The Berliner Tagesspiegel reports on the latest bad news from the planning offices of the Deutsche Bahn. The topic is inefficiency and the confusing delay tactics in relation to the reality that the announced construction breaks concern projects “where the work in the current planning phase is almost finished.” Two affected projects are connected to the Gotthard Tunnel, the longest railway tunnel in the world, running from central Switzerland to the German border.
The TS article explains that Switzerland built the 57-kilometer-long Gotthard Tunnel “primarily to transfer goods in the Alpine transit as far as possible from the road to the rail.” The plan was to open it in 2016. However, since the start day, there has been a significant problem with the German railway colleagues. The article states, “Since its opening, the tunnel can only partially fulfill this task. The two-track approach line in Germany is a bottleneck.”
Three years ago, the Deutsche Bahn presented its construction plans to finally support the Swiss achievement. The article exemplifies the state of German construction and economic planning: “While Switzerland successfully completed more than 28 million tons of rock blasting and drilling in the Alps on time and according to plan, construction work in Germany has not even begun in many places. The current opening year is 2041.”
Currently, the railway company would stop planning for the expansion of the section between Offenburg and Freiburg, according to the newspaper. The reality would cause shock, based on TS information from the documents of the railway subsidiary DB InfraGO for the 2025 annual plan. Another bad news for foreign railway colleagues is the urgent need for construction projects that are currently being paused:
“Also, the construction planning for the Frankfurt-Mannheim line should be stopped or paused according to the document. It also lies on the important European freight corridor Rotterdam-Genua.”
The affected sections would also have a significant impact on freight traffic, as the planned route is also “crucial” for the German ICE traffic: “Because it would relieve the Riedbahn, which despite a 1.5 billion euro expensive general overhaul still produces delays due to the many trains running there.”
According to a current SWR article, “The Deutsche Bahn has assessed the state of its own network. Overall, it is “moderate” – even the newly renovated Riedbahn did not receive a one. The Deutsche Bahn rates its own network as moderate and for the year 2024 it receives a grade of 3.0. This emerges from the so-called Network Status Report of the railway subsidiary DB InfraGo for the previous year.”
In addition, the railway company would stop planning for some smaller projects this year, such as the Studernheimer Curve in Ludwigshafen to better connect the BASF plant, electrification between Mühldorf and Landshut in Bavaria and expansion work at the Container Terminal Munich North.
Possible reasons for the planned DB strategy are that with the “pausing of these trans-European prestige projects, the railway company may try to put pressure on the government to provide more money for infrastructure development.” The railway company hopes to receive up to 150 billion euros additionally from the federal government’s special fund for infrastructure development by 2034. With this hope, many of the currently paused construction projects could be realized.