German regulator mandates DB allocate at least 25% of high‑traffic long‑distance rail slots to competitors

The Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) has ruled that DB InfraGo, the infrastructure subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn, must reserve between 25% and 40% of capacity on heavily used long‑distance routes for other rail operators. The agency says the measure should break Deutsche Bahn’s near‑monopoly in German Fernverkehr, lower ticket prices and improve service quality.

The decision follows a complaint from Italy’s private high‑speed operator Italo, which plans to launch services in Germany from spring 2028 on the Munich‑Frankfurt‑Köln‑Dortmund corridor (hourly) and the Munich‑Berlin‑Hamburg corridor (every two hours). Italo will deploy about 30 high‑speed trains for 56 daily trips, investing roughly €3.6 billion.

Deutsche Bahn warns that surrendering lucrative slots could force it to cut less profitable regional connections, which currently fund those services. The regulator’s “competitor clause” applies only where operators run regularly timed (vertaktete) services – at least four trips a day at two‑hour intervals – and only on routes with officially defined capacity limits such as the Munich and Frankfurt nodes. The agency expects the change to benefit passengers, while critics doubt it will improve punctuality given existing network bottlenecks.