The cables were “essential” for the safe operation of regional and long-distance traffic as well as freight traffic, Wissing continued. The background is still unclear, the federal police have started investigations into the perpetrators. For the incident in Berlin, she handed over the investigation to the state security of the LKA on Saturday evening, as a police spokeswoman said on Sunday.
The railway had stopped all long-distance traffic in Lower Saxony, Bremen, Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein and large parts of regional traffic for around three hours. Private railway companies were also affected. Numerous travelers were stuck, especially at important hubs such as Hanover. The display boards in the stations almost exclusively showed train cancellations.
According to Deutsche Bahn, the technical failure affected “the digital train radio system”. Referring to security circles, the “Spiegel” reported that both the voice radio between control centers and trains and the digital transmission of timetable data are running. It is a “central interface between vehicles and infrastructure”.
The disruption was remedied in the late morning and train traffic resumed. “Because of the aftermath,” the railway warned of further cancellations, delays and overcrowded trains. Because long-distance trains from Berlin to North Rhine-Westphalia and from there further south were also affected and travelers switched to alternative routes, the effects were also felt in other regions.
The railway therefore canceled the train connection for long-distance tickets that had already been purchased. Anyone who has booked a trip for Saturday can use it “flexibly up to and including seven days after the end of the disruption. Seat reservations can be canceled free of charge,” the company explained. Those who did not start their journey can have the ticket price refunded.
Demands for better protection of the infrastructure came from politicians. Bahn, the Federal Ministry of Transport and the security authorities should present a concept for this, demanded the SPD parliamentary group deputy and transport politician Detlef Müller. The critical infrastructure includes not only rails and trains, but also digital control and safety technology, he told the editorial network Germany (RND). The technology must be “installed in an access-safe manner” when new construction and the renovation of routes are made.
The parliamentary manager of the Union parliamentary group, Thorsten Frei (CDU), warned to refrain from speculation and to wait for the results of the police investigation. “Regardless of this case, we have to rethink the security architecture of Germany and the EU,” he told RND. “The new age of hybrid warfare requires an adjustment of our concepts.”
The Greens renewed their demand to use funds from the Bundeswehr special fund to protect critical infrastructure. So far, however, this has failed due to the resistance of the Union, said the first parliamentary manager of the parliamentary group, Irene Mihalic, the RND. “We are ready to improve here.”
The police union assumes that there may be “terrorist structures on the part of the perpetrators,” as its chairman in the federal police and customs department, Andreas Roßkopf, told the RND. Such sabotage is always possible on the railways, “because the cable lines are often on the open route and these are not fully monitored.”
