How Germany’s Deutsche Bahn goals to repair power delays – DW – 12/23/2025 | EUROtoday

In mid-December, Evelyn Palla, the newly appointed chief government of Deutsche Bahn (DB), unveiled a sweeping restructuring plan for Germany’s state-owned rail operator, set to take impact in 2026.

After receiving approval from DB’s supervisory board on December 10, Palla stated the corporate would get rid of round 30% of its government positions as a part of an effort to streamline administration, decentralize decision-making, and enhance punctuality and effectivity by making the group extra agile.

The overhaul comes at a low level for Deutsche Bahn’s efficiency. This autumn, punctuality fell to a brand new file low, with simply 55% of long-distance trains arriving lower than six minutes late — the corporate’s official definition of “on time.”

Punctuality has been deteriorating for years, turning DB into one among Europe’s weakest performers. For commuters, delays and cancellations have develop into a each day expertise, significantly in densely populated areas, the place passengers now contemplate themselves lucky if each second practice arrives on schedule.

A cross-border embarrassment

The disaster took on a world dimension in the summertime of 2024, when Switzerland barred Deutsche Bahn trains from its rail community, citing issues that power delays would disrupt Swiss timetables.

The determination uncovered, in stark phrases, Germany’s decades-long failure to speculate adequately in its rail system and halt the deterioration of its transport infrastructure.

According to the German Transport Ministry, roughly half of the nation’s rail tracks are in mediocre, poor, or poor situation. About one-fifth of the infrastructure will must be changed within the medium time period, whereas some components — together with sign bins which can be greater than 100 years previous — require rapid consideration.

Three many years of decay

For the previous 30 years, Germany has spent solely a fraction of what neighboring nations equivalent to Switzerland and Austria have invested in sustaining and upgrading their rail networks.

At the identical time, the German rail system has shrunk whilst demand has grown, with extra folks commuting longer distances for work. The result’s a community carrying extra visitors on fewer tracks — lots of them in disrepair — a mixture that lies on the coronary heart of Deutsche Bahn’s issues.

Jens Kaminski, a veteran practice driver who has labored for DB since 1994, remembers a really completely different period. Back then, the German phrase “Pünktlich wie die Bahn” (“punctual as a train”) was nonetheless generally utilized in Germany.

“In those days, when you walked through the village, people greeted you like a firefighter — like a hero,” Kaminski informed DW. “Today it’s more like: Oh, he’s a train driver. You’re nothing.”

Among railway employees, one other saying as soon as prevailed: the timetable is regulation. Kaminski recalled why issues have been “different” throughout these years.

“We had 12 people on standby at the depot. If something went wrong — a breakdown, anything — they would step in and fix it. No problem. Today, standby crews are gone. Too expensive.”

From reform to retrenchment

Kaminski’s profession intently mirrors the fashionable historical past of Deutsche Bahn. He started work in 1994, the identical 12 months East and West Germany’s rail operators merged to type Deutsche Bahn AG, simply 4 years after reunification.

The new firm was meant to embody market-oriented reform. As a inventory company wholly owned by the state, DB was tasked with changing into aggressive and worthwhile, with a long-term purpose of itemizing shares on the inventory market.

What adopted was aggressive cost-cutting. Investment in each infrastructure and employees was scaled again to make the corporate extra enticing to buyers.

“That’s when the real job cuts began,” Kaminski stated. “Tracks were closed — even passing tracks that were essential. It was radical.”

The preliminary public providing by no means materialized, and the German authorities stays DB’s sole shareholder.

Auditors sound the alarm

Germany’s Federal Court of Audit has repeatedly criticized Berlin for failing to satisfy its tasks as proprietor of the rail operator.

In their most up-to-date report, the auditors wrote, “for three decades, the federal government has failed to address key railway policy issues.”

Further down, they stated: “Deutsche Bahn has long failed to meet customer expectations for punctuality and reliability. The company is in a constant state of crisis and in need of reform.”

The court docket additionally pointed to the federal government’s constitutional obligation to keep up rail infrastructure as a public good and guarantee dependable practice providers.

A Swiss counterexample

Switzerland confronted related challenges within the Nineteen Nineties however took a unique strategy. Like Germany, it transformed its rail operator into a company with the state as sole shareholder.

Unlike Germany, it made clear that the rail system’s major function was public service, not revenue.

Peter Füglistaler, a former supervisor of Swiss rail operator SBB, says rail infrastructure should not be meant to “generate profit.”

“Its goal is to provide capacity and punctuality — benefits for everyone,” he informed German regional broadcaster WDR, including that operating a railway required a administration philosophy targeted on reliability reasonably than monetary returns.

“Germany invests much less in its railways than Switzerland. If you invest much less, you cannot expect the same quality,” stated Füglistaler.

Data exhibits that 90% of Swiss trains now run on time — an ordinary the nation enforces strictly, as illustrated by its ban on German trains delayed by greater than quarter-hour.

An extended highway forward

Germany’s neglect of rail is usually linked to its robust automobile tradition. Over the previous three many years, successive governments have invested roughly twice as a lot in roads and autobahns (highways) as in rail infrastructure.

Still, indicators of change are rising. Palla is Deutsche Bahn’s first feminine CEO and its first chief government to carry a practice driver’s license. Major investments are already underway.

Of the €500 billion ($585 billion) in new debt that is been taken on by Germany’s new authorities to modernize the navy and public infrastructure, round €150 billion is earmarked for the rail system.

For passengers, nevertheless, the turnaround won’t come rapidly. Construction and repairs are anticipated to trigger extra disruptions within the close to time period — that means that earlier than trains run extra reliably, delays are prone to worsen.

Edited by: Uwe Hessler

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