NRW wants to make rail traffic more reliable by spending money

North Rhine-Westphalia wants to reduce delays and train cancellations in rail traffic with millions from the state treasury.

Among other things, the money is to be used to finance additional points and signals in order to be able to better divert trains and S-Bahn trains to other tracks in the event of construction work or incidents and thus enable more reliable train connections, as NRW Transport Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) on Friday in Düsseldorf announced.

Düsseldorf - The package of measures “Robustes Netz II” agreed with Deutsche Bahn provides for a total of around 131 million euros in infrastructure investments.

The lion's share of the money - 125 million euros - comes from the country.

Deutsche Bahn pays the remainder as its own contribution.

Ronald Pofalla, Board Member for Infrastructure at Deutsche Bahn, emphasized that it was about "small measures on the tracks with a major effect on reliable rail traffic".

The additional points and signals are intended to increase the reliability of the connections in view of the particularly numerous construction sites in the rail network in the coming years.

The background: this year alone, the railway in North Rhine-Westphalia is investing 1.9 billion euros in the expansion of the infrastructure - with an upward trend.

However, the construction work repeatedly causes delays and train cancellations.

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With the package of measures, the options are now to be improved on important routes between Cologne and Dortmund, for example, but also in the direction of Frankfurt in the south and Berlin in the east, to divert train traffic to other tracks in the event of construction work or disruptions.

However, the implementation of the “Robustes Netz II” package of measures will also take years.

As early as 2019, the state and the railways agreed on an investment package “Robustes Netz I” with a volume of 180 million euros, which is still being processed.

dpa