If you go and ask a German who regularly travels by rail (long-distance or local)....the majority will now say (with some explanations ready to follow)....that service isn't as reliable as it was two or three decades ago.
The term often used? "Engpasse". It basically means....bottlenecks.
This relates to this network that has been conceived and built since WW II....that handles local, long-distance and freight traffic.
The sum needed? There was a two-day conference this week, and a lot of chatter to come after this. ARD, the public TV network (Channel One).....discussed this in a news piece. The sum of fifty billion Euro gets thrown around.
The problem here, with all the issues that exist....the Bahn is a commercialized network operation.....not a government entity. The government will give them grants to cover projects or enhancements....but the Bahn relies on tickets to pay for the normal operations.
I sat last night and watched a 30-minute documentary piece from NDR (regional public TV network from north Germany).....featuring a drawn-out story on the failures of the railway network in the north....near Sylt Island. There's a lot of hostility brewing with locals....waiting on some massive resolution or repair to the railway service.....having almost no confidence in the regional folks fixing this. If you go to the link, the 30-minute video is there to view (all in German).
My take on the problem is that urban-Germany (figure around forty significant cities around the nation) all got bulked-up in the 1960s to 1980s....and they need to go back to resolve issues with the minor things. But if you attempted this....you'd have to go and expect a current round-trip train ticket for 30 kilometers to go from 200-Euro a month ($250 US dollars) to 350-Euro a month ($425 US dollars)....way more than a German would pay.
The general get-around-this-problem chatter? The Greens want a simple answer....nationalize all of the railway services and just pay for the extra stuff via normal regular taxes....meaning everyone would see their tax rates go up.
The amusing thing (from my prospective)....if you go around Europe, no one else (with maybe the exception of the Dutch) has the impressive railway services like the Germans do. Well....yeah, I admit....the toilets onboard are often questionable in terms of being operational. I admit....the AC capability of the ICE-trains is often dismal. I admit....there's always a 10-percent chance that the coffee machine on the long-distance trains won't be working when you want a coffee. I admit that 10-percent of the ticket machines that I approach and attempt to use....are out-of-order. But the bulk of traffic runs on time, and it's awful rare for accidents to occur.
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