Railway: Court of Auditors sees undesirable developments in railway renovations

Berlin. The Federal Audit Office accuses the railways of significant deficiencies in the renovation of highly contaminated railway lines. “The first corridor renovations show serious undesirable developments,” says a report from the Court of Auditors to the Bundestag’s Budget Committee. Previous economic feasibility studies were “incorrect and not reliable”. The report was available to the German Press Agency.

It says that the DB InfraGO rail division largely fails to keep promises. The Federal Audit Office considers “consistent readjustment” to be essential. In a statement, the Federal Ministry of Transport did not refute the Court of Auditors' findings, but rather confirmed existing deficits in the economic feasibility studies and success monitoring.

The corridor renovations are intended to bring highly used routes back into shape in the coming years. After problems with the first measures, the railways and the federal government announced two weeks ago that significantly fewer routes would be renovated in the next five years than previously planned. In addition, once the construction work has been completed, train traffic will only be ramped up again gradually in the future - instead of all modes of transport being supposed to run again on a specific date, as was currently the case. During the general renovations that have been completed so far, there have been repeated problems after the work was completed, such as delayed trains.

The concept of corridor renovation envisages that busy railway lines will be closed for months and thoroughly renovated. However, they should then be significantly less susceptible to failure. This should improve punctuality across the entire network.

In the report, the Federal Audit Office calls on the Ministry of Transport to prove the economic viability and success of the corridor renovations in a way that is “in accordance with budget law” and to remedy the identified deficits. The economic viability of each corridor renovation must be proven separately. “There is no viable decision-making basis for the billions invested in corridor renovations.” The Budget Committee lacked essential information in order to be able to exercise its parliamentary budget and control responsibilities. The costs of the first completed corridor renovations increased significantly in some cases.

The railway has reduced the promised “construction freedom” for corridor renovations from initially ten to five years. However, they are already not complying with the five-year construction freedom due to subsequent work and the elimination of defects.