Deutsche Bahn has announced the increase of the ride on one of its most important routes. To change the timetable in December 2021, the train will run between Berlin and Hamburg ICE trains every half hour . This announced the train on Tuesday evening at a "rail summit" in Berlin. So far, the trains run on the route between the two largest German cities once an hour.
Prior to the summit with Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU), the business magazine "Capital" had reported, citing railway circles, the extended offer on the route Hamburg-Berlin would apply a year earlier, ie from December 2020. However, this has proved to be incorrect.
Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said that with the planned expansion of the offer, the company could provide 20 percent more seat capacity in the future. According to rail information, the connection between Hamburg and Berlin, with almost 17,000 passengers a day, is one of the busiest long-haul routes in Germany.
The announcement of the railway is an important step towards the implementation of the "Germany Tact" - a central project of the Federal Government to strengthen the rail. For rail travelers, a fundamentally new system with better coordinated transfer connections is to be set up in the next few years. The train should be punctual and faster, reaching the terminals more direct and reliable.
Cheaper ICE tickets, better connections
Transport Minister Scheuer said at the meeting with industry representatives, the German tact should start gradually from 2021 , so that customers felt improvements in expansion measures. The Federal Government aims to implement the closer integration of local and long-distance traffic by 2030.
Scheuer also reaffirmed his call to make long-distance rail tickets cheaper - through a tax cut. He had suggested lowering the VAT on tickets from 19 to 7 percent. Although not every budget politician jumped to the ceiling with enthusiasm, Scheuer said. But it's about setting incentives.
The meeting in the Ministry was an event of the Rail Future Alliance, which began in October 2018. Railway director Lutz called for a joint effort to make the railroad better. But this will be a long way.
Scheuer said there were improvements in the punctuality of the trains , but more efforts would be needed. The comfort must be better.
Twice as many passengers by 2030
The coalition had announced that it would double the number of passengers by 2030 and bring more goods to the railways. In a paper of the "future alliance" significantly more investment in the partially dilapidated rail network is considered necessary. Large parts of the network are overloaded, it says in the paper. The bottlenecks must be defused quickly.
In order to implement measures for a better rail network, it would have to give significantly more money from the federal government. It is recommended to increase the funds from currently around 1.6 billion euros to around 2 billion in the years 2020 to 2023, from 2023 to around 3 billion. Overall, it is about investments of 30 billion euros.
Meanwhile, the coalition groups want to give rail "top priority". This is clear from a joint Bundestag application, which was the dpa. Called a bundle of 22 measures. For example, it is about promoting the digitization of railways or expanding railway stations.