A phrase that Germans have become accustomed to lately is heard over the platform's public address system: “We ask for your understanding.” Bad. Another train arriving late. Nothing that surprises Monika Wolf, 53, an intermediate position in a spare parts company, who is waiting at the Mannheim station, in the southwest of the country, for her transportation to Berlin: “It is now rarer for a train to be propped than it is. contrary. You have to be psyched up when planning any trip: if it is with a connection, it is very likely that you will miss it, and you know that you have to go with several hours to any appointment in another city,” she says with more resignation than anger.
The country of efficiency has seen in recent years how its once admired railway service, with enviable, punctual and safe territorial coverage, has deteriorated to the point that, last November, almost half of the long-distance trains you arrived late. The annual statistics are not as striking, but almost: 2023 closed with 64% punctuality. That is, only two out of every three trips respected their planned schedule. Deutsche Bahn, the German Renfe, acknowledges the disaster and attributes it largely to the “numerous repair works on the tracks,” according to a spokesperson. It does not offer data on cancellations.
The railway infrastructure is nothing short of dilapidated after decades of neglect. For years, the country of cars preferred to invest in roads rather than railways. And now the result is being seen. “In the seventies we were very proud of our trains, but the lack of investment has been eroding the infrastructure little by little. Now what we feel is shame; This is a disaster,” laments Andreas Schröder, spokesperson for the Pro Bahn rail users association. “If we look at our neighbors Switzerland and Austria, they have a formidable service, but it is because they invest much more per capita than us,” he adds in a conversation with EL PAÍS.
German trains have become fodder for memes and ridicule on social networks. Users share their stories of cancellations, delays and missed connections, sometimes with derision, other times with irritation. The reasons for lateness are very varied: works on the tracks, delay of a previous train, mechanical failures, lack of staff – sometimes the cafeteria closes without warning in the middle of the trip because the workers exceed their working day -, inclement weather… Bad service adds to the high price of tickets. A high-speed Berlin-Munich trip (just over 600 kilometers) can cost 150 euros if purchased at the last minute (flexible ticket, which allows changes).
German trains banned in Switzerland
The wounded pride of the Germans received a particularly painful blow a few months ago, when their Swiss neighbors complained publicly that the constant tardiness of German trains entering their territory was affecting their own network. Switzerland prides itself on the fact that its railways run like clockwork. In 2022, with a punctuality of 92%, it turned out that eight of the 10 trains that suffered the most delays began their routes in German cities, according to an analysis carried out by the media group CH Media. The blame for that 8% delay was not the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB), but Deutsche Bahn.
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The company decided to cut corners. The most unpunctual German trains would not go further into Swiss territory. As confirmed by SBB spokesperson Sabrina Schellenberg, there are now three routes that require you to change trains as soon as you cross the border, in Basel or Zurich, when previously they continued directly to popular Alpine destinations such as Chur, near Davos. SBB even arranged an ICE (high-speed train) available in Basel throughout the day as a replacement train to “minimize the negative impact of cross-border train delays on travelers in Switzerland.”
The coalition government of social democrat Olaf Scholz is perfectly aware of the disastrous nature of the railway service. Last September he announced a plan to inject an extra €24 billion into Deutsche Bahn, run as a private but state-owned company, over the next four years. In total, it is estimated that the railways need 88 billion to get the network back into shape. The chancellor attributes the deterioration of infrastructure to the abandonment of previous governments, as he said last week, during a train drivers' strike that paralyzed long-distance passenger transport for three days.
Despite the budgetary restrictions imposed by a devastating ruling by the Constitutional Court – and which have put the German countryside on a war footing due to the withdrawal of the subsidy for agricultural diesel – the tripartite of social democrats, greens and liberals does not contemplate cutting on the railway. The Greens even ask to increase these items, incurring new debt if necessary, and remember what the coalition agreement signed by the three parties in December 2021 says: “The railway must become the backbone of mobility, also in rural areas.”
Urgent and annoying works
Christian Böttger, a railway expert at the University of Applied Sciences (HTW) in Berlin, acknowledges the current government's efforts to correct past errors, but warns that 20 years of delay now force it to pay an enormous toll in the form of traffic problems. financing and accumulation of improvement works. Pro Bahn's Schröder agrees: “The situation has degenerated so much that it has now become urgent to renew some very busy routes. “Years of works await us that are going to be very annoying for passengers.” The most overloaded routes, and those that accumulate the most delays, are especially along the Rhine, the Ruhr and around Frankfurt, to the west, where a few late trains cause a cascade of unpunctuality in the rest.
Deutsche Bahn describes its own infrastructure as “mediocre” in a report from this week on the state of the network. More than half of the sections are in “regular, bad or deficient” conditions, the text states. “The state of the railway infrastructure has deteriorated in recent years because there were not enough funds to renew the facilities,” writes the president of the subsidiary that authored the report, InfraGo, Philipp Nagl. The analysis estimates that, in the medium term, it would be necessary to replace more than a quarter of the tracks.
The Ministry of Transportation, in the hands of the liberals, is ready to do this. Important corridors will be completely closed for months to simultaneously repair tracks, catenaries and stations. In return, promises its owner, Volker Wissing, the routes will be free of works for many years. The first experiment will arrive in July, as soon as the Euro Cup ends, with the so-called Riedbahn, between Frankfurt and Mannheim, which will close for at least six months. As Schröder recalls, half of the German ICEs pass through there, which will have to detour and will add between half an hour and 45 minutes to their journeys. Work on the Emmerich-Oberhausen corridor will begin at the end of the year. The Hamburg-Berlin route will be undertaken as early as 2025.
A few more years of inconvenience and delays therefore await the Germans. Long-distance trains will take time to recover the punctuality of past decades. It will be more difficult to achieve the objective that Berlin has set to achieve its climate objectives: doubling the number of train users in the near future.
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