Quoted By:
>Abellio Rail, daughter company of Dutch Railways (NS), announced today that they will stop all operations in Northrhine-Westfalia on January 31st 2022
>They are a major passenger railway enterprise and currently operating 15 commuter lines in NRW alone including a connection into the Netherlands, 26 lines in eastern Germany and 8 lines in Baden-Württemberg in south Germany. The group also owns Westfalenbahn, who are operating 3 lines in northern Germany.
>Abellio has been struggling a lot with deficits in the more recent years as the contractually agreed payout didn't cover the costs anymore due to rising personnel costs on top of a lot of contractual penalties caused by inadequate service fulfillment like delayed or cancelled train connections or inadequate rolling stock which differs from what has been agreed on
>It's worth mentioning that Abellio only operated a few lines in NRW until they began their massive expansion starting in 2015 creating subsidiaries for east and south German operations
>With the massive expansion Abellio was plagued by a massive lack of finding operating personnel and problems with the delivery of new rolling stock, some of which being delayed by more than a year
>Due to the massive financial problems Abellio had to plead for a raise in remunition, which got declined by the respective local transport associations
>In summer this year Abellio had to file bankruptcy for financial self-recovery as a first step
>Since then Abellio has been trying to negotiate with the respective transport associations, but with no successful agreement in sight for them
cont.
