Germany plans €47bn rail overhaul amid climate fight

Germany has announced a €47 billion rail-spending programme to correct two decades of underinvestment and boost climate-friendly rail travel over inner-European flights.

The push comes amid the runaway success of a new “Deutschlandticket”, snapped up by 11 million Germans since its launch in May, that allows them travel anywhere in the country on local or regional public transport for €49 a month.

The green light for public transport in Berlin’s so-called “traffic light” coalition is controlled from an unusual quarter: the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and its federal transport minister Volker Wissing. Contrary to the FDP’s reputation as small-state, neoliberal car lovers, Mr Wissing describes himself as a “rational liberal” who views public transport investment as making economic and climate sense.

“We’ve introduced a CO2 toll on lorries, with the income supporting the railways, and this government will invest considerably more in rail than roads,” he said. “For years too little was invested and rail infrastructure deliberately dismantled – now we have to reverse that.”

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Once a model of punctuality across the Continent, German state rail company Deutsche Bahn (DB) is trapped in a polycrisis of delayed or cancelled trains and dysfunction-prone tracks, largely of its political owners’ making.

Restructured two decades ago in advance of a planned flotation that never happened, today’s DB is effectively a profit-oriented company with one investor: Germany’s federal government. Instead of allowing investment in trains or tracks, the Merkel administration used DB as a cash cow, sucking up to €650 million annually out of the company to balance its federal budget.

Mr Wissing’s DB master plan ends all that, replacing strategic stretches of Germany’s 34,000km rail network by 2030. An overhaul of corporate structures will merge operations and infrastructure into a new subsidiary with a “common good mandate”, says the 53 year-old, allowing DB retain profits and encourage timely reinvestment in tracks, trains and stations. “It makes no sense that we expect dividends from this firm,” said Mr Wissing, “because there is a high need for investment.”

His plans to tackle DB delays and crumbling infrastructure have attracted grudging praise from those suffering on the front lines: neighbouring rail companies and rail passenger organisations.

As German budgets tighten, however, some are waiting to see if the promised funding will materialise in full given this year’s draft budget has earmarked €19.2 billion for DB – less than half the agreed investment sum.

Meanwhile environmental lobby group Greenpeace is demanding more action to encourage rail travel across Europe and eliminate privileges for polluting air travel such as tax exemptions for fuel and plane tickets.

A new Greenpeace study this week found train tickets on average double the price of flights for the same routes across Europe.

Mr Wissing describes an EU debate to end air fuel tax exemptions as a “dead end” because it would encourage airlines to refuel cheaper outside the EU – or relocate entire hubs there. Instead Mr Wissing is calling for an air travel levy that takes into account the flight destination as the basis for taxation.