(Potsdam, June 19, 2019) The Management Board of Deutsche Bahn AG has presented its new Powerful Rail strategy to the Supervisory Board in a day-long extraordinary meeting. In the future, Deutsche Bahn will focus on consistently upgrading its core business. "Germany will only meet its climate targets if we succeed in shifting traffic to rail on a massive scale over the next decade," said DB CEO Dr. Richard Lutz. "Germany is in need of a Powerful Rail: for the climate, for people, for the economy and not least for Europe. DB Group acknowledges the responsibility we bear in society and we are focusing all of our efforts on building a strong rail system." The extraordinary meeting of the Supervisory Board was held in the Kaiserbahnhof in Potsdam and concluded on Tuesday evening.
Late last year, the DB Management Board introduced its Agenda for a Better Railway, which was designed to increase capacities, raise quality and punctuality and improve customer satisfaction. The new overarching strategy, Powerful Rail, will now provide a larger framework that makes clear what DB Group stands for and what direction it will take in the future. The new strategy tackles key transport and climate policy targets of the German Government.
These ambitious goals can only be achieved if Deutsche Bahn, the entire rail industry and policymakers tackle it together. In the coming months, important decisions will have to be made to implement these ambitious projects, including concerning the new Performance and Financing Agreement (Leistungs- und Finanzierungsvereinbarung; LuFV) III that will come into force in 2020. Here, progressively digitalizing Germany's rail network will play a key role, as will building new lines and upgrading existing ones.
Supported by digital technology, DB Group will consistently aim for growth in both passenger and freight transport in the coming years. DB Group will invest tens of billions of euros in new trains and increase train kilometers on track infrastructure by 30%. In addition, more than 100,000 new employees will be hired in the next few years alone. Deutsche Bahn has also advanced toward its goal of using 100% renewable energies and will reach it already in 2038, far ahead of its original goal of 2050. The 173-page "DB Group's overarching strategy: Powerful Rail" will replace the DB 2020 strategy that had been in place since the beginning of the decade.
The aim is to make DB Group more robust, more powerful and more pioneering.
"Our Powerful Rail strategy will provide direction for our actions," said Dr. Richard Lutz. "But of course it is clear that a strong rail network has to be linked with other modes of transport and has to take an international perspective, since our passenger and freight customers' expectations don't stop at our own borders and can't be fulfilled with rail services alone. We will assess our major shareholdings based on how they can contribute to building a powerful rail system. DB Schenker strengthens our European rail freight transport business and is thus an integral part of our Group portfolio."