Justified by heavy anti-Russia propaganda, a lot of attention in the public debate in Germany is on the ostensible need to close the “defense gap” by accelerating the increase of the military budget for more battle tanks, aircraft, missiles and ammunition. Whereas there is no evidence of Russian plans to attack Germany, either now or in the foreseeable future, there is a lot of evidence on the “infrastructure gap,” the heavy neglect on long-overdue investments in the transport sector, particularly in the railway grid.
The condition of the railway grid is so bad that 41 high-speed and other lines are in urgent need of repair or replacement, but the latter cannot be done on all or the majority of lines at the same time. Therefore, the so-called Transport Ministry “crash program” can only close some lines at a time—which however will affect rail transport on important routes for months.Average speed of trains on many lines is visibly down, high-speed ICE trains which could potentially travel at 250-300 kmh are slowed often to as little as 120-160 kmh. Limits for railway construction are also created by the fact that Deutsche Bahn has insufficient capacity for that—either lack of special construction units or manpower.
