Overview
- Deutsche Bahn officially commissioned the expanded Nuremberg–Bamberg section on September 19, with trains running on the new layout since September 9.
- The more than 50-kilometer stretch now offers four tracks to remove a key bottleneck and carries about 350 trains per day across ICE, regional and S-Bahn services.
- Roughly €2 billion in funding came from the federal government, the state of Bavaria, local municipalities and Deutsche Bahn.
- The work forms part of the VDE 8 program linking Nuremberg via Erfurt and Leipzig to Berlin, as ICE travel between Munich and Berlin has grown to roughly three to three-and-a-half times 2017 levels.
- Bavarian transport minister Christian Bernreiter is urging completion of remaining gaps near Bamberg and Fürth and calling for higher line speeds to unlock full performance gains.