsistent measurement.
Trends in modal split in Eastern German major cities (SrV urban clusters) from 1972 to 2023 reveal a long-term decline in walking and public transport use, accompanied by a significant rise in private car use through the 1990s. Since 2008, car usage has begun to decline slightly, while active modes – walking and cycling – have shown a resurgence.
Key Findings and Trends:
The SrV data have revealed significant trends in urban mobility in Germany, many of which carry important policy implications.
- After decades of rising car use in the late 20th century, the SrV surveys around the 2000s showed a turning point. Up until the early 2000s, each SrV survey recorded a steady increase in the proportion of trips made by private car (with corresponding declines in walking) in German cities. However, by the SrV 2008 and 2013 surveys, a reversal was observed – car use began to decline as more people chose public transport and bicycles. For example, in a sample of cities over 100,000 population, the car’s modal share dropped from 39% in 2008 to 29% in 2023, while public transport’s share rose from 19% to 21% and cycling’s from 12% to 13%.
- Walking on the rise: Walking has become more frequent again, notably among employed persons working from home. However, this trend is also evident among other population groups.
- Cycling sustains popularity: Cycling continues to play a significant role. The high cycling rates observed during the favorable weather year of 2018 have been matched or even exceeded in many cities.
- Public transport recovery: After the pandemic-related decline, public transport has impressively recovered. Positive experiences with the €9-ticket and the introduction of the Deutschlandticket (€49/€58) in May 2023 played a key role.
- Declining car use in urban areas: Car usage continues to decline, particularly in (large) urban contexts. However, senior citizens outside major cities are driving more than they did in 2018.
- Expanding mobility options: The diversity of available mobility options continues to grow. The trend toward electric bicycles persists, and the Deutschlandticket already played a notable role by the end of 2023.
- The SrV data have also highlighted generational shifts – for instance, younger adults in cities are increasingly less car-dependent than previous generations (many delaying getting a driver’s license or foregoing car ownership). At the same time, the surveys track the mobility of an aging population, noting that seniors tend to continue driving if able, but also walk more frequently as long as their health permits.
Use in urban planning and policy:
SrV results are directly applied in transport planning at the city level. Because the survey delivers a rich set of mobility indicators tailored to planning needs, cities use this data as a foundation for their transport models and policy evaluations. For example, outputs like trip generation rates, peak travel times, and modal splits by demographic group feed into traffic models that forecast demand and test infrastructure scenarios. SrV’s standardized tables cover a wide range of metrics (typically over 100 indicators) that cities require for developing transport plans, monitoring their progress, and calibrating simulation models. Importantly, by repeating the survey every five years, cities can measure the impact of interventions. If a city invested in a new tram line or bicycling network, the subsequent SrV can show changes in ridership or bike use, allowing an assessment against the city’s policy objectives.
The data also strengthens evidence-based decision making: City officials regularly cite SrV findings in developing Urban Mobility Plans (or related documents) and justifying investments (for instance, showing latent demand for better public transport or identifying gaps like low mobility among certain social groups). The availability of up-to-date, scientifically gathered data helps “proper assessment of the risks and potentials of planning measures”, whereas using outdated or no data could lead to “misjudgements and expensive misinvestments”.
Lastly, the cross-city dimension of SrV encourages municipalities to learn from each other. Because results are comparable, a city can benchmark itself – e.g. seeing if its car-free commute rates or transit usage lag behind peer cities – and then seek out policies that successful cities have implemented. This benchmarking effect has spurred a healthy competition and dissemination of best practices in Germany’s urban transport community; all grounded in the common data language provided by SrV.
Author: Armin Wagner, armin.wagner@giz.de, supported by AI for text generation and proof-reading.
References
Technische Universität Dresden/Technical University Dresden, Institute of Transport Planning and Road Traffic. (n.d.). Mobility in Cities – SrV. TU Dresden. Retrieved June 24, 2025, from https://tu-dresden.de/bu/verkehr/ivs/srv
Gerike, R.; Wittwer, R.; Hubrich, S.; Schönherr, F.; Ließke, F. (2025): City, Country – On Foot? Current Insights into Urban Mobility Based on the SrV 2023. Final Conference of the Research Project “Mobility in Cities – SrV 2023,” March 25–26, 2025, Technical University of Dresden, https://tu-dresden.de/srv/srv-2023