Coal by train – Wissing prepares train drivers for additional delays: “We will also have to wait”
Created: 08/24/2022, 12:30 p.m
By: Patricia Huber
Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) speaks.
© Dieter Menne/dpa/archive image
If more and more coal is soon to be transported by train, train drivers will probably have to be even more patient.
Transport Minister Wissing made this clear on Wednesday.
Berlin - Coal transports are soon to be increasingly carried out by rail.
But if energy transport is given priority by rail, passengers on trains may have to be patient.
"If it should happen that we have to activate the prioritization of coal transports, then it can happen that a passenger train has to wait at the end, because the supply of the power plants has progressed," said Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing on Wednesday in the ARD morning magazine .
Wissing: "We are now dependent on rail"
“In fact, personal transport is dependent on a stable energy supply.
Without a stable energy supply, no passenger train runs, it also needs electricity, and that is why it is also in the interest of long-distance passenger transport on the railways that the power plants are supplied with energy," said the FDP politician.
With a view to the low water in the Rhine, Wissing said in the RTL/ntv
program "Frühstart"
: "Climate change has fully reached us." With the low water levels, the inland waterway largely fails, "that hits us hard".
Even if drought and low water levels continue in the future, he does not see inland waterway transport coming to an end: "We have to react to this and further expand the inland waterways." Currently, other means of transport have to be used.
“We are now very dependent on rail.
It now has to provide additional capacities.”
An ordinance drawn up by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Transport provides that the transport of mineral oil, gas, coal and transformers should temporarily be given priority in rail transport.
This is intended to secure the energy supply in Germany.
(dpa)