German intercity trains are less punctual than even the worst operator in Britain, a new analysis has revealed – despite the German chancellor mocking Britain for its “broken tracks and bad trains”.
Last week, Olaf Scholz dismissed a suggestion of privatising the country’s rail system during a snap election debate, stating that it would “end as badly as in England, where nothing works any more”.
However, analysis of railway data by the Financial Times found that Germany’s state-owned rail operator Deutsche Bahn, which runs around 95 per cent of all long-distance trains in the country, delivers one of the least reliable services in central Europe, even when compared to the state of the UK’s rail services.
Around 72 per cent of Deutsche Bahn’s intercity trains arrived within 10 minutes of their scheduled arrival time in 12 months to January, compared with 78 per cent of British long-distance trains, the Financial Times research states.
It was also found that punctuality also affects long-distance train travel across central Europe, for example, services from Germany to Amsterdam are delayed by an average of almost 13 minutes, while trains arriving into the city from elsewhere are typically within two minutes of their scheduled arrival time.
The analysis is based on more than 1.9bn arrivals at stations tracked by websites Bahn-Vorhersage and Zugfinder from February 2024 until the end of January 2025.
Just 39 per cent of German long-distance trains arrived with a delay of less than 60 seconds. Britain’s worst-performing train operator, Avanti West Coast, met this service level 41 per cent of the time.
Overall, the UK average sits at 69 per cent.
The analysis found that about a fifth of intercity trains in Germany were delayed by more than 15 minutes in the 12-month period, which is almost twice the amount that Avanti West Coast experiences and 10 times as much as all the services in the UK.
That being said, compared to much of Europe, there is a lot of competition for both countries for on-time train services, such as Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, whose punctuality consistently exceeds 90 per cent.
Switzerland has even gone as far as preventing some late-arriving German services from crossing the border to prevent them from impacting punctual local timetables.
Deutsche Bahn told the Financial Times that infrastructure was “the key to more punctual railways”, suggesting that 80 per cent of all delays were caused by the poor state of its network.
The train group described its infrastructure as “too crowded, too old and too prone to disruptions”.
However, Deutsche Bahn did point to some services that have proven to have a higher punctuality rate, such as the new high-speed track between Berlin and Munich, where 82.5 per cent of all trains in 2024 arrived within 10 minutes of their schedule.
Complaints over German train services were thrust back into the spotlight during the Euro 2024 football tournament, when fans reported chaos due to long queues and train delays.
The Independent has contacted Deutsche Bahn for further comment.
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