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TRAIN TRAVEL

EXPLAINED: Why train passengers in Germany could see major ticket price hikes

Rail passengers in Germany face higher prices and fewer trains by 2026. Here’s how funding for the railway network is changing and why that will up ticket prices.

Published: 21 August 2024 10:58 CEST
Updated: 24 August 2024 07:57 CEST

A passenger buys a train ticket at a kiosk. Ticket prices can be expected to increase significantly due to funding issues. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Thomas Banneyer

Germany’s national railway network is currently plagued by two primary issues: First the infrastructure is largely outdated and is in dire need of comprehensive, and expensive, upgrades.

Second, the government’s insistence on sticking to the debt brake (Schuldenbremse) – a cap on government borrowing that’s enshrined in Germany’s constitution – means that the funding to do so isn’t immediately available.

These two factors are on a collision course, and the most plausible outcome is that rail travel becomes more expensive for everyone – including freight rail companies, and long-distance and regional passengers.

Here’s the current plan, and why it means steeper ticket prices for you – unless plans change.

Funded by loans and ‘rail tolls’

Put simply, the federal government says it doesn’t have room in its budget to fully fund Deutsche Bahn’s (DB) badly needed rail makeover.

Whereas a €5.9 billion direct investment in the rail network was planned, funding for the renovations will now be provided via reallocations of the federally owned DB as well as billions in loans.

But crucially, DB will need to pay interest on those loans.

And to finance that interest, it will likely increase so-called track access prices – a kind of rail toll – which would result in higher costs for transport companies and therefore higher ticket prices for passengers.

train tracks diverge

Underfunded for years, Germany’s rail infrastructure is due for massive renovations. But funding the railway makeover is tricky. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Marcus Brandt

Price increases ‘near 20 percent’ in 2026

Track access prices are collected by InfraGo, which is the rail infrastructure division of DB.

InfraGo has announced plans to drastically increase track access prices in 2026.

The biggest increase would be applied to regional transport, with an increase of 23.5 percent, according to the track price information published by the company this week.

For passengers this means that regional train (RE) ticket prices could be expected to increase significantly.

Considering rail prices overall, they can be expected to increase by 19.1 percent overall: Long-distance transport would increase 10.1 percent, and freight transport would increase 14.8 percent.

The weight of these increases would affect long-distance passenger ticket prices, and the price of goods transported by rail, respectively.

The Federal Network Agency has already approved increases in track access prices for long-distance and freight transport in 2025.

Whereas regional transport track prices are currently capped. With the increase set for 2026, DB assumes that this cap will be overturned by the courts.

Initial reactions

Industry insiders expressed initial alarm at the plan. “There is a risk of less rail traffic for more money,” said Sarah Stark, Managing Director of the German Railway Industry Association.

She added that this shows the importance of creating “…a Modern Rail Act to create a years-long financing plan for a rail fund.”

North Rhine-Westphalia Transport Minister Oliver Krischer (Greens), suggested that increasing track access prices for local transport by more than 20 percent would have serious consequences.

“Essential parts of local transport will no longer take place. The consequences are more car traffic, more traffic jams and worse climate impacts by the transport sector,” Krischer said.

“The usual construction cost subsidies to finance the infrastructure would avoid this,” said Peter Westenberger, managing director of the Association of Freight Railways.

Unfortunately, as long as the German Finance Ministry maintains its steadfast conviction to maintain the debt brake, those subsidies are off the table.

With reporting by DPA.

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Thousands of jobs have already been lost in the region, where wind farms now rise near abandoned open-pit mines and many people look with dread towards 2038, the deadline for the “coal exit”.

Their fears help explain the strong local support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which does not just rail against migrants but also rejects the green energy push and questions man-made climate change.

At local elections held in Spremberg in June, the AfD scored 39.3 percent – an omen ahead of regional elections next Sunday in the state of Brandenburg, which polls suggest it could win.

Lignite, or brown coal, may be a climate killer, but since the 19th century it has been key to the identity of the Lusatia industrial region on the Polish border, known as the Lausitz in German.

“Thousands of people here have been linked to coal their whole working lives,” said the town’s mayor, Christine Herntier, an independent who has held the post for a decade.

“We are proud of our tradition,” said Herntier, 67, pointing to a huge map on her office wall of the Schwarze Pumpe plant and its surrounding industrial complex.

Most people in Spremberg, population 25,000, have grudgingly accepted the coal phase-out plan, under which the government has earmarked billions for structural transition plans, she said.

But, she added, ahead of the state election the winding down of coal “is still a big issue”.

‘Anger over wind farm’

Michael Hanko, the AfD’s top representative in Spremberg, said he is certain that the looming demise of the lignite industry is “one of the main reasons” residents are voting for his party.

“I don’t think the government has really got them on board with this whole prescribed transformation, saying that we now have to do everything with renewable energies,” Hanko said.

Michael Hanko, the AfD (Alternative for Germany) top candidate, in Spremberg, eastern Germany on, September 9, 2024. Photo by Femke COLBORNE / AFP

The AfD, founded about a decade ago, scored a triumph earlier this month when it won an election in the eastern state of Thuringia and came a close second in Saxony.

It now also has a good chance of winning in Brandenburg, the state that surrounds Berlin, where it is polling narrowly in first place at around 27 percent.

When the German government decided five years ago to phase out coal, it pledged around €40 billion to help coal regions adapt, with €17 billion for the Lausitz alone.

Much of the money is intended to flow into developing the renewables and hydrogen sectors, helping the region maintain its identity as an energy hub.

But residents complain the investment has been too slow to materialise and is flowing into the wrong places.

In Spremberg, plans to extend a nearby wind park have caused outrage among some locals, who fear it will be a threat to 150-year-old trees, a protected swallow species and drinking water.

‘Something different’

Coal has long been synonymous with the Lausitz region, which takes in parts of Brandenburg and Saxony and a small strip of Poland, and where lignite was discovered in the late 18th century.

But the industry all but collapsed after German reunification in 1990, when most of the region’s open pit mines were shut down and thousands of jobs vanished.

Today, only around 8,000 people are employed in the lignite industry across the Lausitz, with 4,500 of them in Brandenburg, though the industry is still one of the largest private employers in the state and coal remains a strong part of the region’s identity.

Already weary from the problems caused by reunification, people in the region have felt “overwhelmed” by recent global challenges, said Lars Katzmarek, a board member of the Pro-Lausitz campaign group.

Lars Katzmarek, board member of the Pro-Lausitz campaign group. Photo by Femke COLBORNE / AFP

“The coronavirus, the energy crisis, the Ukraine war – these are all very difficult things that people still haven’t fully digested… and perhaps at some point they just close their ears,” he said.

On a rainy morning in Spremberg, Joachim Paschke, 81, who used to work in mechanical engineering and welding, was buying bread rolls in the bakery opposite the town hall.

“I’m definitely not an AfD supporter but I can understand people who are,” he said.

“The established parties have nothing concrete and the AfD is offering something different. People want change.”

By Femke COLBORNE