Anyone traveling with Deutsche Bahn in the coming years will need more time and patience. On 15 July, the day after the European Football Championship final, the public railway company will launch an extensive renovation programme.
It plans to renovate 40 major rail lines by 2030. Each line will remain closed for several months while structural paintings are carried out. The first to be renovated is the central road from Germany from Frankfurt to Mannheim, known as the Riedbahn.
“The Riedbahn will be the cornerstone of a successful network,” says Berthold Huber, head of infrastructure at Deutsche Bahn. “Nowhere else in Germany is the infrastructure under pressure lately. Around three hundred local, long-distance and freight trains run in this direction every day. ”
This direction is disturbed by faulty diversions, signs, or force overhead lines due to the poor condition of the site. These in turn delay almost all trains on the Riedbahn line, which is about 70 kilometres long, affecting the railway. traffic throughout Germany.
Deutsche Bahn’s backlogs have been widening in recent years. In 2023, less than two-thirds of long-distance exercises arrived at their destination on time, a new record. In Germany, an exercise is considered punctual if it is less than more than six minutes late.
Train travel is reduced due to long delays and does not even reach its last stop. For Deutsche Bahn, this has an advantage: short trips for exercise are not taken into account in punctuality statistics. If so, those statistics would be much worse.
If an exercise is delayed for more than 60 minutes, travelers can claim the portion of the ticket price. In 2023, Deutsche Bahn refunded €133 million ($143 million) due to delays. This is 43% more than in 2022. Es possible that this money has simply been invested in the rail network.
The railway company’s finances are in bad shape. Deutsche Bahn has been unable to balance its books since passenger numbers plummeted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2023, its deficit was around €2. 4 billion. It is now suffering with a mountain of debt of around 34 billion euros.
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Repairing the frame is becoming more and more expensive. In 2023, Deutsche Bahn invested a record amount of around €7. 6 billion in its infrastructure. But most of its rail systems are so outdated that they can’t be easily repaired. And most of them not suitable for digitally controlled rail operations, which will become the norm in the future.
As a state-owned company, Deutsche Bahn relies on subsidies from the German government. However, the government has invested very little in the business in recent decades.
This lack of funding is now taking its toll. The calamity is so serious that minor interventions are no longer enough. It will be necessary to completely renew forty major axles, essential for the operation of an effective railway network. Some 4,200 kilometers of railroad tracks (approximately the width of the United States) will be affected through 2030.
This plan – the largest infrastructure programme in Deutsche Bahn’s history – is expected to cost €45 billion. Roads, devices and signalling generation will be renewed, overhead lines will be replaced and the soundproofing of roads near residential spaces will be improved. Structural paints will also be painted on foreign trains transiting Germany.
Travel on detour routes will take longer. Stops on routes under structure will be available via train. Thousands of passengers will have to use other means of transport, such as buses. To this end, Deutsche Bahn is modernizing a special car fleet to minimize inconvenience to customers.
German Transport Minister Volker Wissing praises what he calls the “luxury rail replacement service. “
“The buses will be equipped with equipment, toilets, WiFi, etc. , so that consumers feel comfortable with the replacement service for the five months,” he said.
Here’s an important note for air travelers: during the validity of the structure, it will not be possible to access Frankfurt Airport by train. The Cologne-Frankfurt high-speed line from the northwest will be closed from mid-July to mid-August. Trains will be diverted.
Following the renovation of the “Riedbahn”, the approximately 280 kilometer highway (approximately the same length as the state of New York) from Hamburg to Berlin will be closed and renovated. This is planned for 2025. With up to 30,000 passengers each day, about 230 regional, long-distance and freight trains circulate on these tracks daily. The line between Emmerich and Oberhausen, near the Dutch border, will also be renewed. 2025.
But Deutsche Bahn’s main financier, the German government and the federal states affected by the railway network, want to recover their over-indebted budgets. Furthermore, in autumn 2023, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court declared parts of the federal budget unconstitutional, making billions of euros for railway investments inaccessible.
However, if Deutsche Bahn needs its power and reliability, it will not be enough to renew existing lines. Its current rail network is running at full capacity and cannot accommodate any more trains.
To increase the number of trains, new lines would need to be built, which is hard to believe given the government’s existing austerity plans.
This article was originally written in German.
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