I've always thought of the German rail system as super efficient and one of the best in Europe. Well, I did not know that there have been plans afoot for a number of years to privatize Deutsche Bahn's passenger service. It is quite a political controversy in Germany, and apparently there are a lot of Germans who are not satisfied with the service. Recently, there was an air conditioning failure on ICE trains during a heat wave that was a big disaster, and the railroad paid several million Euros in compensation to passengers. There are also complaints of high prices. Here are two interesting articles from a German newspaper (in English). http://www.thelocal.de/money/20100211-25189.html http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100829-29471.html
Posted by
Tilburg, Netherlands
2829 posts
DB is private but has no competition and acts more like a regulated monopoly. They should scrap DB and allocate track slots to the highest bidders on 4-7 years cycle, and let them run separate, independent train services. But that goes way over the top of the scope of this forum.
Posted by
Northamptonshire, England
32821 posts
Andre, so like the UK? Oh yeah, that >would< work well.
Posted by
Berlin, Germany
337 posts
Andre L., there is no monopoly of the Bahn. If you look at the regional lines (which the rail companies serve on behalf of the individual German states) it is done almost exactly like you say. And various companies (mostly subsidiaries of either Veolia, Arriva or SNCF: e.g. NordWestBahn, Bayerische Oberlandbahn, Ostdeutsche Eisenbahn, metronom) serve these lines. ....line..break.... On national/international lines the companies are not paid by any government, but must make a profit purely on the tickets, so not many companies try. But there are a few lines are run by other companies: e.g. the Vogtland-Express of the Vogtlandbahn, or the Harz-Berlin-Express and the InterConnex lines of Veolia).