“Emergency brake”

Experts of the governing Social Democrats (SPD) call for a rapid expansion of railway traffic in Germany, writes Markus Balser in Süddeutsche Zeitung. “We want to achieve a doubling of capacities of the railway network by 2030”, Balser quotes an SPD position paper that lists 19 measures aimed at increasing the railway’s contribution to more climate-friendly transportation. Among the tasks the SPD regards necessary to make the German railway system more capable are a support programme for refurbishing hundreds of railway stations, the nationwide connection of larger cities to the ICE-highspeed-train-network and the elimination of bottlenecks on the routes, Balser writes. According to the author, the SPD also advocates abolishing the electricity tax and lowering fees for the network while at the same time keeping the “entrepreneurial independence” of the German Railways (Deutsche Bahn) intact.

Read the article in German here.