>>1247796p.2
I don't want to elaborate too much here since you could fill books with this topic.
And lastly freight services, especially multinational intermodal freight services, have increased by a huge amount. Germany is geographically in the center of Western Europe and therefore in a crucial position, where passing the country is often the most convenient way to get from east to west or north to south. Trains taking routes from Rotterdam in the Netherlands to Austria or Switzerland, or from Poland to France or Belgium are nothing special. You can see trains taking comparable long distance routes across Europe daily. But it all happens on an infrastructure that isn't suited for this mass of rail traffic, bringing the old lines to their limits. The country is very slow with big infrastructure projects to improve capacities. Fehmarn Belt, Betuweroute, highspeed line Karlsruhe - Basel are all buzzwords for decades long planning and very slow commitment. Or look up the Rastatt accident, where a two track railway line sagged away due to construction works, and all of its consequences.
Put all of these aspects together and you get an idea why German Railway is so chaotic and plagued by delays and cancelled trains, leaving customers of all sorts in despair. But in the end, we can still be lucky that we have these things. It's far from perfect, but still miles better than what other countries can offer.
