More sprinters and faster ICE
Deutsche Bahn doubles booking period for tickets
24.09.2024, 16:11
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Deutsche Bahn has a lot of room to improve the punctuality of its trains. The company wants to address this by increasing the maximum speed for the ICE-4. In addition, passengers will now be able to book their tickets much further in advance.
Deutsche Bahn is extending the advance booking period for train tickets. Instead of the previous six months, tickets will now be able to be booked twelve months before the journey, the state-owned company announced. The change will come into effect on October 16. The new timetable will then be set, according to which the trains will run from mid-December.
The new advance booking deadline is one of several measures with which Deutsche Bahn wants to increase the attractiveness of long-distance travel. So far, 2024 has been a difficult year for the state-owned company. Long-distance travel has recently been severely slowed down by strikes, extreme weather events and the dilapidated infrastructure, said Michael Peterson, Deutsche Bahn’s board member responsible for long-distance travel. “As a result, we have lost trust among our guests.”
In 2023, demand growth was “extremely strong.” The problems in the current year have now put a strain on demand. In August, punctuality in long-distance traffic was 60.6 percent – an “extremely bitter figure” according to Peterson. By 2027, punctuality is expected to rise again to more than 75 percent. “The basic prerequisite for this is a functioning infrastructure,” said Peterson.
ICE trains should travel faster
This is to be renovated in many places in the coming years, with the focus being on 41 particularly important corridors. In addition, construction work is to be scheduled with more consideration for the timetable in the future. In order to improve punctuality, ICE-4 trains, which make up around 60 percent of the seats on long-distance trains, will in future be allowed to travel at 265 kilometers per hour instead of the current 250. This could make it possible to make up for delays on some routes.
Peterson also promised an expansion of long-distance transport services in the coming years. Given the limited capacity on the heavily used network, cutting back on long-distance transport is not a solution, as it only accounts for a fraction of rail traffic in Germany.
According to Peterson, the 2025 timetable will already include slightly more Sprinter connections, i.e. ICE journeys with only a few stops between the start and end stations. “By December 2026, 20 major German cities will be connected to the nationwide long-distance transport network with an ICE service every half hour,” said Peterson.
Trains with poor occupancy face cancellation
At the same time, the rail company wants to replace IC or ICE trains that are underutilized with regional trains. The company is in consultation with representatives of the federal states on this, said Peterson, Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance transport director. It often makes no sense to run an empty long-distance train on a route that is also used by a regional train.
While the white-red long-distance trains are organized and financed by the railway company alone, regional transport is organized differently. Here, the states order trains through the so-called transport authorities, which are usually subsidized by them, in order to connect the regions. According to internal documents, Deutsche Bahn only makes a profit on the main routes in long-distance transport. The remaining 70 percent of the routes in the so-called supplementary and regional network are mostly in the red.
However, before the state elections in East Germany, Transport Minister Volker Wissing and other politicians had demanded that Deutsche Bahn maintain its long-distance service. The division should increase the capacity of its trains by offering better services. However, long-distance trains are also suffering from the Deutschlandticket in local transport, as passengers with the far cheaper ticket are travelling on regional trains instead of IC or ICE.