Tyler Bosselman is wearing the dark blue vest and the red tie that make up the uniform of train drivers. As he sits comfortably in the driver’s seat of his regional train, the landscapes of southern Germany rush by outside, reflected in the sunglasses he’s wearing.
On one of the routes that the 24-year-old train driver is serving, construction work is currently underway. It’s between Frankfurt and Mannheim in Germany, which is getting new switches and signals to make rail traffic run more smoothly. The goal is to finish the overhaul by the end of December, and Bosselmann hopes the upgrade will make Deutsche Bahn “more reliable overall.”
Reconstruction of the Riedbahn route marks the beginning of what Germany’s state-owned railway operator touted as a reboot of the company, with routes to Hanover, Hamburg, and other busy sections of its nationwide network set to follow soon.
and aims to make sure the will be running on time again by the end of the decade. At the program’s launch this summer, German Transportation Minister Volker Wissing called it Germany’s “largest reconstruction and modernization program in recent decades.”
Government crisis set to derail construction timetable
But the planned revival of German rail could come to a screeching halt any time soon. The collapse of the on November 4, and fresh elections to be held on February 23 next year at the earliest, mean the country is stuck in political limbo for half a year, and so is funding for the rail program.
Martin Burkert, chairman of the EVG rail workers’ union, has already warned that without a 2025 national budget, there would be a lack of money to carry on with the projects. “Years of planning work to finally get the infrastructure up to date and improve the punctuality and capacity of the network is now at risk,” Burkert told the German news agency, dpa, recently.
Tyler Bosselman knows just too well how necessary the substantial overhaul of Deutsche Bahn’s rail network currently is. Every day, the train driver navigates his engine through a web of construction sites in and around the Frankfurt rail hub. “It’s like when you are going to a casino. It’s like you’re gambling and hoping that you are on time. During rush hours, there is absolutely no guarantee that you are getting there in any reasonable time,” Bosselman told DW.
An active union member, Bosselman can share many stories about what goes wrong at Deutsche Bahn. While most regional trains still manage to be fairly punctual, he says, . Yet they are usually given priority on the crowded tracks thus holding up slower trains or idling them on sidetracks until they pass by. “It doesn’t matter if it is on a Monday, a Wednesday or any other day in the week. You can basically mark the day in your calendar that you make it into Frankfurt central station without having to slow down once.”
Underfunded German rail a ‘case for restructuring’
Deutsche Bahn’s infrastructure backlog is not only becoming evident in its lack of punctuality but increasingly manifests itself in a thinned-out network that has been shrinking for years. Surprisingly, this has happened against the backdrop of rising demand for its services, with goods volumes and passenger numbers having increased at the same time.
Tyler Bosselman says you can see the ruins left by a chronically underfunded rail company every day. As we pass a steel bridge, he points to rusty, moss-covered tracks nearby, which he says have been disused for a long time. “You could have a much higher volume of traffic here, if you invested a few euros into this replacement track.”
At the end of the 1990s, Germany was hit by a severe economic crisis, with the government starting to cut spending wherever possible. Deutsche Bahn, which is fully owned by the state, became an easy target for the cuts leading to a dramatic decline of investment in rail infrastructure.
Although this has changed in recent years, the German government still spends comparatively little money on its railway infrastructure. According to the Pro-Rail Alliance — a lobby group that unites nonprofit pro-rail campaigners with railway sector companies — Germany spends about €115 ($121) per capita on its railways annually, while countries such as Austria or Switzerland invest three to four times as much.
Cuts or no cuts as budget constraints hit
The result of years of neglect and current underfunding was highlighted in a recent report by the Federal Court of Auditors — an independent body auditing the federal budget and overseeing the management of public funds. It declared Deutsche Bahn a “case for restructuring,” and lambasted the government for having “failed to address key rail policy questions for three decades.”
The comprehensive reconstruction plan was supposed to be the answer to many of Deutsche Bahn’s woes, as the government had earmarked between €30 billion and €50 billion for the endeavor over the next three years. But now, after the collapse of the government, Germany has no budget for the next year which could threaten the funding for some of the rail projects.
Rail expert Christian Böttger from the Berlin University of Applied Sciences for Technology and Economics believes the railway operator will get the money one day, but only after a new government has been formed. “A cancellation by a new government seems politically very unlikely to me, but even the already imminent postponement of construction projects is, of course, a disaster,” he told DW.
Staying positive in the face of adversity
Tyler Bosselman is also not too worried about deep cuts to railway funding in future, saying politicians had eventually started to realize that Deutsche Bahn is part of Germany’s “critical infrastructure.” However, he believes the so-called reboot of the company will not be very strong due to Germany’s budget shortfall at the moment. “In Germany, roads have always taken precedence over rail, and that’s why I feel that cuts to rail are more likely.”
Nevertheless, Bosselman wants to stay positive, as he believes there’s already “a lot of negativity going around” in German politics. “If you kind of give in to all that negativity your life won’t be too positive down the road … I can’t see myself sad or disappointed in everything. There is always something to look up for.”
So, instead of complaining about his employer, he aims to boost his career at the end of the year with a master’s degree in railway operations, which, he says, could be a “door-opener to a leadership role” so that he can try to “transform Deutsche Bahn from the inside.”
And some German passengers — though small in numbers — have also a reason for fresh hope regarding improvements in rail services. Deutsche Bahn said a few weeks ago the reconstruction of the Riedbahn would soon be completed, with service on the route scheduled to resume by mid-December — surprisingly for the rail operator, this would be right on schedule and just in time to complete the first project of the reconstruction plan ahead of the country’s fresh election.
This article was originally written in German.
The post German rail’s punctuality drive runs into political storm appeared first on Deutsche Welle.
