Germany’s state-owned train operator Deutsche Bahn said Thursday that its year-on-year net losses soared 16-fold in the first half of 2024, reflecting the impacts of extreme weather, strikes and upgrades to its ageing network.
The net loss for the first six months of the year reached 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion), compared with a loss of 71 million in the period last year.
Its operating losses also stood at 1.2 billion euros, after 339 million in the first half of 2023.
CEO Richard Lutz blamed an “ageing network prone to malfunctions” as well as “extreme weather events” and labour strikes that caused the company “considerable economic damage”.
Deutsche Bahn’s creaking infrastructure and poor punctuality have becoming running jokes in Germany and were put under the spotlight by the increased demand when the country hosted this summer’s Euro 2024 football tournament.
“The infrastructure is too old and worn to cope with this sort of situation with no problems,” Lutz said at a press conference.
The company is spending billions to repair and upgrade and extend its network after decades of under-investment.
Deutsche Bahn estimates that such work cost four billion euros in the first half 2024, a 35 percent year-on-year increase.
The floods that battered southern Germany in early June added the company’s woes by damaging much of its infrastructure.
The number of long-distance trains arriving with a delay of more than six minutes was slightly up on last year, at 37.3 percent, well above the European average.
A historically long strike also hit the network early this year, with Deutsche Bahn estimating that it cost 300 million euros in total.
The operator is indebted to the tune of more than 30 billion euros and its problems are a headache for the German government, which wants the rail network to play a key role in de-carbonising the country’s transport sector.
The government’s plan to invest 45 billion euros in the railways by 2037 had to be cut back to 30 billion euros after a constitutional court judgement last year upended its spending plans.
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