Germany’s Deutsche Bahn (DB) rail operator is to receive €50 billion in funding over the next 10 years.
Readers who travel throughout Germany by train will be seeing improvements in the years ahead.
The government funding will be used mainly to support a huge modernisation programme covering both short- and long distance routes.
For a list of improvements refer to the DW report and here at thelocal.de.
Some of the money will go towards paying off DB’s debt of €20 billion.
Readers might find this amount excessive but it less than half the debt which France’s SNCF has accumulated.
The rest will be used to overhaul Germany’s ageing rail infrastructure.
Allrail (an organisation representing open access operators in mainland Europe and Scandinavia) is concerned as some funding could support DB’s commercial activities.
It must be ensured that this latest round of additional taxpayer billions for DB do not unfairly support commercial operations within the group,
such as DB Long Distance Trains (DB Fernverkehr) & its exclusive sales facilitator DB Sales (DB Vertrieb)https://t.co/ibUEZrUTe7
— ALLRAIL (@ALLRAIL_EU) May 12, 2020
Its member Flixtrain competes with DB on several of its routes. See our rail report in the April 2020 issue of Business traveller.
Hopefully readers will see improvements in the punctuality and reliability of DB’s high speed (HS) ICE services.
These ICEs are DB’s flagships. Higher fares are charged for travel on these prestigious trains but the punctuality remains below acceptable standards even though DW reports an “efficiency czar” was appointed.
More information when available.
