German state rail operator Deutsche Bahn’s much criticized struggles with punctuality continued in 2024, with more than a third of all long-distance trains arriving late by six minutes or more.
New data released by Deutsche Bahn (DB) on Friday showed that just 62.5% of Deutsche Bahn’s ICE and IC long-distance passenger trains were within six minutes of arriving on-time.
A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn said that 80% of all delays in 2024 could be attributed to Germany’s “outdated, fault-prone and overloaded infrastructure.”
Chronic delays on the railways have become a national embarrassment for Germany, a country which once prided itself on punctuality and reliable high-quality engineering.
The railway has been pressing the German government to fund massive investments in the country’s railroads, arguing that a lack of maintenance and investment in recent decades have caused problems and limited capacity.
Dpa obtained Deutsche Bahn punctuality metrics dating back to 2003, which showed that 2024 marked the railway’s worst on-time performance during that entire period. Punctuality data from 2002 and before was not immediately available.
Deutsche Bahn’s best performance during those 21 years was a 84.3% on-time mark in 2004.
Regional trains perform better
Germany’s regional trains were much more likely to run on-time. In 2024, 90.3% of regional passenger trains arrived within six minutes of the scheduled time, only a small dip from the 91.0% mark in 2023.
In 2020, 95.6% of stops in regional transport and 81.8% in long-distance transport were reached on time.
Delays cost millions
The constant delays on long-distance passenger trains not only get on the nerves of many customers, but also cost Deutsche Bahn significant amounts of money.
Deutsche Bahn chief executive Richard Lutz recently told the Tagesspiegel newspaper that passenger compensation payments for badly delayed trains ran into the hundreds of millions of euros in 2024.
