Typically German?

Germany’s railways used to be a source of pride for the nation. True, Germany was not the first to introduce the steam locomotive – that was England in 1804.

Britain in the nineteenth century was rich in raw materials, thanks to its many colonies, and had an early industrial revolution. But in 1835, the Bavarian Ludwig Railway had a steam locomotive, the English-built Adler, running between Nürnberg and Fürth (steered by an English driver wearing a top-hat). Soon afterwards there was a line between Leipzig and Dresden, complete with Germany’s first railway tunnel.

Germany is a country of engineers and so the many technical problems involved in setting up rail networks – the bridge building, the tunnels – was a constant source of fascination. And then, in the form of the brilliant Friedrich List, came the idea for linking the railway networks of the 35 independent German states. The development of railways became inextricably linked with German nationhood. One of the first infrastructural tasks after German re-unification in 1989 was to restore and develop East and West rail links and to re-construct the once-grand station of Leipzig.

One of Europe’s leading train nations

But now it seems that Germany has become ashamed of its railway system. Once it was regarded as one of Europe’s leading train nations – as fast and as well engineered as the best of the French high-speed TGV trains, almost as punctual as the Swiss, an interesting model for the Chinese. Suddenly though ordinary Germans seem to have lost faith in one of their great achievements. Typisch deutsch?

First, of course, it has to be said that most Europeans are growing dissatisfied with their train services. The privatisation of British Rail has been blamed, by the British, for a rapid drop in quality, for crowded commuter services and erratic safety standards. Both the British and the French nervously investigated their locomotives after trains stalled in the Channel Tunnel. Everybody, not just the Germans, want the trains to run in time. And then there is the weather: a long icy winter that is exposing manifold faults in the infrastructure, so exposed to the elements; hot summers will bring their problems too.

A rush towards profitability

There is a particular fury to the current German complaints though. Perhaps it is a sense that Deutsche Bahn’s excellence depended on it being identified with the state: yes, the ticket inspectors and station-masters, all those men (not many women!) in red caps, could be pompous and over-bearing. But they did behave as if they were serving the state and had a special responsibility. Station staff explained routes and fares in great detail; locomotive drivers were regarded as the very cream of the working class. The so-called Eisenbahner were like a tightly-bonded elite, well paid, well pensioned and with plenty of perks – garden allotments, for example, close to the railway tracks – but they knew what was expected of them and had a strong sense of duty.

Today, as German Rail privatises and prepares to be quoted on the stock exchange, ordinary Germans get the feeling that the rush towards profitability is sapping a grand German institution. Hard-to-understand ticket machines are replacing humans. Train stations in the provinces look very neglected indeed compared to the dazzling modernist constructions in Berlin and the big cities. Some places are disappearing from the economic map because it is no longer profitable for Deutsche Bahn to stop there. The astonishing confusion in normal railway priorities came to light recently when passengers to Berlin’s Schönefeld airport – soon to become the capital’s only airport terminal - found themselves in the charming but desolate end-of-track station of Königs Wusterhausen. The train, the so-called Airport Express, had decided to skip the airport because otherwise it would be unpunctual. Presumably to save money the train announcer did not bother to explain the change in English, thus leaving airport passengers baffled and lost somewhere in Brandenburg.

What is going on? What is making the Germans so angry? Listening in to passengers, there seem to be five main problems.

Frustration of the staff

The first is punctuality, always regarded as an important German virtue. Deutsche Bahn obviously does not set out to be unpunctual. In fact, according to a best-seller (Schwarzbuch Deutsche Bahn, C. Bertelsmann, authors Christian Esser, Astrid Randerath), train drivers are under such pressure to stay punctual that they do not even leave their locomotives to go to the toilet. Punctuality is one of the key measures taken into account by foreign investors and therefore essential for a successful privatisation. But the harder the Deutsche Bahn tries, the more it goes wrong. Some rail connections leave no more than three minutes to catch the next train. A four minute delay often leaves the passenger stranded on the platform for an hour or more.

Second, the pressure to show a profit has cut into staff morale. They are no longer important officials in crisp uniforms but part of a service culture. Nothing wrong with that – except that their wages have sunk (a waiter in the train restaurant wagon earns barely 1000 Euros a month for 12 hour days and is dependent on usually meagre tips) and so has their self-esteem. Ticket counter staff are instructed to try and sell the most expensive tickets and reservations, even when unnecessary. The frustration of the staff gets passed on to the customer.

Nerve-frazzled passengers

Third, a complicated price structure makes it difficult for the passenger to make the right decision. And the pricing software is often slow and misleading – so that the passenger ends up jumping on the train and paying the conductor. If he has boarded a regional train he is travelling illegally and is likely to be thrown off at the next stop. If he is on a sophisticated inter-city-express he will find that he is automatically charged extra.

Fourth: the constant technical problems of the rolling stock – the brakes, the axles, the wheels – means that trains are cancelled or are shortened often at very little notice. That leads to over-crowding and delay. And to nerve-frazzled passengers even though the original motivation for removing locomotives for inspection may have been to increase safety standards.

And so we come to the crucial point. It is not bad for a railway network to modernise itself. To make itself more efficient. To make money, to improve safety. But to achieve this successfully it has to have an intelligent information policy. It has to take the unhappiness of its customers seriously and explain what is going on: that a once-great German institution is in the process of transforming itself into a passenger-sensitive 21st century financial enterprise. This inability of a state institution to listen to its customers, the tendency to treat them as an irritation, is, sadly, typisch deutsch.