Commuters had protested: three hours for a journey from Berlin to Wolfsburg - the train responded

The train journey between Wolfsburg and Berlin actually takes an hour, but due to renovations it currently takes three. Commuters are angry, the Pro Bahn passenger association speaks of a ruin for life concepts. Now the railway has announced relief.

Deutsche Bahn is responding to protests and reducing the impact on passengers during the corridor renovation between Berlin and Hanover. “We are creating an improvement with the timetable change, especially for Wolfsburg commuters,” said railway boss Evelyn Palla to the “Tagesspiegel”. The change in Braunschweig has been optimized, which reduces the travel time east to Berlin by half an hour.

When the timetable changes on December 13th, the timetable for the RE 50 between Wolfsburg and Braunschweig will be adjusted in coordination with the local authority. As a result, passengers between Wolfsburg and Berlin in Braunschweig only have to wait ten minutes instead of forty minutes when changing to the ICE according to the timetable. In addition, from the timetable change there will be ICE journeys from Wolfsburg towards the west again.

Many Volkswagen employees commute between Wolfsburg and Berlin. Before construction work began, which will last until the end of 2027, the journey time between the two cities by ICE took around an hour. It's currently over three hours. The chairman of the Pro Bahn passenger association, Lukas Iffländer, had accused the railway of ruining people's concepts of life.

The railway also announced that it wanted to create more space for families on ICE trains. "With the permanent family ticket, we have already created good solutions on the tariff side. Now we want to offer families even more space on our ICE trains and make the family areas even more attractive," said Palla. For this purpose, many trains from the existing fleet should be touched again. However, there will not be a playground with a slide like on some northern European trains.