German trains running after communication outage but questions remain

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s railway was running largely as normal Wednesday after a late-night communication system outage left trains and travelers stranded around the country, but the main rail operator faced criticism and questions over the chaos.

Trains were halted abruptly across Germany late Tuesday because of a problem with the GSM-R digital communication system used for internal communication on the railway network. Service resumed after about two hours, during which long lines formed at information desks.

The main railway operator, federal government-owned Deutsche Bahn, said trains started running “largely seamlessly” Wednesday morning, though there may be isolated service reductions.

The cause of the failure has not been disclosed.

The breakdown came after years of increasingly frequent complaints about train delays and service interruptions.

Deutsche Bahn is conducting thorough but disruptive overhauls of major routes after years of underinvestment in a bid to improve its performance.

“That all rail traffic in Germany comes to a halt because of a technical defect is a new low in already poor operating quality,” Oliver Krischer, the regional transport minister in North Rhine-Westphalia state, Germany’s most populous, told news agency dpa.

He said there need to be “emergency mechanisms that prevent such a disaster in the future. People rely on reaching their destination at least somewhat punctually by rail.”