Overview
- DelayBahn.com’s 2026 review, published November 11, shows some services had alarmingly high failure rates, including ICE 2267 (Karlsruhe→Stuttgart) with a 38.9% cancellation rate, IC 2364 (Stuttgart→Karlsruhe) at 30.9%, ECE 397 (Schleswig→Hamburg) at 26.9%, and the ECE/EC 199 (Zürich→Munich) with 85.6% of trips arriving late.
- Deutsche Bahn refuses to publish comparable route‑level punctuality and cancellation figures, calling such line snapshots “not useful,” and continues to count a long‑distance train as on time if it arrives within six minutes while typically excluding cancelled trips from its official stats.
- DB attributes the problems to network overload at major hubs, ageing signalling and track equipment, hundreds of construction sites and slow‑speed sections, and says DB InfraGO’s planned multi‑year modernization will take time to relieve pressure on operations.
- Fahrgastverband Pro Bahn says the secrecy is unacceptable and demands a legal duty to publish route data plus a stricter punctuality standard like Switzerland’s three‑minute threshold that counts cancellations, a change that would make reliability comparisons and local accountability possible.
- The independent analysis highlights immediate passenger impacts in travel corridors such as Karlsruhe–Stuttgart and the Bodensee–Allgäu route to Munich and raises the prospect that public pressure and media scrutiny could force policy or regulatory moves on transparency and measurement standards.