DB still carrying out reconstruction works following 2021 summer floods
Deutsche Bahn still cannot run 15 percent of its routes in the areas damaged by the massive July 2021 floods, the company said in a rebuilding update this week. It will take another two years to reopen all the affected routes in its entirety.
Last year, some 600 kilometres of track, 50 bridges, 40 signal boxes and 180 level crossings were damaged or destroyed, especially in hard-hit North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate. The total cost to the railway infrastructure came out at 1,3 billion euros.
According to DB, it has repaired, renovated and rebuilt more than 510 kilometres of tracks, over 150 level crossings and 14 bridges. It also carried out work at 50 train stations in the affected area.
“Now it is a matter of restoring the rest of the infrastructure – where the damage was worst: by the end of 2023, travellers should be able to travel the entire Eifel route again, and two years later travel without interruption from Remagen to Ahrbrück”, DB ceo Richard Lutz said.
Further reading:
- More political will, industry awareness and coordination required for climate adaptation
- Saving energy in rail: ‘The most sustainable energy is the energy you do not use’
- Adif constructing new breakwater to protect coastal railway
- The lessons Infrabel learned from the flood: ‘We had never expected the rail embankments to become so unstable’
As any transport mode claiming high quality, now at railways, robustness and resilency, urgently, has to be provided for.
Shifts is the new standard, Decisively, ware owners, clients, Market, has shifted to “On Demand”. (“On Time”, low risk, supply chains now handsomely is rewarded, by willingly paying clients, etc., etc.)
No sophisticated research report should be requested, for agreeing, that “height” for added load capacity already should be standard, at any railways reinvestment, etc.