The good news first: Nobody has to hoard toilet paper or pasta at the moment. The six-day rail strike will have a massive impact on the economy, but Deutsche Bahn is optimistic that supermarket shelves will remain full. But the strike is becoming a problem for industry, clearly noticeable in power plants and refineries, chemical plants and automobile manufacturers, which receive the vast majority of their primary products via rail and also send their products via rail.
A six-day rail strike is disrupting all of these supply chains. DB Cargo does not have an emergency plan like in passenger transport, where around one in five trains runs. What is most important is driven there: “We prioritize,” explains a DB Cargo spokesman. How exactly does this happen? Not clear.
These figures make it clear how systemically relevant the railway is: Deutsche Bahn subsidiary Cargo sends up to 3,000 freight trains over the rails every day. It supplies automobile manufacturers with batteries and delivers cola and gummy bears across the country. Refineries fill diesel and gasoline into the wagons. Ukraine is also supplied with weapons by rail.
For so-called bulk goods such as liquids and debris, it is the most important – sometimes even the only – route. A dozen coal-fired power plants can only be reached by rail. And only DB Cargo has suitable coal wagons here. Just to keep one block of a coal-fired power plant running requires two to three freight trains a day. In addition, some dangerous goods may only be transported by rail. This particularly affects the chemical industry and its customers.
The relevant and therefore prioritized transports include coal, steel and water for industry. In fact, DB Cargo speaks to each customer individually. Who still has supplies in stock, who can quickly switch to the truck. The goods that are loaded from the truck onto the train anyway remain on the truck. And the DB subsidiary Cargo is also asking its competitors whether they can help out. Around 60 percent of rail freight transport is now carried out by private railways. “In any case, we ask ourselves what is more resilient: train or truck,” said the DB Cargo spokesman. Although the truck drivers are not on strike, the shortage of skilled workers there is enormous.
Every train that comes through limits production downtimes and damage, says DB Cargo. The transport there had already been shut down the day before the strike began in order to avoid perishable or critical goods getting stranded somewhere. The longer the strike lasts, the more difficult it becomes. Then the warehouses empty, and at the same time the goods that are missing elsewhere pile up, which leads to significant problems in production. Tightly scheduled supply chains in Germany are getting out of step and it will take a while for them to run smoothly again. After three to five days of strike, things will become critical, says rail expert Christian Böttger, professor of transportation at the Berlin University of Technology and Economics.
It is difficult to calculate how high the economic costs will actually be in the end. The IW’s estimate of around 100 million euros per day and one billion euros for the current strike is based on assumptions from 2015, said IW infrastructure expert Thomas Puls when asked.
At the time, economists expected a daily production value in the manufacturing sector of 3.2 billion euros, a third of which comes from rail. The failure rate was estimated at 10 percent. At that time, however, there were significantly fewer private railways that could step in and the alternative capacities were lower. It’s a rough approximation, says Puls. The only thing that’s certain is that “the longer it takes, the more we’ll get better.” As soon as there are production downtimes, it spreads widely. It will be dramatic if the port of Hamburg “fills up, meaning ships can no longer be handled because the container trains are jammed there. Then it becomes incalculable.” In addition, the strike also affects neighboring countries. Because six of the ten European rail networks run through Germany.
What could help DB Cargo is that very few train drivers on freight railways took part in the past strikes. However, it could become a problem if the dispatchers also go on strike, which the GDL is pushing forward in order to attract more members. They are also called on to strike. Train dispatchers work in the railway signal boxes, where they organize train traffic and set the course. If a large number of them went on strike, private freight and passenger trains would also come to a standstill.
But 60 percent of rail freight traffic is still running as usual, according to Peter Westenberger, managing director of the private freight railways. And the good news about the strike: “You often reach your destination better because of an empty network.”
This article first appeared in the business magazine “Capital”, which, like stern, is part of RTL Deutschland.
