Comment by fabianholzer
1 year ago
The problem with the legislature about funding is that regular maintainance of the railroad network would has to be paid by Deutsche Bahn itself, whereas creation of new infrastructure or complete rebuilding of completely degraded railway infrastructure is to be paid out of the federal budget. Taking preventative/regular maintainance also is at the discretion of the Deutsche Bahn as a corporation. Of course this incentives the executives of the Bahn to let the railroads rot.
I have a hard time imagining that the perverse incentives in the system have not been obvious to those in power at its inception.
I didn't do a deep dive into the issues as there are many - but a contributor to the tardiness is the decommissioning of track switches/overtaking lanes. While this allowed for a short term economy, it harmed the reliability of the network and causes flow-on traffic.
I include this detail as the source of the largest problems are not necessarily about creation of new infrastructure (although that of course would be the solution), but the deletion of existing infrastructure.