The punctuality of Germany’s long-distance trains remained at a low level in May, with 61.3% of ICE and Intercity services arriving on time, according to internal data from state-owned rail operator Deutsche Bahn.<\/p>\n
The figure was down from 62.1% in March and 64.4% in April but remained above the 60% mark, a threshold that was missed several times in 2025 and at the start of this year.<\/p>\n
Deutsche Bahn is maintaining its target of achieving more than 60% punctuality on long-distance services for the whole of 2026. Under the company’s definition, a train is considered delayed if it arrives six minutes or more behind schedule. Cancelled services are not included in the statistics.<\/p>\n
German Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder recently expressed cautious optimism about the outlook.<\/p>\n
“I think we can be satisfied if the figure starts with a six, meaning punctuality above 60%,” Schnieder said, adding that he trusted Deutsche Bahn executive Evelyn Palla’s assessment that the company had “reached the bottom.”<\/p>\n
Germany’s state-owned rail operator has struggled with poor punctuality for years, with performance deteriorating particularly sharply at the start of 2026.<\/p>\n
The company has attributed the problems to ageing infrastructure, extensive construction work across the rail network and severe winter weather.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The punctuality of Germany’s long-distance trains remained at a low level in May, with 61.3% of ICE and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[28158,11791,5,28160,28161,28159],"class_list":["post-28533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-cologne-central-station","tag-deutsche-bahn","tag-germany","tag-intercity-services","tag-punctuality","tag-rail-operator"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}