On the Wrong Track: Exploding Costs Threaten German Rail's High-Speed Future

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Anyone traveling between the cities of Hamburg and Dresden can experience the two sides of Germany's current rail network. The first stage, the 280-kilometer trip from Hamburg to Berlin, takes a little more than an hour and a half. Trains depart every hour and are usually on time. The high-speed ICE trains have priority on the route.

The trains traveling from Berlin to Dresden are Intercity trains (express trains which are not as fast as the ICE), but there is only one departure every two hours. The cars are often 30 to 40 years old and there are repeated "unscheduled stops" between stations. Construction or run-down tracks often force the Intercity trains to crawl along at speeds of only 30 kilometers per hour (about 19 mph). The 170-kilometer route from Berlin to Dresden takes two-and-a-quarter hours -- at least. Ten years ago, the trip took less than two hours.

Things are even worse when it comes to freight traffic. Many trains creep through the country at an average speed of 50 kilometers per hour, so that the trip from the Lower Rhine region near the Dutch border to Heilbronn in the southwest can take up to nine hours. This comes as no surprise, given that the last significant investments in a freight traffic route were made 30 years ago.

No one knows how the federal government and the Deutsche Bahn expect to increase rail freight traffic under these circumstances. According to a report by the Federal Environment Agency, it would cost €11 billion to upgrade the rail network to allow for a substantial increase in goods transported by rail. But this kind of money isn't in the transport minister's budget, unless he bids farewell to projects like "Stuttgart 21" and planned high-speed routes like Stuttgart-Ulm.

'Bottomless Pit'

New questions are now being raised about precisely this project. As recently as July, the costs of the route were estimated at €2.9 billion, while the federal government originally expected it to cost about €2 billion. An expert report on the issue, which was commissioned by the Green Party and carried out by the Munich transportation consulting firm Vieregg & Rössler, was unveiled on Wednesday. It concluded that the new Stuttgart-Ulm route will cost at least €5.3 billion -- more than twice the original estimate. "Stuttgart 21 and the new Stuttgart-Ulm route threaten to become a bottomless pit," said the Green Party's Winfried Hermann, chairman of the Bundestag's transportation committee. "In normal life you would call that deception."

Railroad expert Karl-Dieter Bodack arrives at similar results when he compares the Stuttgart-Ulm project with the Nürnberg-Ingolstadt route completed in 2006, where a large number of tunnels drove up costs. He expects the same issues to apply to the Stuttgart-Ulm route, which passes through the hills of the Swabian Alps. He estimates the total cost at €5.2 billion.

If these estimates are correct, the federal government can expect to face considerable costs down the road. Ramsauer's predecessor Wolfgang Tiefensee, a member of the center-left Social Democrats, had pledged, on the basis of the original cost estimate, that the federal government would assume all cost increases over and above its share of €925 million.

Downgraded

Experts at the Transport Ministry are also increasingly skeptical. For months, ministry officials have been developing cost-benefit analyses for all new construction and expansion projects. They had planned to release a new list in early September, but that is now unlikely to happen until at least the end of the year.

However, the reassessment is already available for Stuttgart-Ulm, the most controversial route. Until now, it was relatively high up on the ministry's priority list, on which it was categorized as a level two or three project ("high priority").

Now the officials have downgraded the route, mainly because of its lack of suitability for freight trains. It is now a category one project ("moderate priority"), which, according to the administration's criteria, puts it in the same group as projects that are barely considered economically justifiable.

For Anton Hofreiter, the transportation policy spokesman for the Green Party's parliamentary group, Ramsauer's list is hardly worth the paper it's printed on. "They know perfectly well that it'll never be possible to pay for these projects," he says, accusing the ministry of "organized irresponsibility."

Sticking to Their Vision

The minister and the head of Deutsche Bahn, on the other hand, say this is nothing but fearmongering. And at their appearance in Berlin last Wednesday, they weren't about to allow anyone to spoil their good spirits.

Once again, Grube touted his vision of a European high-speed rail network. "The new route is indispensable for a fast connection from Paris to Bratislava," he said.

Ramsauer also believes that everything is on track. "I can't imagine that a project like this will be cancelled at this point," he said -- as he fidgeted nervously with his hands.

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• Part 1: Exploding Costs Threaten German Rail's High-Speed Future
• Part 2: Taking the Slow Train