Responding to a question in parliament from the Alliance 90/The Greens, Germany’s federal government said the expert it commissioned prior to the start of the Third Performance and Financing Agreement (LuFV III) between the government and German Rail (DB) identified a “theoretical pent-up demand” for investment of €44.5bn for infrastructure manager DB Network and €4.5bn for DB Station & Service. Of this, €18.46bn is for ​​bridges and €15.92bn for track.

However, the “critical pent-up demand” is estimated at around €20bn. These are structures which have reached their average technical service life, are in poor condition and therefore need to be replaced. Of this figure, around €19.3bn was attributable to DB Network and €700m to DB Station & Service, the government said.

Similar conclusions were reached in a paper published by the Railway and Transport Workers’ Union (EVG) in February, when it estimated the backlog of replacement investment for DB Network at around €50bn and €7bn for DB Station & Service.

The investment backlog affects all areas from structures such as bridges, tunnels, culverts, supports and dams, to control and safety equipment.

Higher costs

Decades of neglect in maintaining the rail network is driving up maintenance costs. The EVG says maintenance costs have doubled since railway reform in 1993 from around €1bn to €2bn today. Increased maintenance work on the network is also having an impact on the punctuality and reliability of train services.

A review by DB of 16,000 bridges in 2017 found that 13,535 bridge structures were older than previously assumed. As a result, the official average age of all bridges on the rail network rose suddenly from 57 years in 2016 to 73.4 years in 2017, while the number of buildings that are at least 100 years old increased from 1982 to 11,939.

Based on the assumed life of railway bridges of 122 years, 1054 bridges of the 25,710 bridges on the network will have to be replaced within five years, which is significantly more than previously assumed.