Bahn board member Ronald Pofalla is still in office. Next week he wants to put the new high-speed line between Wendlingen and Ulm into operation with a first test drive on board an ICE together with Baden-Württemberg’s Transport Minister Winfried Hermann (Greens). At the end of April, however, the 62-year-old will leave the group after seven years.
For a few days now, Deutsche Bahn’s supervisory board has been discussing who could follow Pofalla as a board member for the group’s important infrastructure area. To award is one of the most difficult tasks of the railway. After all, the post that has to take care of the 33,000-kilometer rail network is about the trouble that has been driving customers crazy for years: the chronic lack of punctuality of the trains, the record-breaking number of construction sites due to the outdated and overburdened network and the sluggish digitization of train traffic.
Now the group has apparently found a solution. According to information from group circles, the Bahn board member Berthold Huber is the favorite. He has so far been responsible for the passenger transport division and is responsible for the railway’s train fleet. A decision on the post has not yet been made. Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) still has to agree to the change. According to the information, the supervisory board is to decide on this at a special meeting in the next few weeks. The 58-year-old Huber has been with Deutsche Bahn since 1997.
The change triggers a further restructuring of the board. Huber’s previous department is to be taken over by the divisional boards for long-distance and regional transport. If both move up to the group board, the highest management body would grow by one to eight posts. The railway initially did not comment on the plans, about which the first mirror had reported. The contracts of freight transport chief Sigrid Nikutta and finance chief Levin Holle are to be extended this week.
Criticism of the situation of the network for which Pofalla is responsible hailed criticism from the traffic light coalition
The board of directors of the railway will meet on Wednesday to discuss the future of the railway. A salary increase for Bahn boss Richard Lutz and Huber should then also be decided. It was heavily criticized last year and then postponed to this year. On Thursday, Deutsche Bahn will present its balance sheet for the past year. The group has been suffering from empty trains and a lack of income since the beginning of the Corona crisis. According to the original plans, the leaked personnel shift should not be an issue this week.
If the conversion is completed in the board, the new infrastructure board Huber is threatened with a difficult task because Transport Minister Wissing wants to convert the area. He had recently clearly signaled that he would no longer accept the chronically poor performance of Deutsche Bahn. The traffic light coalition also criticized the situation of the network for which Pofalla is responsible. Wissing seems determined to reform the group and is primarily focusing on the network division. It could be formally separated from the Deutsche Bahn joint-stock company. The critical situation for the area had recently been exacerbated by the fact that the controversial Stuttgart 21 train station project is said to be even more expensive than already expected. The costs are now more than nine billion euros. Most recently, a good eight billion euros were estimated for this.