The nine-euro ticket pushes the rail system to its limits on some routes. More and more trains are broken.
(Photo: dpa)
Frankfurt The two trade unions of Deutsche Bahn have criticized the current state of the state-owned company in clear terms. “I saw people literally fall off the train on a train from Rostock to Hamburg when the doors opened,” Martin Burkert, deputy chairman of the railway and transport union (EVG), told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper “. He had never experienced conditions like this summer.
The chairman of the train drivers’ union GDL, Claus Weselsky, also spoke to the newspaper of “unprecedented chaos”. “This is the absolute worst case scenario,” he said. And repeated a long-known accusation: the state-owned company had gotten into this catastrophic state “through years of ruthless savings”.
Both employee representatives blame, among other things, the nine-euro ticket for the difficult situation of the rail company. The resulting rush revealed the heavy wear and tear on the entire system. “We notice damage from the heavy use of the nine-euro ticket very early on: elevators are defective, toilets on trains no longer work, everything is simply put under a lot of strain,” said Burkert.
Many employees are already at the breaking point, Burkert said. Sick leave would increase. “We notice: The nine-euro ticket makes you sick.” According to Deutsche Bahn, only about 58 percent of long-distance trains ran on time in June, and 88.5 percent of regional trains. The Bahn board knows about the precarious situation for many customers and the workforce. “Believe me: I suffer like a dog,” CEO Richard Lutz said recently.
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The state-owned company is primarily struggling with two challenges: On the one hand, the rail network is in a desolate state due to years of investment backlog. Again and again defective signals or switches slow down the train traffic. At the same time, construction is going on in more places than ever before. This causes detours.
>> Read here, why the railways checked the rails after the train accident in Bavaria
On the other hand, the nine-euro ticket decided by the government caused an additional rush to the trains. The train is currently running with all of its available material. This has consequences: although more staff has been made available, the company can hardly keep up with the maintenance and supply of the trains. There are also no reserve trains, should a train ever stand still.
There is no quick fix. Only in 2024 do the railways and the federal government want to bring the ailing network into shape with a new concept. Instead of constantly working on the rail network, all construction measures planned for the long term are to be bundled on one route in order to then completely renovate it. However, this means that these routes then have to be closed and bypassed for several months.
But the board of directors of the railway and the owner, the federal government, see no other way to finally make the German rail network sustainable. Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) has now declared the renovation and modernization of the network to be a top priority: “I expect that in the future we will be able to set the clock by the train again.”
More: Six reasons why Deutsche Bahn is failing on its own