THE second day of the Railway Forum conference in Berlin turned to the issue lying at the heart of what many speakers, including from within German Rail (DB) itself, referred to as the “crisis” currently facing the national network.

DB is now working to improve infrastructure condition and overcome a renewals backlog thorough its “general renovation” programme, closing main lines for extended periods in order to concentrate work to replace track, signalling and overhead electrification equipment into a single campaign.

This includes all 278km of the main line between Hamburg and Berlin, now closed until the end of April 2026 for work including the replacement of 180km of track and 200 switches. The closure started on August 1 and DB reports that work is progressing to plan.

Expanding, modernising and funding infrastructure was the topic debated by a panel session on September 4. For DB’s head of infrastructure planning and projects, Jens Bergmann, funding did not seem to be the most pressing issue, with an additional €29bn to be provided up to 2029 from the federal budget.

A formal agreement for this funding had still to be concluded between DB and the government. Nevertheless, “we are already spending the money even though we don’t have it yet,” he said.

“The money is there,” agreed Markus Fritz, managing director and chief operating officer (COO) at Hitachi Rail GTS Deutschland, but progress has been slow. When DB announced earlier this year the signing of a €6.3bn framework agreement for the supply of digital signalling and train control equipment with four contractors, including Hitachi, it said that the first call-offs worth several million euros would be made in spring 2025.

Nine months later and this has yet to happen, Fritz said. He reported that staff allocated to the project have been left waiting wondering when work will start. “They are in the starting blocks and want to get their foot on the gas,” he said. “We need to be more honest about the current schedule.”

In contrast, Mark Fisher, chief technology officer (CTO) of infrastructure renewals contractor Spitzke, felt that the mobilisation time between contract award and start of work was too short, not allowing enough time to sufficiently prepare for projects bundling all work into a single long-term line closure. And it was not always clear what the precise scope of work would be, making it hard to determine what resources and staffing would be required.

Nevertheless, “we are prepared to do more in a very short time,” he said. The lack of qualified staff was problem, he noted, particularly in disciplines such as overhead electrification equipment where this risked forming a bottleneck in the upgrade programme. While the skills shortage also raised the prospect of other contractors poaching staff, at Spitzke “we are ready, we are hiring, we are training,” he said.

Regulatory burden

At the same time, Fisher stressed the need to cut the “gordian knot” of national regulation that he feels is preventing projects from being implementing quickly and easily. “It feels like you’re being held back at every stage,” he said.

Here, Fisher echoed the remarks made by Plasser & Theurer CEO, Johannes Max-Theurer, in his keynote address opening the second day of the conference. Regulatory requirements are preventing the European rail industry from meeting its full potential, Max-Theurer believes, particularly as regards the approval of specialised vehicles, and “deregulation must happen.”

Lightening the regulatory burden was also a priority for Fritz, who noted how digital workflows at Hitachi Rail are interrupted by the manual Federal Railway Authority (EBA) approvals process, conducted by EBA-approved individuals. “Will still print some things out and then scan them back in,” he said.

“We simply have to have to get better,” Fritz said. “We have to be three, four, five times faster. But we won’t be able to do this with today’s processes.”