Decades of underinvestment in the German railways have been blamed for chaos in parts of the country after heavy snow led to much of the network grinding to a halt.
Snowfall of up to half a metre in Bavaria, southern Germany, led to numerous breakdowns and prompted the cancellation of scores of trains, with signalling systems and electronic information boards frequently malfunctioning.
The head of the Railway and Transport Union, Martin Burkert, said DB was ill-equipped to deal with the weather as a result of years of underinvestment.
“The DB slogan ‘we travel in all weathers’ has lost its credibility,” he told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper, calling large parts of Germany’s rail infrastructure “creaking and dilapidated”.
The criticisms came on the back of figures published at the weekend, which showed that last month DB’s long-distance services fell to their least punctual level in eight years.
Partly to blame are extensive construction works being carried out across the network, a response to years of neglect of bridges, tracks and general infrastructure.
The original article contains 544 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Decades of underinvestment in the German railways have been blamed for chaos in parts of the country after heavy snow led to much of the network grinding to a halt.
Snowfall of up to half a metre in Bavaria, southern Germany, led to numerous breakdowns and prompted the cancellation of scores of trains, with signalling systems and electronic information boards frequently malfunctioning.
The head of the Railway and Transport Union, Martin Burkert, said DB was ill-equipped to deal with the weather as a result of years of underinvestment.
“The DB slogan ‘we travel in all weathers’ has lost its credibility,” he told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper, calling large parts of Germany’s rail infrastructure “creaking and dilapidated”.
The criticisms came on the back of figures published at the weekend, which showed that last month DB’s long-distance services fell to their least punctual level in eight years.
Partly to blame are extensive construction works being carried out across the network, a response to years of neglect of bridges, tracks and general infrastructure.
The original article contains 544 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!