The condition of the rail infrastructure is one of the biggest problems facing the railways. More and more projects are now being announced so that everything runs better in 2030. Can this work?
Broken elevators, dirty toilets, dark corridors full of graffiti: the condition of many train stations is dramatic. Many have long ceased to be places to linger. By 2030, Deutsche Bahn now wants to renovate around a third of its stations. According to railway circles, these so-called train stations of the future would have to be brought into a condition that would meet the demands of customers. There is agreement with the Federal Ministry of Transport headed by Volker Wissing.
The train is currently serving a good 5,400 stations. 900 belong to her completely, including the station building. As part of the rail reform in the 1990s, many of the other buildings were sold. 1,800 stations are now to be renovated by 2030 – including those where the buildings do not belong to the railways. More than two-thirds of customers should be reached with this restructuring plan.
Significantly better condition of the network by 2030
The pile of infrastructure measures that are intended to bring the network into a significantly better condition by 2030 is thus getting bigger and bigger – and it will probably continue to grow. The rail infrastructure has been saved for years and is supposed to do more and more at the same time. It is currently reaching its capacity limits. There are disruptions in the entire network every day, which is also an important factor for the poor punctuality values in long-distance traffic.
At the end of March, the heads of the traffic light coalition determined that the railways would need around 45 billion euros to cover the investment needs by 2027. This need for investment should be covered “as far as financially feasible”, among other things, through proportionate revenue from the truck toll, from which a good five billion euros are expected in the coming year. Then the railways want to put seven billion euros into the infrastructure, a year later nine billion euros and 2026 twelve billion euros. According to railway circles, the industry needs a ramp-up in order to be able to build up more capacity bit by bit.
The focus of the efforts are general renovations: More than 40 particularly stressed and particularly important routes are to be completely closed for almost half a year each in order to repair everything that needs to be repaired in one go: stations, overhead lines, rails, switches and much more more. In addition, some level crossings will disappear. After that, there should be eight to ten years of freedom to build and the susceptibility to failure should drop by 80 percent.
Start after the European Football Championship
It starts after the European Football Championship in the summer of 2024 on the Riedbahn, the route between Frankfurt and Mannheim. Deutsche Bahn hopes that this general renovation alone will lead to noticeable improvements throughout the network. For passengers, however, general renovation also means: before the condition of the network and thus punctuality improves, there are lengthy construction sites with failures and rail replacement services.
The private rail freight companies also take a similar view of the situation. For them, a functioning rail network is the basis of business – they are interested in improvements, but worry about the construction phases. The railway subsidiary DB Netz is a service provider for all rail freight traffic – but this role must also be accepted, says Peter Westenberger, Managing Director of the Association of Private Freight Railways. He criticizes the fact that Deutsche Bahn announces many projects to improve the infrastructure, but only implements a few of them. The association launched the db-watch.de portal to document this discrepancy in extensive dossiers.
Westenberger fears major damage to the railway companies during the general renovations. “Long closures make sense, but only with certain boundary conditions.” He cites diversions as one of the issues. So far he has only seen this point organized and guaranteed in the planning for the general renovation of the Riedbahn. “We see great difficulty in organizing the Nuremberg-Passau, Munich-Salzburg and Hamburg-Hanover routes.”
Source: Stern
