Within Germany one of the fastest growing segments is city transportation technologies as several companies compete to try and solve Berlin's traffic issues.

A new app went fully live recently, offering travelers a one-stop choice of options ranging from U-Bahn to e-scooters, making the city of 3.6 million one of the first to offer such a joined-up ‘mobility as a service’.

The app, called Jelbi, is run by the BVG transport authority and runs on technology from Trafi, a Lithuanian startup that built a similar mobility platform in Vilnius, and has partnered with Prague and Jakarta.

“Jelbi is a solution for people to move to shared forms of mobility - and to avoid a transport collapse,” Jelbi head Michel Heider said in an interview. The app’s name is a play on the German word for ‘yellow’ - BVG’s livery.

Rollout has been quick: BVG struck an agreement with Trafi in January and a month later drew a strong response when it solicited pitches from mobility providers to join the project, said Heider.

BVG required that partners be fully integrated into the Jelbi app - meaning that users can, with a single registration, book and pay for all of the transport options on the platform.

It did a soft launch in June, featuring its own metro and bus services, rail operator Deutsche Bahn; electric scooters from Emmy; car-sharing service Miles; and bicycles from Nextbike.

Now BVG is completing the Jelbi menu with its own on-demand minibus service Berlkoenig; kick scooters from Tier and conventional taxis from Taxi Berlin. “All forms of mobility will be offered from October,” Heider told Reuters.

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