BERLIN, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Germany's National Railway Company (Deutsche Bahn) is operating at the limits of its capacity due to severe shortages of staff, equipment and investment, according to a report on Thursday.
According to the public broadcaster ARD's report, the situation has become so dire that only 20 percent of Germany's ICE high-speed trains are currently "fully operational." The high incidence of defects on these and other connections was reflected in a 73 percent rate of trains arriving on time in 2018 which was still well below the official target of 82 percent.
ARD cited internal Deutsche Bahn documents which it had obtained as the source of the statistics. The supervisory board of the state-owned company is meeting in Berlin on Thursday and Friday to discuss its public funding needs and is expected to request around 7 billion euros (7.99 billion U.S. dollars) per year from 2020 until 2025 for infrastructure spending alone.
While the number of German trains undergoing repairs has risen by 45 percent since 2016, this partial success was more than offset by a higher number of damage incidents during the same period. As a consequence, the number of ICE trains which left workshops although they were still at least partially defective also increased by 17 percent.
ARD noted that frequent delays and technical defects produced a "vicious cycle" in which trains arrived late for repairs and could then consequently also only have their most urgent problems attended to by maintenance staff. This meant that the same train with a broken toilet or air condition system is often kept in operation for several connections, resulting in a reduced quality of service for passengers.
The underlying source of the problems was identified in a shortage of qualified staff and insufficient investment. The report highlighted that Deutsche Bahn has more than 5,000 vacancies in so-called "operationally critical" functions and estimated the total backlog of necessary railway network spending at roughly 32 billion euros. Densely-populated areas in Germany were described as the worst affected by capacity bottlenecks and being responsible for 50 percent of delays on long-haul journeys.
Reacting to the report, Claus Weselsky, chairman of the German train drivers union (GDL), reacted to the report with sharp criticism of what he viewed as inadequate government funding. Weselsky warned that the German railway system was at risk of "collapsing" if it continued to be hit with austerity programs year after year.
Earlier this week, Deutsche Bahn chief executive officer (CEO) Richard Lutz conceded that his company was experiencing "growing pains" stemming from capacity bottlenecks, higher passenger numbers and a growing volume of cargo traffic.
