Delays, often several hours long, missed connections, train cancellations and dirty stations. Broken tracks and signal boxes, leading to endless track work. Poor service on trains, dirty toilets. Deutsche Bahn has been in crisis for a long time.
Now everything is supposed to get better. With a new boss, a realistic schedule, and a focus on passengers’ expectations that trains run comfortably and reliably from A to B as scheduled.
On Monday (22.9.2025) in Berlin, Patrick Schnieder, Minister of Transport in the Chancellor’s cabinet, introduced his choice for Deutsche Bahn’s new CEO, Evelyn Palla, and presented his plan to improve Germany’s railway.
“Today, we are taking up the baton for a new era. An era in which we will once again focus on what we do best: running trains, the railway as the lifeline of this country,” 51-year-old Austrian national Evelyn Palla told journalists in Berlin on Monday. She is to replace the hapless railway boss Richard Lutz, who has been at the helm of the state-owned company since 2017. Lutz had repeatedly warned of the dilapidated state of the railways, but for a long time, politicians paid little heed to his warnings. One of his most memorable and often-repeated statements was: “We are carrying three times as much traffic as in 1990 on virtually the same network.”
Evelyn Palla has been on the Deutsche Bahn board since 2019 and has been responsible for regional transport since 2022, managing to whip it into shape. In fact, local transport has recently been in the black and has attracted more customers.
Union representatives of the 235,000 Deutsche Bahn employees have expressed appreciation for Palla herself taking and passing the test to get her locomotive driver’s license last year. “I wanted to know what it feels like to sit in the driver’s seat. And also to understand what our employees do every day and what our core business is all about,” Palla said at the time.
‘Many people equate the dysfunctionality of the railways with the dysfunctionality of our state,’ warned Transport Minister Patrick SchniederImage: Fabian Sommer/dpa/picture-alliance
The lack of punctuality
Minister Schnieder began the press conference in Berlin with a critique of the previous Deutsche Bahn management, describing its target of making 75 to 80% of long-distance trains run on time again by 2027 as “nowhere near achievable.” Schnieder set a new target: From 2029, 70% of trains should once again be on time. This would give the railways more time to renovate their dilapidated tracks and signal boxes, some of which have not been repaired for decades.
Current figures prove Schnieder right: in the first six months of this year, only 63.4% of long-distance trains in Germany were on time, and in July this figure fell to just 56.1%. In other words, over 40% of long-distance trains did not arrive on time during the most important summer travel month of the year. By comparison, in neighboring countries Denmark and the Netherlands, around 90% of trains run on time, and in Switzerland, the figure is as high as 99%.
“Many people equate the dysfunctionality of the railways with the dysfunctionality of our state,” the transport minister remarked, adding, “I find that extremely dangerous.”
Germany’s national rail network covers around 33,500 kilometers (20,800 miles) of tracks. As a state-owned company, the operator Deutsche Bahn is dependent on subsidies from the federal government, which critics say has invested far too little in infrastructure over the last few decades.
In fact, some tracks, junctures and even signal boxes date back to the 19th century. Many systems are completely worn out, almost beyond repair, and now so outdated that they are unusable for digitally controlled rail operations, which are to become standard.
How to travel by train in Germany
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Minister Schnieder promised that the new railway management will stick to its plan to completely renovate around 40 important routes by 2036. The busy connection between the capital Berlin and Hamburg in the north of the country is currently being upgraded. Work began at the start of August and is scheduled for completion in April next year. It is estimated to cost €2.2 billion ($2.6 bn). And this brings us to the next point: money.
Billions in investment
Last year alone, around 2,000 kilometers of tracks and 2,000 switches were replaced, work was carried out on around 150 bridges, and around 1,000 stations and stops were renovated. The total cost was around €16.4 billion. And the railways will receive many more billions of euros from the €500 billion special fund for infrastructure that the federal government intends to borrow in order to whip the country into shape over the coming years. Schnieder announced that he was still working on a piece of legislation to this effect, but that he intended to present figures in the fall showing exactly how much of the new windfall Deutsche Bahn would receive. This is because a large amount of money from the fund is also intended to accelerate the digitization of the country.
In August, Deutsche Bahn reported a loss of €760 million for the first half of the year. The company billed this as progress, as losses had been reduced by almost €1 billion compared to the previous year.
But even as the new railway officials in Berlin were answering questions from journalists, news was making the rounds that train service in the north of the country had been severely restricted due to an overhead line disruption. ICE trains between Hamburg and Berlin, Germany’s largest and second-largest cities, which were already being rerouted and taking longer due to the aforementioned construction work, had been completely canceled.
This article was originally written in German.
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