I should have made that clear: there is no such formal rule, although there are quibbles like that where regional politicians demand additional stops. That's t

I should have made that clear: there is no such formal rule, although there are quibbles like that where regional politicians demand additional stops. That's the system working as intended, though. People like to laugh about small cities like Montabaur or Limburg getting ICE access but it turned out that the regions benefitted a lot from that access and after two slow years the demand for high speed train access in the region exploded.