Abstract: This contribution examines how the infrastrucutre and ticketing of inter-city railway transport leads to entrepreneurial practices of ride-sharing and asks if this twofold practice (it allows saving money and gaining money) also contains the potential of articulating economic visions of degrowth. The background for these new forms of transportation-entrepreneurialism is the ongoing process of de-regulation in the national and European transport markets since the 1990s. Today a productive conflict is to be found in the breaking of the rail monopoly for inter-city transport and the resulting cheap bus connections. The quite well established online hitchhiking websites offer rail and bus tickets. At first sight sharing in the field of mobility might be interpreted as ethically motivated and contributing to degrowth in the sense of a “new frugality”. A closer look indicates that besides the motivation of saving resources it is as much motivated by saving or even gaining money. Are these motivations mutually exlcusive? If not what are the intersections between these motivations and how far do they lead?

This media entry was a contribution to the special session "Saving practices – considering degrowth in low-budget urbanity" at the 4th International Degrowth Conference in Leipzig in 2014.