Deutsche Bahn wants and has to invest a lot of money over the next few years to bring the rail network into shape. But there are a few problems: The state-owned company is said to be running out of employees. And the bureaucracy paralyzes too.
More than 150 million travelers used Deutsche Bahn trains last year. It will not top this record in the Corona year, but in the long term it should go high. The federal government wants to almost double the number of train passengers by 2030, the "rail pact" specifies. But maybe she did the math without the train. In any case, the group does not appear to be adequately equipped to implement the ambitious goals.
The infrastructure, which in some cases is ailing, is the main cause of concern. The federal government is making 156 billion euros available for the next ten years in order to whip them into shape. So there is no shortage of money, but there may soon be a shortage of employees: By 2030, 86 percent of the workforce at DB Netz AG alone, which is responsible for new construction and expansion, should retire, the "Handelsblatt" recently reported.
"This is the result of many years of saving. No new staff have been hired, consequently the aging population is increasing," says Lukas Iffländer, deputy federal chairman of the Pro Bahn passenger association, in the ntv podcast "Wieder Was Learned". "We have old technology in many places, especially when it comes to the infrastructure. The signal boxes were built in the days of Kaiser Wilhelm. And if I try to make a young person enjoy a job that involves moving eight levers a day, it will be difficult . With digital signal boxes, the youth can be better won over for such jobs. "
Every second employee retires
Young people would indeed be important to catch the approaching wave of retirement. 86 percent of the workforce at DB Netz AG corresponds to around 39,000 employees. According to "Handelsblatt", however, only 36,500 new hires are planned.
Deutsche Bahn itself rejects these reports. The published figures come from an overview from 2019 and were not decided by any committee. "The current planning round for 2021 is still running and will not be completed until the end of this year with the decision of the supervisory board. There are no concrete figures so far," a railway spokeswoman said when asked by ntv.de. The group prefers to turn the tables, speaks of a "hiring offensive at a high level, even during the Corona crisis". In the next ten to twelve years, "around half" of the current 214,000 employees will retire, it is said. 100,000 new hires are planned for the same period.
At DB Netz AG one seems to want to cope with the bloodletting, among other things with a restructuring. Business units are to be merged and reorganized on October 1st, according to a response from the federal government to a small request from the Greens in the Bundestag. "Of course, we can hope that you will really attack again. But when I think back to the previous years at Pro Bahn, we have already seen too many reorganizations that have actually brought nothing", criticized passenger representative Iffländer. "So far we at DB have had the big problem that we have too many chiefs and too few Indians. So there is a big head of water."
In addition, the vice-boss of Pro Bahn complains that the so-called group levy, which is incurred by the sub-companies, is rising steadily: "The costs for the water head are rising and there is far too much administration. In the end, there is far too little Manpower at the front. "
More investment, hardly more performance
The fact that it sometimes gets a bit confusing is due to the structure of the group. The railway has over 570 subsidiaries. These include, for example, DB Fernverkehr AG, which is responsible for long-distance train operations. DB vehicle maintenance for material and trains, DB Dialog GmbH for customer complaints. And also DB Netz AG. This division creates a chaos of bureaucracy and entails high costs. But there are no big leaps. Although more is being invested, the operating performance has stagnated for years: in 2009 it was one billion route kilometers. At the same time, 6.5 billion euros were invested. Ten years later, investments were almost twice as high at 12.7 billion euros. The operating performance, however, has not even increased by 0.1 billion kilometers.
The German railroad network in Germany is around 33,000 kilometers long, but so far only less than half has been renovated. "Last year, Deutsche Bahn was unable to spend a middle three-digit million amount on the infrastructure because the resources to build and plan for it are lacking," said passenger representative Iffländer, complaining about the modernization backlog on the railways. There is a shortage of skilled workers, says the pro-Bahn vice. "We have far too many projects that actually have to be fully planned, but are still in the planning stage because we have too few planners."
The neighboring countries show how things can be done better. Whether in Switzerland, Denmark, Poland or the Czech Republic – modernizations and upgrades are progressing faster everywhere, says Iffländer. "We are pretty much the red lantern, if you look at it. Switzerland, mind you as a non-EU country, was the first country to introduce the European train control system ETCS one hundred percent. In Germany, only a few routes have been equipped. Poland is doing imagine how things would actually go, the Belgians want to be ready by the end of the decade, the Dutch and Danes are equipping. "
After all, the railway was able to announce a new record recently. Over 4000 trainees started their training at the beginning of the month, Never that many before. In addition, all interlockings are to be digitally converted by 2035. So far, the upgrade should not be completed until 2040. The federal government is promoting this with an additional half a billion euros from the economic stimulus package. So there is no shortage of money. Now “only” enough skilled workers have to be trained, the group better organized and, ideally, the bureaucracy also tamed a little.
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