Deutsche Bahn: Why journeys are likely to become significantly more expensive in the future

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Diesel locomotives: The railway also lacks the money for many electrifications

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Arnulf Hettrich / IMAGO

The huge savings in the budget could delay the upgrading of the railways in Germany even more than previously assumed.

Train travel is also likely to become significantly more expensive - and not really any more reliable in the foreseeable future.

This conclusion is suggested by an internal document from the group that SPIEGEL has seen.

Despite many federal investments in rail, the company lacks money.

The full-bodied promises of Transport Minister Wissing and railway boss Richard Lutz to finally make the railway better will be difficult to keep.

Motto for numerous projects: postponement until the end.

According to the federal government's current financial planning, by 2030 only 2,600 kilometers of track could be renovated instead of the originally planned 4,200 kilometers and only around 600 kilometers of track could be built and expanded instead of 750.

The group still wants to build so-called future train stations, but in this scenario only around 520 instead of 1,800 as originally planned.

And of the new and expanded service facilities, i.e. stations for maintaining and cleaning trains, there are still around 18 remaining instead of the 150 that the group originally had in mind.

The internal school grades for the rest of the so-called area network could also deteriorate significantly by 2030: from a 2.8 to a 3.2.

Not stopped, just built later

The company calls its approach “reprioritization” in the documents.

Management always publicly assured that nothing would be stopped, that construction would simply take place later.

“We are not canceling any demand plan projects,” said a spokesman.

Internally it sounds more drastic: “The restriction on investment funds has a significant impact on the availability of routes.”

By 2030, around 60 billion euros less could be available for infrastructure than the railway's planning had originally assumed.

Because the costs of maintenance and renovation are also rising sharply, the railway's infrastructure division wants to increase the fees for the use of tracks and stations.

This could make long-distance tickets more expensive, and the discontinuation of individual IC lines that would then be uneconomical seems conceivable.

Railway boss quoted in the transport committee

SPIEGEL had already reported on the big savings in February.

As a result of this reporting, railway boss Richard Lutz was summoned to the transport committee.

At the time, according to participants, he rejected the depiction as “absurd, period,” and so far nothing had been stopped or slowed down.

These statements are contradicted by decisions made by the group, for example in the southwest, where further digitization of the scandalous Stuttgart 21 project has been stopped for the time being.

Parliamentarians and the Ministry of Transport are becoming increasingly disconcerted about the state-owned company.

According to critics, Deutsche Bahn has developed a life of its own that is difficult to control.