Deutsche Bahn: "Main artery" to be disconnected
The general refurbishment of the rail network begins shortly after Euro 2024. The transport minister and the CDU chairman have contradictory suggestions.
Track construction work in Mannheim.
(Image: Deutsche Bahn AG / Uli Planz)
The complete closure of the railroad line between Mannheim and Frankfurt am Main today, Monday, marks the start of the general renovation of the first main corridor of German rail traffic. For Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP), this is the most difficult corridor of all those to be fully renovated by 2030, as he said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio. The route, also known as the Riedbahn, is "like a clogged artery in an organism. It will now be disconnected, renovated and then the system will function better". In order to achieve this within five months, the planning was very meticulous and complex.
(Image: Deutsche Bahn)
Laws were changed and a new financing system set up at record speed for the general refurbishment project. It was possible to renovate the Riedbahn on schedule, as this had been successfully tested in January of this year, said Wissing in response to criticism from the construction industry. The necessary capacities and material were available.
"I took over a dilapidated rail infrastructure, my predecessors did not invest enough over the decades," Wissing repeated accusations against the previous government. He had worked on a renovation concept immediately after taking office and was now investing historic sums in the railroads. It is not yet possible to predict how much this will ultimately amount to. The general refurbishment will now begin after the European Men's Football Championships, as otherwise the chaos on the rails would have become even greater than it already is.
"The railroad is overwhelmed"
CDU chairman Friedrich Merz said in an ARD summer interview that the railroads are overstretched, they are overtaxing themselves. He cited the planned German cycle as an example. The complex system in its current state would not be able to provide the planned additional services and the railroads would have to reduce their services. When asked about Merz's statements, Wissing said that the former CDU-led government had not developed any solutions for the railroads. For the minister, these were "fine-grained demands" that had no relevance.
His parliamentary group in the Bundestag had dealt extensively with the issue of the railroads. Their concept essentially consists of separating the network and operations. "The network must remain in the hands of the state, operations on the network can take place in competition," said Merz. In March of this year, his parliamentary group failed in the Bundestag with a motion along these lines.
In the coming years, 41 busy railroad lines are to be renovated. Tim-Oliver Müller, Managing Director of the Federation of the German Construction Industry (HDB), told Welt am Sonntag that he is very certain that not all of the planned corridor renovations will be completed by 2031. The entire project would have to be extended in terms of time, as the companies could not yet make any realistic capacity plans. Politicians and the railroads would first have to agree on this.
(anw)