Evelyn Palla appointed the new boss of Deutsche Bahn

Evelyn Palla has been appointed the new head of the Group by the Deutsche Bahn supervisory board. That announced that. The EVG railway and transport union had announced in advance to want to vote against the South Tyrolean. Since a simple majority was enough for its calling, the union could not prevent the change at the top of the group.

Palla will say that Palla will start on October 1st. So far, the South Tyrolean is the head of the regional transport division of Deutsche Bahn, DB Regio. She is now the successor to Richard Lutz, who led the group for almost eight years, but was recently unable to initiate a trend reversal.

In the future, Palla will have to orientate herself to the new federal strategy that Federal Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder (CDU) presented on Monday. The focus is on more reliability, more security and more cleanliness. With three instant programs, for example, comfort for travelers in long -distance transport is to be improved in the coming year.

With a view to the dilapidated infrastructure, the federal government adheres to the concept of so -called general renovations, with which around 40 particularly important and contaminated routes are to be modernized from scratch by 2036. Schnieder also wants to ensure that the DB Infrago, which is responsible for the infrastructure, can act more independently and independently from the overall group.

The punctuality goals for the trains of long -distance transport were reduced. According to the federal government, at the end of 2029 at least 70 percent of the ICE and IC trains should travel on time. The railway itself had set this goal for the coming year – Schnieder considers this to be “beyond all reality”. In the first half of the year, more than a third of the long -distance trains of the railways were on the road.

According to the Ministry of Transport, the quota should be at least 80 percent in the medium term, in the long term at least 90 percent. In local transport, punctuality should be more than 90 percent permanently. The strategy does not show a specific period of time for these goals.

It is still unclear whether Schnieder also gets his desired candidate for the management of the DB Infrago. The minister wants to use Dirk Rompf at this point, but the EVG wants to prevent the appeal. Rompf is no stranger to the train: he was the network boss under the then group board member Ronald Pofalla. During this time, the infrastructure was increasingly felled because too little money was invested in receipt.

Rompf must be appointed by the DB Infrago Supervisory Board, the meeting will be pending in the next few weeks. The EVG pays off good chances of being able to prevent this appointment. EVG boss Martin Burkert assumes that the manager will not be able to make a simple majority because representatives of the employer side on the supervisory board could also vote against him.

The EVG emphasized that her voices against Palla should be understood primarily as votes against Rompf. According to the union, Rompf as an infrago boss cannot be spoken of a restart on the train. In his time as CEO of the DB Netz “, Rompf was not noticed – also not positively noticed, on the contrary. He massively did the savings dictate and is responsible for the fact that the infrastructure is in such a state,” said Burkert.

If Rompf actually fails to the Infrago Supervisory Board, this would also be a serious damage to Minister Schnieder. Accordingly, Schnieder surprised the industry with the presentation of Rompfs – and thus triggered incomprehension and criticism instead of confidence for the restart.