German rail operator weighs fewer trains in bid to improve punctuality

Germany’s rail operator Deutsche Bahn may reduce services as part of a plan to make its trains more punctual despite an aging, overloaded rail network, reported newspaper Tagesspiegel. Construction on tracks and delays are at record levels, while in 2025, 10 percent of trains ran on routes with a utilization of over 115 percent. Just 60 percent of all long-distance trains reached their destination without major delays last year.

Germany’s plans to make its transport sector more climate-friendly involve increasing train use, but the poor performance of the railways makes this a distant prospect. The Court of Auditors in 2025 said that Germany’s railway lacks a strategy to escape its “permanent crisis.”

A newly formed expert committee will hold open discussions to find solutions which will then be weighed by lawmakers, federal states and the rail industry. But one major consideration is less traffic on tracks, Enak Ferlemann, the federal government's former rail commissioner, told Tagesspiegel. “One example could be that between Berlin and Hamburg, only one long-distance train runs per hour instead of every 30 minutes, but the trains run reliably,” said Ferlemann, a member of the supervisory board of DB InfraGo, the Deutsche Bahn subsidiary responsible for infrastructure.

Industry groups criticised any possible reduction in train services, adding that the whole industry rejected the “simplistic approach of running fewer trains” as part of a previous taskforce looking to create a more reliable rail network. "In the worst case, the few trains become even less punctual because they cannot depart due to overcrowding,” said Dirk Flege, managing director of rail lobby group Allianz pro Schiene, who said the right solution was to create more capacity on the tracks.

According to figures in its first five-year plan for the national rail network published in October, Germany’s government expects train delays caused by faulty rail infrastructure to remain more than double their 2020 level by 2030. The country is set to invest around 100 billion euros in railway modernisations by 2029, but construction work will cause further delays, the government said last year.