Sabotage on railway lines repeatedly brings train traffic to a standstill – most recently at the beginning of the month between Hamburg and Berlin. Does DB Group take the protection of its systems seriously enough?
At the beginning of September in the middle of the night in Hamburg: There is a fire in three cable shafts. The police suspect arson. A letter of responsibility appears on the radical left-wing platform Indymedia: “The arteries of the capitalist infrastructure” were sabotaged. “A few liters of gasoline in the cable shafts,” it says, would have been enough to paralyze rail traffic.
Chaos for days
And indeed – what follows is chaos that lasts for days. More than 100 trains are being diverted or canceled completely. Not the first attack on the railway: Only in October last year, unknown persons deliberately destroyed Deutsche Bahn’s communication cables and thus brought train traffic in northern Germany to a standstill. There were also acts of sabotage against Deutsche Bahn in North Rhine-Westphalia at the beginning of the year. Unknown persons manipulated several signal boxes.
Police officers after the suspected arson attack on cable shafts on a railway embankment in the Lokstedt district of Hamburg.
The rail-critical association Prellbock Altona sees a need for action. “The railway must protect its infrastructure better. And ensure that the cables are safe,” says Andreas Müller-Goldenstedt from the citizens’ initiative. Cables are usually located near railway facilities and are laid in cable trays. The troughs protect the cables from external influences and are covered with concrete slabs. According to the railway, there is no provision for the cable trough to be tightly closed. If repairs are necessary, quick access must be guaranteed so that they can be repaired quickly.
But during a tour of a Hamburg S-Bahn station, Müller-Goldenstedt found numerous exposed cables. The S-Bahn station is currently being renovated; Cables lie unprotected on wooden supports and are visible to every train driver: a safety risk for the club. A railway spokesman responds to the request from NDR, laying in cable routing systems made of concrete, plastic, wood or even in open construction is safe. At the latest when all work is completed, the cables would be laid back in permanent cable ducts.
Bahn wants to protect itself better
According to Prellbock Altona, “resilience through redundancy” should be the primary goal of Deutsche Bahn’s infrastructure expansion. Sufficient alternative and diversion routes would have to be created. The railway also says that it wants to create further redundancies, for example by securing its cables twice and thus better protecting themselves against attacks.
According to experts, the problem with the railway is the speed of implementation. “Such construction measures and system changes take many years. A new line that is being planned now will go into operation in 15 to 20 years,” says railway engineer Jan Felix Wiebe. “We definitely need these resilience measures to be accelerated there.”
Greater more economical Damage
Deutsche Bahn says the company is already hiring more security guards and technicians. With around 34,000 kilometers of route network and around 2,600 signal boxes, complete protection of the infrastructure is almost impossible. The railway is currently unable to provide any information about the economic damage caused by the attacks.
According to rail expert Christian Böttger, the economic consequences of such attacks are immense. “We assume that each such attack in a city causes damage worth millions. In recent years we have always had one to three attacks per year. Then of course that adds up massively to the detriment of the railway.” In the end, citizens and taxpayers financed this damage, according to the railway expert.
An open cable duct on a railway line. The railway does not provide for tightly closed cable trays.
Higher penalties might also help to deter potential perpetrators. The Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office is now investigating the attacks in Hamburg. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office can prosecute crimes relevant to state security if they are of particular importance. The Karlsruhe authorities also took over the investigation into the alleged railway sabotage last October.
More cameras planned on railway systems
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser also promised in “Bild am Sonntag” to investigate the perpetrators and to better protect the railway lines. She announced that she would strengthen video surveillance at railway facilities and increase the number of cameras from 9,000 to 11,000.
However, experts believe it is impossible to protect the rail network completely with cameras, sensors or emergency services. And one thing is certain: in the end, it is the train drivers who suffer from such attacks.