Despite Corona, the chaos on the train and airports is not fate, but multiple failures. And during the holiday season, the situation with horrendous train delays and thousands of flight cancellations will not improve. And the state makes everything even more chaotic with nonsensical rules and stands by and does nothing.
After the lockdown is before the gridlock. The major modes of transport in the Federal Republic, the plane, the train and the road, do not want to succeed in returning to the normality of a mobile society. With unprecedented humility, the head of Deutsche Bahn and the CEO of Lufthansa now appeared in front of their customers to apologize. Richard Lutz: “Believe me: I’m suffering like a dog.” Carsten Spohr: “We can only apologize to you and want to be completely honest: In the coming weeks, the number of passengers, whether vacation or business trips, will continue to increase the situation will hardly improve in the short term.”
1. The airport operators leave the airlines and their customers hanging. In the wake of the Corona crisis, bus drivers, porters and other ground staff were laid off, which is now proving to be short-sighted. According to the German Economic Institute, there is a shortage of 7,200 air and ground staff at the airports. The word passenger handling used to sound like a threat, today it sounds like an unfulfillable longing.
2. The state makes it even more complicated because air traffic control training takes several years. In addition, air traffic controllers only receive approval for a specific area of the sky, so it is not possible to flexibly step in for the colleague who has failed. Franz Kafka apparently wrote the duty rosters.
3. The state is great at issuing new safety regulations. No liquids from 100 ml. No nail files. No this and no that. The only thing he doesn’t want to do is control this granularity. The long queues at the security check are now to be fought with an army of Turkish guest workers.
4. Switching to the train is only an alternative for masochists. The trains are just as full as the cattle trucks from Tönnies. Except that the cattle trucks are on time.
In long-distance traffic, just 62 percent of the trains reached their destination on time in May. Bahn boss Richard Lutz has already capitulated. He has been considering his goal of 80 percent for the year as a whole to be unrealistic since May.
In a 50-page report in November 2021, the Federal Court of Audit attested increased incompetence to the railway management:
The current system provides false incentives. “
In their distress, they appear in front of the public with the same promises, ranging from investment programs worth billions to “smart construction site management”. But none of them has touched the reality that can be experienced.
Karl-Peter Naumann from the Pro Bahn passenger association speaks the truth: “The infrastructure is too old and there is not enough of it. One drove for 40 years on wear and tear. “
Conclusion: The self-proclaimed “progress coalition” would now actually be required to eliminate the reform backlog of the past decades . In other words, politics is the art of solving problems that would not have arisen without it.
