In the beginning of February, cold weather and heavy snowfall in Germany have put people in all means of transport to a hard test – especially on the railways. There have been a lot of train cancellations, individual rail lines were still closed and loaded goods trains had to stay parked in the middle of nowhere for days. In the face of new precipitation, the passenger association PRO BAHN and the Network of European Railways (NEE) e.V. have taken stock and formulated demands on how the reliability of system-relevant rail transport can be quickly strengthened.

“The railways have not done their job well enough in this cold and white week,” is how Lukas Iffländer of PRO BAHN succinctly summarised the result of the analyses on freight and passenger transport by rail. Ludolf Kerkeling, NEE board chairman sums up: “We see an organisational failure on the part of the infrastructure manager that has alienated rail customers.” He said there was no reason for Deutsche Bahn companies to be complacent in view of the fact that no trains had to be evacuated. The suspension of services for days was unacceptable and also obviously unnecessary. The operators of smaller railway networks and the railways in many neighbouring countries had once again shown that such weather situations were more manageable.

The full article (in German) can be consulted on PRO BAHN’s website.