Anyone who wants to reduce emissions from traffic would do well to expand the rail connections.

If people are to use the car less often, they must first be offered alternatives.

How should it be logically different?

People have to stay mobile, even over medium and long distances, and today this is often only possible by car.

The bicycle is only useful in clearly defined conditions.

In this respect, it is good if Deutsche Bahn, as announced on Friday, is investing half a billion euros in the modernization of its stations in Hesse.

Anyone who is ready to leave their high-tech feel-good car behind has the right to an environment that does not deter them, not just on the train, but on the platform.

Of course, this also applies to all other passengers.

Everything takes too long

In the end, however, the entire transport chain has to be right. Passengers want beautiful, clean and safer train stations, of course handicapped accessible - not only wheelchair users and fathers with prams benefit from this. However, passengers also need clean and fast trains that run in as close a cycle as possible. A lot has been happening here in the Rhine-Main area for some time - the new connection to the Gateway Gardens district at Frankfurt Airport is one of them, as is the laying of separate tracks for the S-Bahn line 6 between Frankfurt and Bad Vilbel.

The planning of the much larger projects, the new lines to Fulda and Mannheim and the ICE tunnel under Frankfurt, are also making progress.

But just the planning.

Because that is the biggest problem: Everything takes too long because planning law is too complicated (not least thanks to the many environmental regulations).

There is great hope that the new coalition in Berlin will not only provide more money for the railways and ensure that the network and operations will be decoupled, but that planning law will also be simplified.

Then it will also work with the realignment of transport policy.

If they have alternatives, drivers will switch too.

It is far from that far on many routes.