Deutsche Bahn had announced that after the train accident in Garmisch, trains would soon be rolling in the region again. But the local mayors are dissatisfied with the company’s plans.
After Deutsche Bahn announced that most of the routes in its Werdenfels network would be operational again in mid-September, the 22 mayors in the Garmisch-Partenkirchen district and district administrator Anton Speer (FW) are calling for these plans to be changed. The background is DB’s plan to close the main route between Murnau and Garmisch-Partenkirchen again from October 7th to November 13th in order to renovate it. The local politicians reject this schedule.
After a meeting with DB representatives on Thursday, “due to safety concerns”, they demanded that the route not be put into operation temporarily and for a few weeks, but that it be completely renovated immediately and, if possible, by mid-November.
According to a statement on Friday, Deutsche Bahn wants to spend around 80 million euros by 2025 on the rehabilitation of the routes in the Werdenfels network and in the Oberland network in the direction of Tegernsee, Bayrischzell and Lenggries. Slow-moving sections will be removed from September and individual tracks will be renewed from October, followed by the fundamental renewal of the routes from June 2023 to November 2025. The trigger for the problems that led to the blocking of the Werdenfels network around Garmisch-Partenkirchen and as far as Tyrol was the train accident near Burgrain at the beginning of June, in which five people lost their lives.
Defective concrete sleepers are a possible cause. The railways had sleepers of this type examined nationwide, blocked a number of routes and set up numerous slow-moving sections. In Burgrain, she wants to replace 700 meters of rails and 500 sleepers after the investigators have given their approval. In order to create “a plannable and as stable an offer as possible”, it should remain in the Werdenfelser Land until September 13th with replacement buses.