The Greens transport politician Matthias Gastel has criticized the quality of the railway infrastructure in Germany. “The state of the rail infrastructure is still unsatisfactory,” said the member of the Bundestag to the dpa news agency. The recently published infrastructure status report shows that the deficiencies as well as the delays continued to increase. “The previous funding is not sufficient.”
In addition, there is “a dramatic dismantling of tracks and switches,” said Gastel, who is a member of the Bundestag’s transport committee. Deutsche Bahn (DB) continues to build sidings and points. “This means that buffers for delays and flexibility are lost.”
From 2019 to 2022, 122 kilometers of tracks were dismantled and 900 switches were removed. Since then, the length of the platforms has decreased by a total of 16 kilometers across Germany. According to the report, this corresponds to a percentage decline of between 0.2 percent and almost 1.4 percent. “DB must turn things around and increase the capacity of the network and not optimize it broken,” said Gastel.
In addition, the total number of minutes of delay had grown sharply within a year from 166 minutes to a good 186 minutes per 1000 train kilometers, criticized Gastel. Target values for the theoretical loss of driving time, which is relevant for speed restrictions, and for infrastructure deficiencies have not been achieved.
The infrastructure status report also shows that the number of disruptions rose to 184,000 in 2022. In 2020 there were still 164,000, compared to 2021 there was a slight decrease.
Ministry must “wake up from twilight sleep”
The Federal Transport Ministry headed by department head Volker Wissing (FDP) must finally present proposals for new financing of the infrastructure, the Greens transport politician demanded. It was agreed in the Rail Acceleration Commission to present proposals in the first quarter. “The ministry needs to wake up from its slumber and take a proactive approach to strengthening rail.”
The pent-up demand for infrastructure amounts to 88.5 billion euros at the current price level, said Gastel. “This deficit can no longer be made up with the financing planned so far.”
The Deutsche Bahn is struggling with an outdated and scarce infrastructure, many construction sites and a rapidly growing volume of traffic. In long-distance transport, the punctuality rate in 2022 was 65.2 percent, 10 percentage points below the previous year’s level. The railway wants to completely renovate dozens of busy sections of track by 2030. The traffic light coalition has agreed to use a large part of the billions in revenue from a CO2 surcharge on truck tolls from 2024 for investments in rail.
