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It's difficult. They privatized everything in the early 90ies and even attempted to go to the stock exchange - this resulted in cuts and bad long-term decisions

by nisa 8y ago

It's difficult. They privatized everything in the early 90ies and even attempted to go to the stock exchange - this resulted in cuts and bad long-term decisions - now most of the Deutsche Bahn is public owned but a private company. They probably want to make some profit where it's possible. They need to invest a lot of money in the coming years because their infrastructure is crumbling and running on attrition. Here are the prices vs. inflation: https://media0.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/wirtschaft/1643856533/1.2598616/default/die-preise-der-deutschen-bahn.jpg https://media0.faz.net/ppmedia/aktuell/wirtschaft/1643856533... However the price for a certain track depends on a lot of things and this new high-speed track has lot's of buisness customers that avoid a flight this way - so it's priced higher. It's a complicated system with lot's of subsidies, subcontractors and so on. There is a price to pay for using the track to a different company that runs the train... Another problem is that freight train traffic is even more expensive and they simply forgot to invest in the system for 30 years - now the Autobahn is clogged with trucks...

bogomipz 8y ago
>"They privatized everything in the early 90ies and even attempted to go to the stock exchange - this resulted in cuts and bad long-term decisions - now most of the Deutsche Bahn is public owned but a private company" Can you say how it is "public owned" if it is not a publicly traded stock? It sound like their bid to list it on the stock exchange failed?
- nisa 8y ago
  I'm sorry not a native speaker - I mean the GmbH is owned by the state of Germany.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    It's an AG (a stock company), not a GmbH (a limited company). But yeah, all the stocks are still owned by the federal government, and therefore all profits get credited into the federal budget.
    - bogomipz 8y ago
      This is interesting. I am curious what is the upside to a stock company if all the shares are owned by the same entity(the government)? Are there some classes of the DB stack that are allowed to be publicly traded then?
      - nisa 8y ago
        The original plan was to somehow make the whole thing profitable and publicy trade a large partion of shares - so they bought a lot of companies and hoped that they can refinance the train operations. Turn's out it's not so easy...it was just typical management failure, neoliberal politics and pipedreams - so they stopped it in 2005 - Hartmut Mehdorn the CEO at the time is now infamous for basically destroying everything he touches. It's still not a government entity so they don't need to be that transparent and have more leeway to keep wages down.
        bogomipz 8y ago
        Very interesting, thanks for the detailed information. I will need to read up more on this. It sounds like a good case study. Cheers.
majewsky 8y ago
> They probably want to make some profit where it's possible. Deutsche Bahn is infamous for extracting as much profit as possible, especially when they had no competition (long-distance buses were mostly outlawed until 2012 because of a Nazi-era law). A particularly well-known instance were the local express trains ("S-Bahn") in Berlin where they outright closed many depots and ignored mandated maintenance schedules until: > On May 1, 2009 an S-Bahn train of the class 481 in Kaulsdorf derailed due to a broken wheel. According to S-Bahners, the scheduled general inspection of that train had been postponed for two years. This accident led to the S-Bahn chaos of 2009, since the Federal Railway office mandated shortened test intervals and therefore at times only 165 out of 552 required quarter trains were available. Eventually, all axes had to be replaced because they were generally considered to be inadequate. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_S-Bahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_S-Bahn (lightly edited because the original article reads like it came out of Google Translate)

by nisa 8y ago

bogomipz 8y ago

>"They privatized everything in the early 90ies and even attempted to go to the stock exchange - this resulted in cuts and bad long-term decisions - now most of the Deutsche Bahn is public owned but a private company" Can you say how it is "public owned" if it is not a publicly traded stock? It sound like their bid to list it on the stock exchange failed?

nisa 8y ago
I'm sorry not a native speaker - I mean the GmbH is owned by the state of Germany.
- majewsky 8y ago
  It's an AG (a stock company), not a GmbH (a limited company). But yeah, all the stocks are still owned by the federal government, and therefore all profits get credited into the federal budget.
  - bogomipz 8y ago
    This is interesting. I am curious what is the upside to a stock company if all the shares are owned by the same entity(the government)? Are there some classes of the DB stack that are allowed to be publicly traded then?
    - nisa 8y ago
      The original plan was to somehow make the whole thing profitable and publicy trade a large partion of shares - so they bought a lot of companies and hoped that they can refinance the train operations. Turn's out it's not so easy...it was just typical management failure, neoliberal politics and pipedreams - so they stopped it in 2005 - Hartmut Mehdorn the CEO at the time is now infamous for basically destroying everything he touches. It's still not a government entity so they don't need to be that transparent and have more leeway to keep wages down.
      - bogomipz 8y ago
        Very interesting, thanks for the detailed information. I will need to read up more on this. It sounds like a good case study. Cheers.

majewsky 8y ago

> They probably want to make some profit where it's possible. Deutsche Bahn is infamous for extracting as much profit as possible, especially when they had no competition (long-distance buses were mostly outlawed until 2012 because of a Nazi-era law). A particularly well-known instance were the local express trains ("S-Bahn") in Berlin where they outright closed many depots and ignored mandated maintenance schedules until: > On May 1, 2009 an S-Bahn train of the class 481 in Kaulsdorf derailed due to a broken wheel. According to S-Bahners, the scheduled general inspection of that train had been postponed for two years. This accident led to the S-Bahn chaos of 2009, since the Federal Railway office mandated shortened test intervals and therefore at times only 165 out of 552 required quarter trains were available. Eventually, all axes had to be replaced because they were generally considered to be inadequate. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_S-Bahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_S-Bahn (lightly edited because the original article reads like it came out of Google Translate)