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Train drivers' strike: Sixt and Free Now expect higher demand

In the middle of the holiday season, the GDL strike is disrupting business for the railway. Once again, cars are benefiting from this: Sixt expects significantly higher demand and Free Now is offering discounts.

The tracks are empty, the streets full: Free Now and Sixt promptly responded to the train drivers' strike at Deutsche Bahn. | Photo: Charles Forerunner/Unsplash
The tracks are empty, the streets full: Free Now and Sixt promptly responded to the train drivers' strike at Deutsche Bahn. | Photo: Charles Forerunner/Unsplash
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Gregor Soller

Due to the train drivers' strike, Deutsche Bahn has canceled around 75 percent of its long-distance trains for August 11 and 12. The company does not expect largely disruption-free traffic again until Friday. The strike could not come at a more inconvenient time: right in the middle of the travel season, without a lockdown, which the GDL is turning into a "Lokdown."

Sixt is responding promptly and preparing for increased demand in the coming days. In the past, demand for rental cars, rides, and taxi services always increased during train failures. According to Sixt, there is a particularly rising number of trips during strikes in local transportation, as commuters, many of whom no longer own a car, temporarily switch from trains to cars. Sixt can easily shift cars flexibly to locations with increased demand and explains:

"Therefore, we expect an increased number of bookings in the coming days."

The one-week train drivers' strike in May 2015 already brought a record demand for the car rental company: the start of the strike at that time, according to the then CEO Erich Sixt, gave the company "the best Monday in the company's history with a 100 percent occupancy rate." Sixt recalls:

"We were completely booked out."

This expectation is confirmed by the comparison portal Check24, which confirmed that rental car bookings had significantly increased after the strike announcement on August 10, 2021, at 11 a.m. According to Check24, 74 percent more rental cars were booked in Germany than on the previous Tuesday. For pickups in Berlin and Hamburg, the bookings more than doubled.

Free Now responds immediately - with discounts

The service provider Free Now, which belongs to Daimler and BMW, is also renting out carsharing cars, e-scooters, and e-mopeds with discounts until Friday, August 13, 2021. Customers could enter a promotional code in the app and thus benefit from a subsidy of ten euros five times, the company announced in Hamburg.

What does this mean?

One person's misery is another's joy - and the GDL is doing the environment a disservice with this: once again, the GDL is driving the railway off track, which does the least to help CO2 emissions, which rise massively because it causes much more individual traffic on the road.

 

Translated automatically from German.
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