Tyler Bosselman was wearing the dark blue vest and the red tie of a Deutsche Bahntrain driver. As he sat comfortably in the operator's seat of his regional DB train, the landscapes of southern Germany rushed by outside, reflected in his sunglasses.
Construction is underway on one of the routes that the 24-year-old Bosselman drives. It's the busy Riedbahn route between Frankfurt and Mannheim in Germany, which is getting new switches and signals to make rail traffic run more smoothly. The goal is to finish the overhaul by the end of December, and Bosselman hopes that the upgrade will make Deutsche Bahn "more reliable overall."
Reconstruction of the Riedbahn route marks the beginning of what Germany's state-owned railway operator touted as a reboot of the company, with routes to Hanover, Hamburg and other busy sections of its nationwide network set to follow soon.
DB's so-called comprehensive reconstruction plan involves a total of 40 major construction projects and aims to ensure that the operator's infamously unpunctual trains will be running on time again by the end of the decade. At the program's launch this summer, German Transportation Minister Volker Wissing called it Germany's "largest reconstruction and modernization program in recent decades."
DB's plans could soon come to a screeching halt. The collapse of the three-party German government coalition on November 4, and fresh elections to be held on February 23 next year at the earliest, mean the country is stuck in political limbo for half a year, and so is funding for the rail program.
Martin Burkert, chairman of the EVG rail workers union, has already warned that, without a 2025 national budget, there would be a lack of money to carry on with the projects. "Years of planning work to finally........