Overview
- Deutsche Bahn will carry out only two full corridor overhauls per year in future and in exceptional cases three, CEO Evelyn Palla said Thursday.
- Palla tied the change to limited financing from the federal special fund and to lessons from early projects that showed four simultaneous overhauls strain the wider rail network.
- Early large closures exposed weaknesses in diversion routes, with the Hannover–Berlin works and recurring problems on Hamburg–Berlin cited as examples of how unprepared detours can cause big passenger disruption.
- The revised approach promises better operational planning by sequencing works more carefully, strengthening diversion lines before closures, and setting clearer, measurable post‑work performance targets.
- The updated concept is being negotiated with the Bundesverkehrsministerium and will be published once agreed, a move that makes completion of the roughly 40‑route program likely to slip beyond previously discussed 2030s targets.