The German Railway Act allows a lot of things. In particular the possibility for a Land to purchase its own trainsets from the manufacturer of its choice, which it then leases to dedicated operators. A good idea that gives the Land a strong control over his railway policy.
With the railway reform of the 1990s, the organisation of local rail passenger transport (called SPNV in Germany) was transferred to the 16 federal states. The state of Baden-Württemberg, as the responsible body, receives financial resources (regionalisation funds) from the federal government for this purpose. In addition to ticket revenues, regionalisation funds are the main financing element for local rail passenger transport. The responsibility for expenditure lies with the state. It orders and pays for local rail passenger transport services, by contract.
In 1995, at the beginning of liberalization, the Ministry of Transport of Baden-Württemberg created the Nahverkehrsgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg. This public entity is the central contact for all questions concerning local rail passenger transport (SPNV). The NVBW is responsible for the planning and coordination of local public transport in the state and is supporting and advising the Ministry on all issues relating to local public transport. Among other things, it takes care of the state-wide timetable preparation, the tenders and the telephone information service and is also responsible for marketing and controlling. It is a genuine authority that oversees public transport throughout the state. It is the NVBW that awards contracts to various railway operators, according to the rule of public service delegation.
It is in this context that the State of Baden-Württemberg going much more than other states by acquiring its own regional trains, whereas it is usually the operator who provides the equipment of its choice. The idea behind this is that the financially sound state can take out loans at significantly better conditions to finance new vehicles than is possible for companies that are new to the local transport market. This could put these companies at a disadvantage compared to established suppliers when submitting bids. The trainsets are owned by the state-owned Landesanstalt Schienenfahrzeuge Baden-Württemberg (SFBW) leasing company and leased back to the operators. In Germany, this model is called « model BW ». A similar formula is used by the Land of North-Westphalia. The british Go-Ahead and the dutch Abellio were awarded the contract by NVBW in 2015, while Deutsche Bahn Regio remains in any case the dominant regional carrier. These companies therefore benefit from the rolling stock purchased by the SFBW, but must then train their drivers themselves. Rolling stock increasingly has the livery of the state.
Go-Ahead, created in 2014, has won the operation of two networks 1b « Rems-Fils » and 1c « Franken-Enz », the later linking Stuttgart to Würzburg. This 13-year contract, which covers 8.1 million trains/kilometres per year, started with a number of problems related to the lack of drivers, but also to the overloading of the railway infrastructure, which is not the responsibility of the Land, but of DB Netz, the national public manager of infrastructure. However, that the German railway infrastructure is suffering from a lack of investment, which that made it to the newspaper headlines in recent years.
Two other operators, Abellio as well as SWEG, are victims of major delays in deliveries from Bombardier, whose new Talent 2 trainsets (for Abellio) and Talent 3 trainsets (for SWEG) are not expected to run until mid 2020 or even early 2021! This caused a general outcry to the Stuttgart Regional Parliament. Not to mention the Covid-19 crisis which brought traffic down to its lowest level.
But all of this does not seem to dampen Baden-Württemberg’s optimism, managed since March 2016 by a coalition between the ecologists of Alliance 90 / Ecologists (Grünen) and the conservatives of the CDU, led by the ecologist minister-president Winfried Kretschmann. The regional Minister of Transport does not intend to deviate from the « BW model », despite the problems. The Ministry of Transport wants to cope with the expected increase in passenger numbers in the country over the next few years. It want to buy up to 130 electric double-decker trainsets for approximately 1.6 billion euros, according the newspaper Südwest Presse last week. In addition, Transportation Minister Winfried Hermann, also ecologist, is seeking an option to purchase another 100 trainsets. The SFBW must therefore assuming procurement costs of up to 2.76 billion euros, despite an already high debt load from previous trainsets.
The new trains should be able to cope with the predicted doubling of demand in local rail passenger transport by 2030 compared to 2010. One might wonder whether about the optimism of the Greens, regarding forecasts that the world after the pandemic no longer seems to confirm. Public transport seems indeed to be the great victim of the health crisis and both the finances and the rates of use of public operators are becoming unsustainable.
But what is interesting in the case of Baden-Württemberg is the ability of the Land to acquire its trains itself. This has several advantages:
- more favorable borrowing conditions;
- pressure on competing manufacturers to lower prices;
- to prevent Deutsche Bahn from imposing its fares and rolling stock without the Land having a say;
- lastly, above all, it makes it possible to make politicians face up to their responsibilities as regards the choice of manufacturers, whereas previously, elected representatives knew nothing about the rail sector and only criticised it.
The problems encountered with drivers do not jeopardize this model of regionalization, and training centres are now being set up at regional level.
The other major problem concerns the network, which is still dependent on the national level and which continually causes political tensions between the 16 Länder and Berlin. Is it now necessary to regionalising the networks and some stations? This question has not yet been asked…
Source :
Mediarail.be – La régionalisation des trains de proximité en Allemagne (in french)
2019 – Stuttgarter Zeitung – Christian Milankovic – Warum das Land Millionen für Züge ausgibt
2019 – International Railway Jounal – Go-Ahead and Abellio launch Baden-Württemberg services
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