Deutsche Bahn faces infrastructure funds gap

German national rail operator Deutsche Bahn doesn’t have enough money to complete 46 high-priority planned construction projects, a media report said on Friday.

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Most of these additions and extensions to the railway network were scheduled to be finished by 2015, but Deutsche Bahn head Rüdiger Grube recently presented parliament with a paper that explains current financing can’t guarantee the work will be finished until 2025, daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.

The company will need €1.8 billion yearly until 2025 to realise the new infrastructure projects, the paper said. But the government currently has only €1.16 billion budgeted per year after 2011.

Head of the parliamentary transportation committee Winfried Hermann told Süddeutsche Zeitung that Deutsche Bahn needs a total of €23 billion, adding that Transportation Minister Peter Ramsauer urgently needs to reprioritise and abandon current prestige projects such as the new Stuttgart train station.

But Grube disagreed.

“To have more on the wish list than you get in the end is normal,” he told the paper.