Train Issue Story

I use the German railway system (the Bahn) a good bit...probably a hundred trips a year (roughly half are 20 minutes or less).  So I have a curiosity and interest in the Bahn.

Today, a story popped up via ARD (public TV here in Germany, Channel One)....which worries me to some degree.

It's a shortcomings story, which details all the woes of ICE (the intercity series of trains...which travels at high speeds...going from major city to major city. 

On any given day, only 20-percent of ICE trains are fully functional.  You could be on a train with four passenger cars, and only two of the four toilets function.  Or you could be in the one car of the four-car train which has marginal air-flow/air conditioning.  Or this could be the train with a coffee/snack bar....but the coffee machine is broke and will be five days before they have the parts to repair it.

Empty billets?  Well....this got mentioned as well.  The Bahn is short on 5,000 employees (IT staff, maintenance, support, etc. 

All of this adds up and as the journalists point out....in major urban areas, it often means delays. 

To make ICE work (including Austria and Switzerland), there's a total of 259 trains in the system.  Around a third of the trains in use....were built between 1989 and 1997....which means they are approaching thirty years old.  The newer ICE series 4 train?   There's a total of 220 on the purchase order but so far....only ten to twenty have made it into the system.

Is it strictly ICE with the problems?  Not really.  I've ridden on regional trains that had AC problems in July....with stifling heat.  I've also ridden on a three-car group (each with a toilet) and all three toilets were broke (what's the odds of that). 

The problem here is that once you start to convince Germans of a second-rate service or the lack of dependability....they quietly move onto accepting car or airline travel.  If you had to get from Munich to Berlin for a business meeting....twenty years ago, a fair number of folks either drove or took the train.  Today, you can fly the route for about 75 Euro, and it takes 75 minutes (one way).  The same route with the Bahn?  You'd be talking about four hours of travel (one way, with no delays) and a cost factor of 100 to 120 Euro.