The German rail associations Die Güterbahnen, Mofair, VPI and Pro Bahn want to remove infrastructure management from the DB Group’s tasks. The parties are not satisfied with DB InfraGO’s performance and say that the launch of the infrastructure manager eight months ago has not brought any positive results.

The parties say that “DB InfraGO’s performance has continued to decline due to poorly planned construction sites, underfunding and growing frustration among the unenviable staff.” The four associations call for a “major railway reform that, among other things, removes the natural monopoly of infrastructure from the profit-oriented and at the same time faltering DB Group.”

Matthias Stoffregen, managing director of Mofair, commented: “The traffic light [government] parties started out like a tiger in the coalition agreement but then allowed themselves to be intimidated by the communicative barrage of the integrated DB Group. In the end, they ended up as doormats.”

List of demands

“As an industry, we only see higher costs for the rail infrastructure – without any demonstrable better quality anywhere. A future federal government must finally clearly separate the monopoly and competition areas. This is the only way to make transparent where and how exactly the urgently needed additional funds for the infrastructure must be used most efficiently”, Stoffregen added.

The associations also present a list of demands, which includes removing all infrastructure management from the group. Rail infrastructure, according to the associations, should be managed by a federal company. Moreover, they want stable financing “that complies with fundamental rights and competitive route prices.”

A survey conducted by the associations revealed that no respondent railway company in Germany has seen an improvement in infrastructure performance since DB InfraGO took over from DB Netz at the start of this year, and nearly half noticed infrastructure performance worsening. Nearly all respondents expressed dissatisfaction with the price-performance ratio.