The Story

According to older members of German society, you used to be able to set your watch by the trains. The timeliness of trains was one of the strengths of a country that placed such a high value on organisation and punctuality.

But those days are long gone.

State-owned rail company Deutsche Bahn is rarely out of the headlines these days - and always for the wrong reasons. The nadir was hit last November, when close to 40 percent of all intercity connections arrived late (at least six minutes behind schedule).

That number hardly does justice to the full extent of the chaos, though. Trains that are cancelled don’t even make it into the punctuality statistics. You can add to the delays a record 45,000 trains that didn’t even make it out of the depot between the summer of 2020 and summer 2022 - another new record.

Meanwhile, customers increasingly complain about overcrowded carriages, out-of-service toilets and confusion over seat reservations.

There d…