German trains are running after communication outage stranded passengers nationwide
BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s railways were operating largely normally Wednesday following a late-night communications system outage Trains and passengers stranded across the countrybut the main rail operator faced criticism and questions over the chaos.
Trains were abruptly stopped across Germany late Tuesday, with services gradually resuming about two hours later after midnight. Long queues formed at information desks as passengers tried to figure out how to get to their destination and where to spend the night.
The main rail operator said it was offering taxi and hotel vouchers and, if possible, would install trains where passengers could sit while waiting. However, passengers complained about the lack of information.
It was stated that the outage was caused by a problem in the GSM-R digital communication system used for internal communication in the railway network.
Deutsche Bahn, the main federal government-owned rail operator, said trains started running “largely without problems” on Wednesday morning, but isolated service disruptions were possible.
There was no official statement as to what caused the system failure, but German media reported that a faulty software update was suspected rather than sabotage.
Federal Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder told the dpa news agency that if the problem is a problem with hardware components or a software update, Deutsche Bahn must install a system to prevent this situation from happening again.
The breakdown follows years of mounting complaints about train delays and service disruptions.
Deutsche Bahn demonstrates comprehensive, if disruptive, management revision of main roads After years of underinvestment in improving its performance, however, any significant improvement is expected to take time.
The European Union’s most populous country has a railway network totaling 33,400 kilometers (20,750 miles) with 5,400 railway stations.
“The fact that all rail traffic in Germany has come to a halt due to a technical fault means a new decline in the already poor operating quality,” Oliver Krischer, regional transport minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, told dpa.
“There must be emergency mechanisms to prevent such a disaster in the future,” he said. People count on getting to their destination on time, at least by rail.”
