Punctuality on the railway is poor and the rail network urgently needs to be renovated. A new railway company has now been founded for this purpose: DB InfraGO. Will this make everything better?
There are signs of a new beginning for the railways, at least that’s what Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) promises in the Federal Ministry of Transport’s image film for the new DB company InfraGO. Wissing and railway boss Richard Lutz are presenting it for the first time in Berlin today. It has one main goal: “To guarantee passengers a punctual and reliable train again.”
But that won’t be easy: the condition of the German rail network has recently deteriorated further. This emerges from a report that has just been published by DB InfraGO. The new company was founded to renew tracks and stations from a single source; previously these two divisions of the railway were separate from each other. The “GO” stands for oriented towards the common good, i.e. making profits should not be the priority.
Too little control for politics?
Michael Donth still doesn’t believe that everything will get better at the railway. The CDU politician sits on the Bundestag’s transport committee. Above all, he criticizes the fact that InfraGO, as a stock corporation, is still part of the DB Group because: “According to stock corporation law, the owner, i.e. the federal government, does not have the opportunity to say: ‘You have to move forward faster, you have to do it better’ , but that is the board.”
So if there is a problem with the route renovation, Donth fears that the influence of politics will be low. The Union had spoken out in favor of breaking up the railway company, similar to the FDP and the Greens. The SPD opposed this in the coalition negotiations; the pressure from the unions was great.
However, the transport policy spokeswoman for the SPD parliamentary group, Isabel Cademartori, also emphasizes: “From the SPD’s point of view, it would not have been wise to spend the entire legislative period setting up a completely new company outside of the railway. That would have taken away all our capacity, that we need to really get the infrastructure up to speed now.”
General renovation: Many questions still remain unanswered
This is supposed to happen from mid-July: Then the general renovation of the busy Riedbahn between Frankfurt and Mannheim will begin. The first of a total of 40 route sections that InfraGO is scheduled to completely renew by 2030.
For Dirk Flege, chairman of the pro-rail alliance Alliance, important questions still need to be clarified beforehand. He misses a clear balance between the common good and profit orientation. And he asks: “How does the federal government actually want to control its rail infrastructure company? There is currently nothing tangible. A necessary legal shell has been created, but the content has not yet been properly defined.”
“Not everything by order of the minister”
So is the new InfraGO ready for its mammoth task of renovating thousands of kilometers of rail network? The Federal Ministry of Transport is apparently already working on a plan. But the Commissioner for Rail Transport, Michael Theurer from the FDP, also gave an interview with the ARD capital studio to: “Of course, not everything can be changed simply by order of the minister. Instead, we need DB employees who we want to put in a position to handle the task.”
Above all with money: The federal government had originally promised 40 billion euros for the railway renovation by 2027, but now it will be less because of the austerity measures in the budget. This also shows that the founding of the new InfraGO is only a first step until the train runs on time again. Many more must follow.