Rail customers cannot expect rapid improvements in train punctuality. Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) expects the first big step towards more reliability on the rails at the end of 2024. The politician told the German Press Agency: “The poor condition of our main corridors is the most urgent problem that we are now tackling.” As soon as the Riedbahn between Frankfurt and Mannheim has been renovated, which will be the case before Christmas next year, there will be the first “high-performance corridor” in Germany. “From then on it will be better.”
In view of the numerous problems in the infrastructure, the Pro Bahn passenger association even assumes that passengers will have to wait much longer until the punctuality of the trains improves noticeably again. “The reliability will probably not be really good before 2030 because the infrastructure for it is not there,” said the association’s honorary chairman, Karl-Peter Naumann, on Thursday of the dpa. There is a strong renovation backlog, especially for bridges, which repeatedly leads to bottlenecks and delays.
Referring to the Riedbahn, Wissing said that every seventh long-distance train in Germany had to go through this corridor. “On the Riedbahn we have at least one operational disruption a day. With more than 300 passenger and freight trains a day, this has an enormous impact on operations throughout Germany.”
In the first six months of this year, only 68.7 percent of the ICE and IC trains were on time, as reported by Deutsche Bahn. Actually, Deutsche Bahn has set itself a goal of achieving a punctuality rate of more than 70 percent in long-distance transport for the current year. The main reason is the ailing infrastructure in many places: large parts of the DB route network, which covers a good 33,000 kilometers, are in urgent need of renovation, and disruptions occur almost daily on some routes. A “general renovation” of important corridors is now planned. The Riedbahn makes the start.
Wissing: Like operating on a main artery
According to Wissing, this will be blocked for five months from July 15, 2024 – shortly after the European Football Championship in Germany. During this time, everything will be torn out and made new: 152 points, 140 kilometers of overhead lines, 117 kilometers of track and more. “This brings us improved punctuality and improved train operations at maximum speed,” said the minister.
“You have to imagine it like operating on a main artery in the body and pinching it off. You have to do a bypass beforehand, otherwise it doesn’t lead to healing but to the patient collapsing. That’s why we have to now, before we can block the first corridor, lay bypasses. And we do that in two ways. On the one hand, branch lines are upgraded and at the same time rail replacement services are set up because you can’t shift everything from a main corridor to branch lines,” said Wissing. In 2025, two corridors will be closed, namely the Emmerich-Oberhausen and Hamburg-Berlin routes.
Deutsche Bahn aims to ensure a high-performance network by 2030 with the general renovations on 40 routes, on which traffic runs more reliably and more trains can also run.
Naumann said that the general renovation of the Riedbahn is one of the biggest sources of delays in the network. “This will bring stability and certainly one or two capacity improvements. But it doesn’t change the fact that capacity is exhausted somewhere and every small disruption leads to subsequent disruptions.” Naumann emphasized the need for the planned new line on the Riedbahn with a significant increase in capacity. However, this is still in the planning stage.
Refurbishment instead of new construction
Wissing went on to say that more punctual trains can be achieved primarily through the renovation of the existing network, not through the construction of new routes. “That’s why the discussions about building new rails for more punctuality are technically irrelevant. The problem is the core corridors, they are no longer efficient. If you have a funnel where the flow is blocked, then you can’t say that solves it by widening the cone. Of course, we also need the new buildings built as part of the Deutschlandtakt for future needs.” For this purpose, around 1000 kilometers of new routes are in the requirement plan. “But they don’t change anything about punctuality and don’t quickly provide more capacity. That’s only possible with corridor renovation.”
With the Deutschlandtakt, long-distance traffic between the metropolitan regions is to be more closely timed. The trains between the largest cities should run every half hour. They should arrive at central train stations at about the same time and leave again shortly thereafter.
The managing director of the Pro-Rail Alliance, Dirk Flege, told the dpa: “There must be no either-or when it comes to rail. If new construction and expansion is neglected, traffic jams and delays are programmed with constantly growing traffic demand, even on a completely renovated network. Even worse: the growth of rail traffic is slowed down by an undersized rail network and dependence on road traffic is cemented for decades.”
