BERLIN (AP) — One of the world’s busiest rail lines GermanyThe Frankfurt-Mannheim railway line, a 70-kilometer (45-mile) stretch between Frankfurt and Mannheim, will be closed for five months from Monday as part of an effort to restructure a network notoriously prone to disruptions.
State rail operator Deutsche Bahn is planning to close the line until December 14 while it overhauls the track, stations and other infrastructure. The section is part of the main north-south route between Hamburg and Cologne and Stuttgart and Basel in Switzerland, and more than 300 trains run through it every day, often causing delays with knock-on effects on other parts of the line.
During the closure, all regional trains on the route will be replaced by buses and long-distance services will be diverted to slower routes.
The 1.3 billion euro ($1.4 billion) upgrade is supposed to be the start of a broader plan to modernize 40 sections of railway by 2030 and improve the reliability of a network that often falls short of expectations. Over the past month, it has frustrated soccer fans. Germany’s European Championshipswhich ended on Sunday.
Deutsche Bahn said on Friday that punctuality during the games had been “mixed”, adding that “we made the best use of the rail system but an outdated and overloaded infrastructure limited the possibilities”.
Transport Minister Volker Vissing said starting plans for the renovations before the football tournament would cause further disruption.
“I inherited an ageing rail infrastructure in which my predecessors underinvested for decades,” Vissing, who took over as transport minister at the end of 2021, told German broadcaster Deutschlandfunk on Monday. “We are going to invest huge, historic amounts of money in the railways.”
