German railways to publish punctuality scores

Jul 28, 2011, 11:50 GMT

Berlin - German trains have a reputation for punctuality. Now the country's main rail company wants the world to be able to judge for itself.

Starting in September, state-owned Deutsche Bahn will begin to post punctuality rates online, company chief Ruediger Grube said on Thursday.

'We want to allow ourselves to be assessed according to our actual service,' he said.

The online listings will include combined and separate tallies of punctuality for long-distance and commuter trains. Until now, Deutsche Bahn has only provided average punctuality figures for entire years.

Complaints about train service are common in Germany, with punctuality only one of the issues. In several cases over the last year, customers have received money back when air conditioning broke on trains - on which the windows don't open - during hot days.

The service, seen by many Germans as a national institution rather than a commercial company, has also had several public relations problems when conductors have thrown underage riders off trains for not having tickets, sometimes leaving them stranded kilometres from their homes.

The announcement came as the company listed its half-yearly business report, noting a rise of 1.9 per cent in ridership to 973 million for January to June of 2011, versus the same period for 2010.

Profits for the same period were 648 million euros (925.9 million dollars), 65 per cent more than in the 2010 period.