Germany shuts one of its busiest rail routes for 5 months, launching drive to improve reliability

BERLIN -- One of the busiest railway lines in Germany, the 70-kilometer (45-mile) stretch between Frankfurt and Mannheim, is closing for five months starting Monday as the country launches an effort to get its notoriously disruption-prone network into shape.

State-owned railway operator Deutsche Bahn is closing the route until Dec. 14 and plans a full overhaul of the tracks, stations and other infrastructure. More than 300 trains per day use the stretch, part of a main north-south route that connects Hamburg and Cologne with Stuttgart and Basel, Switzerland, and often pick up delays that have knock-on effects elsewhere on the network.

During the closure, all regional trains on the route will be replaced by buses, while long-distance services will be diverted via slower routes.

The 1.3 billion euro ($1.4 billion) overhaul is supposed to kick off a broader program to modernize 40 stretches of railway by 2030 and improve the reliability of a network that often fails to impress. Over the past month, it frustrated soccer fans at the German-hosted European Championship, which ended Sunday.

On Friday, Deutsche Bahn said its punctuality during the tournament was “mixed,” adding that it got “the maximum out of the railway system, but the possibilities were limited by outdated and overloaded infrastructure.”

Transport Minister Volker Wissing said that starting the overhaul program before the soccer tournament would have meant even more disruption.

“I took over dilapidated railway infrastructure in which not enough was invested by my predecessors for decades,” Wissing, who became transport minister at the end of 2021, told Deutschlandfunk radio Monday. “We are going to invest enormous sums, historic sums in the railway.”