By 2030, 40 heavily used railway lines are to be completely renovated – but until this is achieved, travelers must expect months of closures and long diversions. The federal government and railways have now presented the schedule.
With additional investments worth billions, the railway wants to tackle the renovation of busy routes. The aim is to make rail transport significantly more reliable for passengers and goods. “Now we know in which order the whole thing will work,” said Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing at a “rail summit” in Frankfurt. There he and the railway presented the concrete schedule.
The list contains 40 highly polluted routes that are to be fundamentally renovated up to and including 2030 at a cost of billions. The sections should generally be completely closed for five months for the work. This sometimes involves long diversions for train traffic. After that, it should run undisturbed for years.
Wissing explained that the federal government would provide Deutsche Bahn AG with a further 12.5 billion euros in equity. Together with previous commitments, this results in a total of almost 40 billion euros. According to the FDP politician, it is a show of strength and a clear commitment to rail. He now expects the railway to implement the renovation “with the necessary haste”.
“Ready to go”
The railway had reported a need of 45 billion euros. Wissing explained that he wanted to make the remaining funds available in the coming years. The rail infrastructure has been neglected for decades and pushed to its absolute limits. This is no longer acceptable and is also not the claim of Germany as a location.
The minister appealed to the railways and the construction industry to tackle the renovation together: “The money is there, we can get started.” The railway is important as a climate-friendly mode of transport.
The need is great. In 2022, almost one in three long-distance rail travelers reached their destination at least 15 minutes late. Only 70.6 percent of passengers arrived at their destination less late, according to a response from the Federal Ministry of Transport to a representative’s office. From the perspective of critics, the background is the lack of investment in the rail infrastructure for decades.
4,000 kilometers of rail are being renovated
The railway has to organize extensive replacement services and diversions for the general renovation of 4,000 kilometers of rail. In the end, there should be a “high-performance network” covering around 9,000 kilometers. In total, the network extends to around 34,000 kilometers.
The start is to be made next year on the Riedbahn in the Frankfurt-Mannheim corridor. This will be followed by the Berlin-Hamburg and Emmerich-Oberhausen routes in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2025.
New company is to be founded
At the Frankfurt “Rail Summit” with the construction and railway industries, the further sequence of a total of 40 rail sections was presented. In 2026, the Cologne-Hagen, Nuremberg-Reichswald-Regensburg, Troisdorf-Koblenz and Koblenz-Wiesbaden routes will be started, among others. At the end of the list for the second half of 2030 are the Ulm-Augsburg and Mannheim-Karlsruhe corridors. Two sections in Hesse were removed, which, according to the railway, now need to be renovated elsewhere. These are the Fulda-Flieden and Flieden-Hanau routes.
In order to implement the renovation projects, it is planned to found a new, public-interest-oriented infrastructure company called “InfraGo” under the umbrella of the DB Group. The sub-companies DB Netz and DB Station and Service are to be merged into this at the turn of the year. The purpose of the design is that the federal funds provided flow exclusively into the infrastructure and not into driving operations. Critics had called for the network to be completely separated from the railway company.