One-way streets, roadworks, road closures: The daily gridlock in downtown Hanover has prompted Deutsche Telekom service engineers to switch to bicycles to get them to customers. On a trial basis for the time being.
The first trial run of an innovation: In June 1817 the ranger and inventor Karl Drais covered a fourteen-kilometer-long stretch with his new running machine in two hours, as the Badwochenblatt newspaper reported on July 29, 1817. The so-called draisine is regarded as the archetypal bicycle.
Almost two hundred years to the day, Deutsche Telekom is itself testing an – admittedly smaller – innovation in Hanover. It also involves two wheels and similar distances: “We are cycling for your Internet” – is how Deutsche Telekom service engineers sum it up, who together with their tools, measurement instruments, jumper wire and routers are now switching to cargo e-bikes as part of a trial. Not to do away with the drudgery of walking as in Drais’ day. But to eliminate the stressful, long car journeys through the roadworks, one-way streets and jams in Hanover, and get to customers on time. It is an idea colleagues have been toying with for some time. In April they set about turning that idea into reality and began to implement the project with Deutsche Telekom’s own vehicle fleet Mobility Solutions.
The first trial runs on the new E-Bike were “still a bit shaky,” recalls service engineer Matthias Wehrstedt. The heavy tool box obscures the small front wheel, which takes some getting used to. Wehrstedt is a triathlete and so relishes the idea of being able to do something to keep healthy and fit while at work.
The benefits are clear. The service engineers get to their customers without any detours and always have a parking space right outside the front door, save time, and cut down on unnecessary mileage. Obviously, cycling weighed down with bags and equipment is not for everyone – and especially in the rain or snow, the bike is not going to replace the car entirely. It is now time to weigh up everything they have learned before we might see a bigger solution to the gridlock problem emerging from the pilot project along with a cleaner environment - and with benefits for customers too, as Deutsche Telekom works on improving its service. In future, the idea is to make sure there are no complaints any more, and especially no complaints about engineers missing appointments. Bicycles are just one of the many approaches to achieving this.
One thing is clear, though. The feedback from the Hanover-based engineers is overwhelmingly positive, as they themselves report. “Cool,” “wow,” “great,” “fantastic” – those are the kind of comments passers-by made about the eye-catching electric bike. The customers are equally enthusiastic, as a colleague notes in an initial progress report. Just like how the Badwochenblatt newspaper described the reaction to the draisine’s first test run:
“Baron Karl von Drais … negotiated the steep mountain road, a two-hour trip, from Gernsbach with the actual machine in around an hour, and here too convinced several aficionados of the high speed of this very interesting riding machine.”
