The German federal government said that before the government signed a third implementation and financing agreement with Deutsche Bahn, its commissioned experts determined that the experts it commissioned determined the theoretical investment in railway infrastructure and invested 44.5 billion euros in the German federal railway network. The German federal railway station and service investment is 4.5 billion euros. Among them, the bridge investment is 18.46 billion euros and the track investment is 15.92 billion euros.

Among them, the investment must be estimated to be about 20 billion euros. These structures have reached their average technical service life and are in poor condition and therefore need to be replaced. The government said that about 19.3 billion euros belong to the railway network and 700 million euros belong to the station and service facilities.

The Railways and Transport Workers Union reached a similar conclusion in a paper published in February when the agency estimated that the railroad network had a backlog of about 50 billion euros in replacement investment and a backlog of stations and service facilities of 7 billion euros.

higher cost

Maintenance costs have risen over the decades due to the neglect of railway network maintenance. Since the railway reforms in 1993, maintenance costs have doubled, from about 1 billion euros to 2 billion euros today. More and more maintenance work on the railway has also affected the punctuality and reliability of train services.

A review of 16,000 bridges by Deutsche Bahn in 2017 found that 13,535 bridge structures were older than previously thought. The official average age of all bridges on the railway network increased from 57 in 2016 to 73.4 in 2017, while the number of buildings with at least 100 years of history increased from 1982 to 11939.

According to the assumed life of the 122-year railway bridge, it is necessary to replace 1,054 of the 25,710 bridges on the railway within five years, which greatly exceeds the previous assumptions. Editor / Huang Lijun