German Railways Disaster: The ‘Green Transition’ tool in transport is a complete disaster
Germany, the country that pushes the most in Europe for the green transition, has decided to introduce the "Single train ticket" at 9 euros in an attempt to convince commuters and travelers to stop taking a car or plane, but the move risks to be a boomerang, the umpteenth of an unrealistic Europe and no longer able to plan anything. This because…. the German railway system literally falls apart.
As Handelsblatt reports, there is chaos on the German rail network. On Friday, for example, 309 trains were unintentionally stopped by the Deutsche Bahn freight branch. The day before, DB Cargo had warned customers that this was going to be a terrible year: on all essential rail corridors, from the Rhine to the Alps, from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean or from the North Sea to the Baltic states, there will be months of interruptions due to of construction work. Industrial customers, furious, could not say that "The network has collapsed".
Not that the passenger trains don't show the limits of the material. Only about two thirds of long-distance trains were on time in April. If the signs or switches do not turn, the air conditioning system fails or the toilets are faulty. In short, it sucks for everyone.
But freight pays the highest price: since passenger trains take precedence over freight traffic in the network, DB Cargo has already voluntarily reduced the transport volumes in order to avoid a total transport block.
“It's about discussing with companies which freight needs to be transported and when to ease the network,” explains a spokesperson for the rail freight branch. The companies had been very pragmatic in the talks. In the meantime, however, we must build, otherwise the problems will never be solved.
Why this chaos? Because since privatization in 1990 there has been a brutal drop in investment and maintenance. The network has therefore become increasingly old and inadequate. Now the government has allocated a lot more money, but building on an existing network means partially closing it with what goes with it. We try to stop by changing schedules and making freight trains travel even on Sundays, but it is not enough. The 13 billion investment in the network is almost a disgrace and groups like BASF have decided to cut the train and return to polluting road transport. At least that comes.
Now the "Green" German government wants to focus on rail transport and discovers that it does not have a network, indeed that it has nothing at all, precisely because of the austerity of the last thirty years, which obviously cannot be reversed in a semester, but it will require years of work making the “Single ticket at 9 euro” a demagogic stunt. But until yesterday you had to be "Competitive" and "Austere". Meanwhile, Japan will have a 260% Debt / GDP ratio, but also has the best railway network in the world, which accentuates the efficiency of the economic system.
The Germans have the "Debt Brake", but the brakes carry neither goods nor passengers. They leave them on the ground …
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The article German railways disaster: the tool of the "Green Transition" in transport is a complete disaster comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/disastro-ferrovie-tedesche-lo-strumento-della-transizione-verde-nei-trasporti-e-un-disastro-completo/ on Thu, 26 May 2022 13:59:33 +0000.