The track is one of the 18 bottlenecks with capacity problems identified under the Bundesschienenwegeausbaugesetz (Federal Railway Infrastructure Development Act) of 1993.

The 45 km of line between Markt Schwaben and Ampfing is only single track despite substantial passenger and freight traffic.

[2] Ampfing station was redesigned as part of this project and received two new exterior platforms and was made fully accessible for the disabled.

In addition, the entire upgraded section has been rebuilt with flying junctions to remove at grade crossings; some of this work was done years ago.

Overall, this makes the Markt Schwaben–Mühldorf section (excluding the approximately 8 km long section between Ampfing and Altmühldorf) one of the busiest single-track lines in Germany: it now carries about 3 million tonnes, more than 1 percent of Germany's freight transported by rail; by 2015 an estimated 2 percent rail freight are carried on this single-track, non-electrified line.

This realignment, like the long-planned four-track upgrade to Markt Schwaben and the connection from the New Munich Trade Fair via an S-Bahn link, has apparently not been pursued since 2010.

[4][5] However, the route from Mühldorf to Munich via the so-called Walpertskirchener Spange (Walpertskirchen link) directly to Munich Airport is still planned to greatly improve transport links, especially from eastern and south-eastern Bavaria and Upper Austria and the state of Salzburg to the airport.

The entire Munich–Mühldorf–Freilassing route would be used as an alternative to the Munich–Rosenheim and Rosenheim–Salzburg lines, especially to deal with the expected volume of traffic after the completion of the Brenner Base Tunnel.

The line is part of the Magistrale for Europe, which is almost identical with the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T) project No.

Moreover, the industrial enterprises of the Bavarian Chemical Triangle have demanded for quite some time an upgrade of the outdated and congested railway lines.