Reopening rural railways offers an important spectrum of benefits, according to a study commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development & Building. These range from positive effects on land use to advantages for local and regional economies, transport, the environment and society.
The Räumliche Effekte reaktivierter Schienenstrecken im ländlichen Raum (Structural Effects of Reactivated Rail Routes in Rural Areas) study was conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers WPG, and looked in detail at six reopening projects in rural areas, three of which were successful and three of which have not yet come to fruition.
The authors identified 80 different outcomes and effects from reopening projects. Of these, 28 related to the local or regional economy, and another 28 were related to transport. A further 12 were concerned with spatial development or land use and planning, seven were impacts on the environment and five were societal.
Noting that the size of Germany’s rail network had shrunk from 46 400 km in 1950 to 39 089 km in 2021, with 5 148 km closed since the railway reforms of 1994, the report says that 933 km were reactivated for passenger traffic between 1994 and 2020, with a further 364 km reopened for freight. It points out that Deutsche Bahn undertook in 2019 not to close any more lines and that it set up a taskforce to examine possible reopening schemes.
Many reopening projects were more successful than expected, the authors say. They cite the example of the Schönbuchbahn near Stuttgart in Baden-Württemberg where passenger trains were reinstated in 1996; by 2000 the service was carrying 6 000 passengers a day compared with a forecast of just 2 500.
Funding for reopening projects is available from various sources including the Gemeindeverkehrsfinanzierungsgesetz (Community Transport Finance Act), the report says. It notes that the criteria used to establish a standardised cost:benefit analysis were due to be updated by the end of 2021 in order to take account of environmental concerns, climate change and health.
The routes analysed for the study were: