Actually, the board members in the railway tower can not complain. While other sectors, such as the energy industry or the auto industry, are practically on the verge of restarting, and can not be sure if they succeed, the managers in the Berlin Bahn Tower need only look how they handle the foreseeable rush of passengers to get. Because their product should become one of the most important weapons in the fight against climate change.
This is what the German government wants to decide on a climate protection bill on Friday, which will allow Bahn to lower ticket prices and finance important investments in the expansion of its services. But it's not that easy on the train. There are budget deficits, a scandal about dubious consultancy contracts and the still unsolved problems with trains and ailing infrastructure. Topics that the Supervisory Board needs to attend at its meeting on Wednesday.
Just in time for this crisis meeting, the Federal Court of Auditors is also raising the alarm. He has done so many times recently, in his recent paper is about the billion sums, which the state of the railway each year for the receipt of the infrastructure transfers. The so-called performance and financing agreement (LuFV) between the federal government and the railways should actually be waved through by the supervisory board.
But the auditors from the Federal Court of Auditors demand that the agreement, the government and infrastructure manager responsible for infrastructure Ronald Pofalla have negotiated in recent months, will be improved - after all, it is about a huge sum: 51.425 billion euros. The money is to serve over ten years of the railway for the maintenance of infrastructure. In order to dissolve the investment backlog, which experts estimate at the railways to at least 50 billion euros and makes it difficult for railway customers with delays and train cancellations.
Significant risks
The Federal Court of Auditors, however, poses considerable risks that the restructuring project entails. For the federal government there is the danger that "systemic deficiencies" of the financial instrument "remain conserved for a decade", so the core message of the report of the Federal Court of Audit for the Bundestag, which is the SPIEGEL.
The auditors had repeatedly complained in the past that the federal government makes money available, but then not sufficiently checked whether it is also used meaningfully and effectively. From their point of view, the bad condition of the rail network provides the striking proof of their suspicions. Prescribed success checks to achieve the objectives, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the LuFV are "not yet carried out", write the inspectors. The Federal Ministry of Transport failed to remedy oversights.
The opposition is skeptical
The auditors do not question the meaning of the regulation itself. Greater control over the outflow of funds from the Ministry of Transport, and additional powers for parliamentarians, are still being proposed. After all, the funds would be awarded "over three legislative periods", which the auditors described as "extraordinary".
The opposition wants to use the report as an opportunity to emphasize the demand for additional control options. "With this agreement, more bridges will break down and the necessary change in traffic and relocation to the rail will not succeed," said the budgetary spokesman for the Greens, Sven-Christian Kindler, the SPIEGEL. "Obscure corporate structures, in which taxpayer funds percolate, must come to an end," adds his parliamentary colleague Victor Perli, a member of the budget committee of the Bundestag and there rapporteur for the railway.
Whether such a dense control network effectively curbs the waste of money, or only provides for additional bureaucracy, is still open. One thing is certain: the task of the railway superiors is likely to be more complicated in the coming years. After all, their range of motion is already extremely limited by the hybrid construction of Bahn. Although the railway is organized like a private company that follows the rules of corporate law, but because the federal government is the sole owner, its influence goes much further than that of ordinary shareholders anyway. Conflicting political interests and a certain lack of imagination in the Federal Ministry of Transport have so much more impact than would be conceivable in the free economy.
Thomas Niedermueller / Getty Images
Rail Board Ronald Pofalla: infrastructure in need
The tasks that are imminent to the railway are enormous. If it really succeeds in inspiring motorists for the rail, additional trains are required, the digital renewal of the control technology and additional tracks - and first of all the elimination of the deficiencies of the old equipment, which has been worn for decades for wear.
It all costs a lot of money. In the next ten years, 86 billion euros will flow into the network, significantly more than before. Of that, 24 billion are coming from the railway.
It is also hard to overlook the financial risk inherent in the reconstruction of Stuttgart Main Station, which is scheduled to be completed by 2025. 8.2 billion euros were last estimated and there are not a few experts who consider them to be insufficient. At the start of construction in 2010, the cost limit for the underground station and the connecting lines had been 4.5 billion euros.
Arriva for sale - or not
There is already a lack of money at every turn. In another, recently published report for the Bundestag, the Federal Court of Auditors alone expects a loss of almost three billion euros by the end of the year. In addition, there are debts and leasing obligations of around € 25 billion - according to the law, the railways are not allowed to be lower in the black.
How difficult it is for the train to procure new money, shows the discussion about the sale of individual Bahntöchter to get extra money in the cash. The auditors of the audit office consider the separation from the international logistics division Schenker to be the best solution. The railway board, however, would rather strike the British daughter DB Arriva. With 53,000 employees, it operates buses and regional trains in 14 European countries and could bring in three to four billion euros. There are even some interested parties. Where it is still unclear how concrete the offers are. In an emergency, Arriva could still try his luck on the stock market.
Another source of funding will be a so-called hybrid bond, which will bring in around two billion, as it was called from supervisory board circles. The combination of bond and share offers a very long term - and would give the train in addition to the money one thing above all: a lot of time.