German railway orders 30 high speed trains for US$1.1B
by The Associated Press
The new trains from Siemens will go into service from 2022
BERLIN — Germany’s national railway operator is ordering 30 new high-speed trains from industrial conglomerate Siemens for some 1 billion euros (US$1.1 billion).
State-owned Deutsche Bahn said July 15 that the new ICE trains will go into service from 2022, initially between the populous western North Rhine-Westphalia region and Munich.
The company said the order means that its long-distance fleet will expand by 20% in the coming years. It also has an option to buy 60 more high-speed trains.
“Even though demand declined strongly because of the coronavirus pandemic, in the longer term everything speaks for climate-friendly railways,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a statement. “So we are staying on a course of growth and investment.”
Deutsche Bahn cut long-distance ticket prices at the beginning of this year when the German government reduced value-added tax on train tickets as part of a package of measures aimed at combating climate change. The government cut all VAT rates on July 1 for six months as part of a stimulus package to boost the economy after the coronavirus shutdown, which resulted in another reduction in ticket prices.
