Germany’s Flixtrain to double train services

Specialising in bus travel, Flix has been expanding its low-cost rail offering in Germany since 2018.

Publicly-owned Deutsche Bahn has meanwhile been unable to restore punctuality on long-distance services and is struggling under debt and the consequences of years of underinvestment.

“We are going to tap into this tremendous market potential in Germany and firmly establish ourselves as the second major operator,” said a spokesman for the Munich-based group, confirming a report in Spiegel magazine.

By 2027, FlixTrain plans to double the number of journeys between Berlin and Leipzig, and between Hamburg and Cologne, and to increase services between the capital and Hamburg by one third, with up to 10 trips per day in each direction.

From 2028 onward, “a high-frequency network linking all major German cities with one another” will be rolled out, the group added.

A spokesman for the transport ministry told AFP that it “welcomes any initiative aimed at strengthening competition on the railways”.

To modernise Germany’s creaking rail infrastructure, the government announced last spring that it would invest more than one hundred billion euros over the coming years.

These investments “will lead to a more stable and, above all, more digitalised network,” the Flix spokesman stressed.

However, the business model of the young company, created in 2018, is still far from breaking even.

FlixTrain will not generate profits “for a few more years” in Germany, the group’s co-founder and CEO, Andre Schwaemmlein, said in November.

Deutsche Bahn still accounts for around 90 percent of long-distance rail services in Germany, according to Spiegel magazine.

A third player is also seeking to enter the German market: Italian operator Italo, which plans to launch its high-speed trains in the country in 2028, subject to approval from the federal network operator.