MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
To Germany now, where contrary to cliche, trains do not always run on time, at least not anymore. After decades of neglect, the government has announced a 100-billion-euro investment into the national railway operator. But it may take more than money to get German trains back on track. Esme Nicholson gets on board with our story.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: (Non-English language spoken).
ESME NICHOLSON, BYLINE: So I've just boarded a train in Switzerland, where the railways run well like Swiss clocks. But this is a German train heading to Berlin. And as we cross the border, passengers are bidding farewell, reluctantly, to punctuality and simply hoping for the best. One of them is 57-year-old Elisabeth Eisel (ph).
ELISABETH EISEL: (Through interpreter) Trains in Switzerland are always on time, unless they're coming from Germany. Harsh but true, sadly. It didn't used to be the case.
NICHOLSON: Chronic underinvestment in Germany has derailed yet another myth about Teutonic efficiency. Deutsche Bahn's long-distance fast trains are now among the least punctual in Europe. We've got about another 7 hours to go before we reach the capital. So far, we are on time. Fingers crossed.
(CROSSTALK)
NICHOLSON: Waning reliability is one of many problems for state-owned Deutsche Bahn, which is operating at a loss and regularly subjects its passengers to poor or no Wi-Fi access, seat reservation mix-ups and missing carriages.
LUKAS IFFLANDER: We are now paying the price for years and years of neglect, basically, since 1998.
NICHOLSON: Lukas Ifflander is vice chair of the railway passenger group Pro Bahn. He says it's not just crumbling tracks and sticky signals that need attention but the network operator's overly bureaucratic infrastructure.
IFFLANDER: Every process at Deutsche Bahn takes forever and is really complicated, and that frustrates the people that actually want to do something.
NICHOLSON: Ifflander says Deutsche Bahn is top-heavy, that while there are not enough train engineers and signal operators, there are too many managers sitting at desks. German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel recently reported that upper management has allegedly been canceling long-distance trains to bump up its miserable punctuality ratings because canceled trains are not recorded in the statistics. Deutsche Bahn declined NPR's requests for an interview, but in a written statement denied embellishing data. Deutsche Bahn says that the Spiegel report is, quote, "based on chat messages between dispatchers," not, quote, "actual data used for collecting statistics."
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: (Non-English language spoken).
NICHOLSON: On a different train, the 11:18 from Munich to Berlin, passengers are packed like sardines at double capacity because another fully booked intercity express was canceled last minute. The mood is surprisingly jolly, despite the fact that half of us have been standing for more than four hours now, with no hope of getting through the crowded carriages even to use the restroom. Fifty-one-year-old Catherine Launay (ph) is from France. She says she's surprised passengers are not kicking up more of a fuss.
CATHERINE LAUNAY: (Through interpreter) If this had been a French train, there would've been more of an uproar. In fact, French passengers would've revolted by now.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DER BAHN SONG")
ANKE ENGELKE: (Singing in German).
NICHOLSON: In an effort to prevent aggressive passenger behavior towards train staff, Deutsche Bahn has launched a mockumentary TikTok series about a team of train staff struggling to cope under increasingly preposterous conditions. But as our train turtles down the track, it's difficult to differentiate between parody and reality.
UNIDENTIFIED CONDUCTOR: (Speaking German).
NICHOLSON: Our train conductor wishes us a pleasant trip, and as far as it's possible, adding that we should just about make it to Berlin. But Deutsche Bahn is no laughing matter for federal transport minister Patrick Schnieder.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PATRICK SCHNIEDER: (Through interpreter) Many equate the malfunctioning of the railways with the malfunctioning of the state.
NICHOLSON: So whether it's signal failure, humor failure or state failure, Germany's trains appear to have gone off the rails.
For NPR News, I'm Esme Nicholson, somewhere between Munich and Berlin. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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