A letter from Deutsche Bahn about possible cuts in long-distance services caused unrest last week. Deutsche Bahn is trying to calm things down.
After the excitement about the future long-distance service, Deutsche Bahn boss Richard Lutz stressed that no cuts are planned for the coming year. “Our plans for the 2025 timetable, which were completed in April, do not include any cuts,” Lutz wrote in a letter to the Eastern regional group of the SPD parliamentary group. The letter was made available to the German Press Agency. “We want to run the full timetable in 2025,” a DB spokesperson confirmed when asked.
In the letter, Lutz shows understanding for the uncertainty felt by MPs following the media reports last week. “Contrary to the claims in the ‘Spiegel’, we currently have no plans or decisions to cancel the long-distance connections mentioned,” writes Lutz.
Trigger of the debate: The track charges
Last week, the “Spiegel” newspaper reported on a list of long-distance connections that could be reduced or canceled. The magazine referred to a letter from Deutsche Bahn to the Federal Network Agency from the beginning of February.
The background to the debate about cuts is the track access charges charged by the DB infrastructure company DB Infrago. All companies that use the railway’s infrastructure have to pay them, including the railway’s transport companies themselves. The Federal Network Agency recently approved a significant increase in track access charges for 2025. According to Infrago, the reason for the high increase is higher personnel and material costs in recent years. For 2025, track access charges for long-distance traffic will increase by 17.7 percent according to current figures. However, there are complaints against this, and the federal government has also promised help in the form of track access price subsidies.
Lutz wrote to the SPD MPs that the letter mentioned by “Spiegel” was a written statement from Deutsche Bahn to the Federal Network Agency. According to Lutz, the agency had asked Deutsche Bahn to explain the economic effects of the proposed increase in track access charges. “This letter in no way mentions any possible measures that are one-sidedly directed at East Germany,” Lutz wrote to the MPs.
Source: Stern
