EN ROUTE TO BERLIN — As the 12:06 p.m. Intercity Express to Berlin leaves Bern and crosses into Germany, passengers reluctantly bid farewell to punctuality — a guarantee in Switzerland where trains run like clockwork. Elisabeth Eisel, who regularly makes the seven-hour trip, says: “Trains in Switzerland are always on time, unless they’re arriving from Germany. Harsh but true, sadly. It didn’t used to be the case.”
Chronic underinvestment has derailed another myth of Teutonic efficiency. Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance trains are now among the least punctual in Europe. In October the operator broke its own record with roughly only half of long-distance trains arriving without delay. Waning reliability is only one problem for the state-owned company, which is operating at a loss and routinely subjects passengers to poor or no Wi‑Fi, seat-reservation mix-ups, missing cars and vague “technical problems” announced over the intercom.
The government has announced a 100‑billion‑euro investment in rail infrastructure after decades of neglect. But Lukas Iffländer, vice chair of passenger lobby Pro Bahn, says money alone won’t be enough. “We are now paying the price for years and years of neglect, basically since 1998,” he says. Beyond crumbling tracks and aging signals, he points to an overly bureaucratic network operator. “Every process at Deutsche Bahn is really complicated. It takes forever and that frustrates the people that actually want to do something.”
Iffländer says the company is top heavy: too few train engineers and signal operators, and too many managers. German weekly Der Spiegel reported that upper management allegedly approved canceling long-distance trains to boost punctuality figures, since canceled services are not included in some statistics. Deutsche Bahn denied embellishing data, saying the report relied on chat messages, not the official numbers.
On another train — the 11:18 a.m. from Munich to Berlin — a last-minute cancellation left a fully booked Intercity Express jammed to double capacity. Despite many standing for hours with limited access to facilities, the mood remained surprisingly jolly. Catherine Launay, 51, from France, quipped that French passengers “would have revolted by now.”
To defuse tensions with staff, Deutsche Bahn launched a mockumentary series for TikTok, Instagram and YouTube about a crew coping with absurd conditions. The fictional dance to a techno beat and the cheeky chorus “zenk yoo for träveling wiz Deutsche Bahn” proved popular — even if onboard Wi‑Fi often can’t handle streaming.
The line between parody and reality is thin. A conductor wished passengers a pleasant journey “as far as it’s possible,” adding “we should just about make it to Berlin.” Federal Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder warned that many equate railway malfunction with a malfunctioning state.
Many place hope in the company’s new CEO, Evelyn Palla, whose track record at Austrian Federal Railways won praise. Palla has announced plans to slim down management and improve efficiency, but warned the task is immense and will take time.
As trains pull into Berlin Hauptbahnhof, passengers are resigned. Whether the cause is signal failure, managerial failure or decades of underfunding, Germany’s railways face a long road to restoring the punctuality and reliability they once promised.