Germany wants to regain its lost reputation as an efficient country with fast and punctual trains. “We are no longer just putting patches on, but completely renewing everything,” announced the liberal Transport Minister Volker Wissing, announcing the start of the work just a few days after Deutsche Bahn became the target of jeers from Euro fans for the disaster of its trains. The biting criticism of the Germans’ delays, cancellations and lack of foresight made headlines around the world and left national pride bruised. The humiliation abroad – Germans who suffer it daily have been protesting for years – finally convinced those who still doubted that the situation was unsustainable.
The scope of the work is colossal. Maintenance and expansion work is planned on 41 high-traffic sections totalling some 4,000 kilometres. The first, which was closed on the evening of 15 July, is the so-called Riedbahn between Frankfurt and Mannheim, a 70-kilometre stretch that carries almost half of the country’s high-speed trains. It will not reopen until December at the earliest, resulting in detours that extend long journeys by at least half an hour. Shorter journeys to nearby cities such as Darmstadt or Mainz are being replaced by buses.
“Deutsche Bahn has been planning the closures for some time, which will last until 2030,” says Andreas Schröder, spokesman for the rail users’ association Pro Bahn, who has doubts about the funding of the estimated cost of more than 40 billion euros. “The budget for the projects for this year and early next year seems to be secured,” he says. But the bulk of the spending will occur after the Germans elect a new government on 28 September next year. “Anything can happen with the budget after the federal elections,” he laments.
30,000 layoffs at Deutsche Bahn
Deutsche Bahn, which is run as a private company but is controlled by the state, is in a dire situation. The company posted losses of 1.2 billion euros in the first half of the year. Strikes, extreme weather, construction work and weak demand are to blame, says the company, which wants to tackle the crisis by cutting back on its staff. Levin Holle, chief financial officer, announced a few days ago that some 30,000 full-time jobs would be cut over the next five years. “In the future, we will have to do more with fewer people,” he said.
The cuts have shaken public transport users’ associations, who fear the consequences for the service. “We hope that most of them will be administrative and management positions, the typical office positions, and that they will not cut operational positions such as drivers or flight attendants. For now, it is not known where these 30,000 layoffs will come from. If it is done badly, it can greatly affect the travel experience, and we have already seen many cancellations due to staff shortages,” says Schröder.
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For decades, the reliability of German trains has been a mirage. “The problem with the railway system dates back to the mid-1990s, when funding was cut,” recalls Jens Boysen-Hogrefe, an economist at the Kiel Institute. Successive governments did not see the need to recoup investment and the infrastructure gradually deteriorated. “Until we reached this point where we will be stuck for years with endless construction work,” he laments.
Experts criticise the fact that Germany has for years allowed railways to compete for public investment with road transport, which is also heavily subsidised with tax subsidies that undermine climate protection. While Deutsche Bahn pays fees for using the infrastructure, motorists do not pay a single euro to travel on German motorways, where there are no tolls, except for heavy vehicles.
Only since 2020 has more investment been made in rail than in road, even though Germany has set out to improve its railways as part of its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Berlin aims to increase passenger rail transport by 50% and freight transport by 25% by 2030. However, the figures for per capita investment are still far behind those of neighbouring countries with good rail systems, such as Switzerland and Austria, according to data compiled by the Allianz pro Schiene association in its 2023 report.
“The development of these figures shows that other countries started to increase their investments in railways much earlier and are already benefiting from this,” said Maria Leenen, managing director of the strategic management consultancy for the railway and logistics industry SCI Verkehr, at a press conference in Berlin last month. Experts are calling for multi-year funding that is not dependent on the political horse-trading of budget negotiations each year. “Everyone must realise that not investing in railway infrastructure is also going into debt at the expense of future generations,” said Andreas Geißler, spokesman for Allianz pro Schiene, at the same forum.
Train reliability ceased to be taken for granted a decade ago, but “it has deteriorated significantly in recent years,” notes Schröder, who also blames “overly ambitious plans to increase services on a depleted and worn-out network.” National punctuality statistics hit an all-time low in June 2024, the month of the European Championship, with hundreds of thousands of witnesses on the panels at stations warning of a train running with a “V”spreading” (delay) or has been cancelled altogether. Only 52.9% of long-distance trains arrived on time in June 2024, compared to 63.1% in the previous month.
In front of one of these panels, 26-year-old Emanuel Glück was desperate a few days ago at Berlin’s central station, pointing with a weary face at the dreaded expression “The road falls off” (trip cancelled) next to the announcement of his direct train to Amsterdam. He got on the next one, two hours later. “There are dozens of us sitting in the aisles,” he said later. “Nothing happens. It is not the first time, and it will not be the last. In Germany this does not come as a surprise to anyone anymore.”
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