According to a response from the Federal Ministry of Transport to questions from the Greens parliamentary group,
which is available to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”.
. And the problems are still big. According to the railways on Friday, 31 sections are currently completely closed. As a precautionary measure, the railway has set up slow-moving sections at a further 124 points.
The concrete sleepers are to blame, which could also have triggered the train accident near Garmisch-Partenkirchen at the beginning of June with five dead and many injured. Because the same batch from the manufacturer is installed in many places in Germany, 200,000 components had to be tested by the end of August. The railway now sees the suspicion that something is wrong with the sleepers. “First preliminary findings from technical reports by independent testing institutes now suggest that there is a manufacturer error,” said the group on Friday. “Some of the sleepers have irregularities in the material properties.”
Almost all states affected
The response from the federal government shows that almost all federal states are affected by the security measure. Sleepers were tested in Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, Bremen, Saxony-Anhalt, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg, Berlin, Saxony, Thuringia and Bavaria.
Saxony is most affected with 42 problem areas, followed by Bavaria (37) and Saxony-Anhalt (30). Some of the problem stretches are very short and just 100 meters long. Others extend more than six kilometers. The railways had already granted 165 places where thresholds would have to be checked and some replaced. She had only spoken of “isolated” route closures.
“Safety is clearly the priority”
Politicians are issuing urgent warnings to the group. “Safety is clearly the priority,” demands Matthias Gastel, rail policy spokesman for the Greens parliamentary group, who also sits on the supervisory board of the rail subsidiary DB Netz. “The Deutsche Bahn must now do everything possible to quickly replace the damaged railway sleepers and eliminate the slow-moving sections.” They are one of the causes of the extremely large number of delays on the train nationwide and “even ensured that in some places no trains can run at all”.
Gastel is also calling for a rethink when it comes to purchasing: “Deutsche Bahn, like all other infrastructure companies, will have to use this experience with the concrete sleepers in order to be able to better check and ensure the quality of building materials and components in the future.” This serves “to ensure safety and reliable railway operations”.