If the Bavarian Railway Company (BEG) chooses sharp words, the situation must be serious: After all, it orders regional rail transport for the Free State and is therefore jointly responsible for ensuring that it runs. when he drives “The state of the infrastructure on regional railway lines is unacceptable,” the BEG captioned its alarm message this Monday in view of the recently increasing problems on Bavaria’s tracks. “The latest development is really frightening,” said managing director Bärbel Fuchs in the statement. “Plannable operation is hardly possible under these conditions, not to mention adequate passenger information.”
This corresponds to the experiences of many train travelers these days. This can be expressed in figures in the so-called punctuality rate. This was 82.8 percent for all Bavarian regional and S-Bahn traffic in June – a significant deterioration compared to the average of 92.4 percent from January to May. The cause in almost half of all cases: infrastructure deficits. Their share of all delays grew from 36.9 percent to 45.4 percent.
“The average figures for all of Bavaria hide an even more drastic development in the regional route network away from the main traffic axes,” says the BEG. “On these routes, where there are usually no or hardly any long-distance trains, the condition of the infrastructure is in parts even worse.” The train failure rate due to line closures was not taken into account by the BEG due to missing data.
The available figures also correspond to the experiences of the private railway companies. The latter have been complaining for weeks about operation at the limit, numerous new slow-moving sections that would mess up timetables, and route closures scheduled at short notice. Last Friday, the section between Bad Reichenhall and Berchtesgaden served by the Bavarian Regiobahn was temporarily closed. The week before the route towards Augsburg between Schongau and Peißenberg was suddenly closed. And due to construction work between Freilassing and Traunstein, the RB 27548 ends early in Teisendorf until this Wednesday.
1250 delays in June
However, the Werdenfelser network operated by the railway subsidiary DB Regio is a kind of prime example. According to the BEG, the number of delays due to road defects on the tracks between Munich, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Kochel and Oberammergau has increased more than twentyfold. 1250 cases were only recorded for June, not including train cancellations.
The Murnau – Garmisch-Partenkirchen – Mittenwald route is currently closed on the network for repairs. If you want to travel to the Passion Play in Oberammergau, you have to switch to replacement buses from Murnau. A section near Garmisch is also closed because of the train accident on June 3rd, where defects in the superstructure are treated as a probable cause. The DB is therefore currently inspecting and replacing sleepers of a certain type nationwide and “as a precautionary measure”, as it says in a company statement, which “will be checked by the investigating authorities”.
In view of the grievances, BEG boss Fuchs is calling on DB Netz to improve preventive maintenance of the infrastructure: “It must not be the case that almost every measurement train run involves new slow-speed sections or even complete route closures.” It is also unacceptable “that DB Regio does not manage to provide enough rail replacement buses around Garmisch-Partenkirchen even six weeks after the train accident”. For Transport Minister Christian Bernreiter (CSU), the federal government is obliged to make “massive investments” in the regional networks. In any case, these are a cause for ongoing disputes: the federal states regularly demand more funds for public transport, which the federal government also regularly rejects.
“Capacity bottlenecks and high sick leave”
When asked about the BEG requirements, Deutsche Bahn is a bit self-critical. “We know that we are currently not offering our passengers – especially in the Werdenfels region – the quality and reliability that our customers rightly expect from us,” said a spokeswoman. However, “capacity bottlenecks and high sickness rates” are the cause of the problems with rail replacement services, which are currently having a severe impact on the Bavarian bus market. Together with the federal and state governments, more investments are being made in the modernization and construction and expansion of the route network than ever before. In the current year, 2.35 billion euros are available for the Bavarian infrastructure alone – including around 310 kilometers of track, 325 switches and 27 bridges.