Lack of connectivity: Greens demand the right to long-distance trains for large cities

The Greens see in the crisis of the railway a reason for a loss of confidence of the population in the state. "The years of mismanagement and the politically motivated dysfunction triggers for millions of people every day again from the feeling that in our country something fundamentally does not work," said the group leader of the Greens in the Bundestag, Katrin Göring-Eckardt, the SPIEGEL.

Therefore, she demands: "Every city with 100,000 inhabitants or more should have a right to long-distance transport, at least once an hour."

The new ICE route from Berlin to Munich was great for many people in both cities. The simultaneous end of more and more regional connections, however, meant a problem for people everywhere in Germany.

"There are cities like Chemnitz, which are completely disconnected from long-distance traffic: there are no ICE, IC or EC, and then there are numerous big cities like Trier, Krefeld or Magdeburg, which are only symbolically connected ", says Goering-Eckardt. This aggravates the problem of unequal living conditions, a pity for social cohesion and trust in the state.

Party seeks blame from the federal government

Already on Tuesday, the Greens had blamed the responsibility for the problems of Deutsche Bahn, especially the federal government. According to Matthias Gastel, rail policy spokesman for the Greens, the government has failed to reduce competitive distortions, to expand the rail network and to shift traffic from the road to the rail.

"The railway is owned by the federal government and it is the duty of the Federal Government to ensure that the railway is again reliable for all citizens," explains Goering-Eckardt. The Grand Coalition must stop financing expensive road construction projects, as long as broken roads, bridges and tracks have to be rehabilitated.

This Tuesday, Rail Ministry Director Richard Lutz and Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer met in the Ministry of Transport to discuss the crisis in train traffic. There was plenty of need for discussion - and the mood was also rather icy.