Transport in Germany

Air travel is used for greater distances within Germany but faces competition from the state-owned Deutsche Bahn's rail network.

[1] Since German reunification substantial effort has been made to improve and expand transport infrastructure in what was formerly East Germany.

Infrastructure, which was further hampered by the havoc wars and scorched earth policies as well as reparations wrought, had to be adjusted and upgraded with each of those shifts.

The volume of traffic in Germany, especially goods transportation, is at a very high level due to its central location in Europe.

In the past few decades, much of the freight traffic shifted from rail to road, which led the Federal Government to introduce a motor toll for trucks in 2005.

Intercity bus service within Germany fell out of favour as post-war prosperity increased, and became almost extinct when legislation was introduced in the 1980s to protect the national railway.

The Autobahn network had a total length of about 12,996 kilometres (8,075 mi) in 2016,[6] which ranks it among the most dense and longest systems in the world.

Only federally built controlled-access highways meeting certain construction standards including at least two lanes per direction are called "Bundesautobahn".

[7] German autobahns are still toll-free for light vehicles, but on 1 January 2005, a blanket mandatory toll on heavy trucks was introduced.

Railway subsidies amounted to €17.0 billion in 2014[9] and there are significant differences between the financing of long-distance and short-distance (or local) trains in Germany.

While the high speed network is not as dense as those of France or Spain, ICE or slightly slower (max.

The fastest high-speed train operated by Deutsche Bahn, the InterCityExpress or ICE connects major German and neighbouring international centres such as Zürich, Vienna, Copenhagen, Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels.

The German government on 13 February 2018 announced plans to make public transportation free as a means to reduce road traffic and decrease air pollution to EU-mandated levels.

[11] The new policy will be put to the test by the end of the year in the cities of Bonn, Essen, Herrenberg, Reutlingen and Mannheim.

[12] Issues remain concerning the costs of such a move as ticket sales for public transportation constitute a major source of income for cities.

[13][needs update] While Germany and most of contiguous Europe use 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge, differences in signalling, rules and regulations, electrification voltages, etc.

These obstacles are slowly being overcome, with international (in- and outgoing) and transit (through) traffic being responsible for a large part of the recent uptake in rail freight volume.

Berlin and Hamburg (as well as the then independent city of Schöneberg whose lone subway line is today's line 4 of the Berlin U-Bahn) began building their networks before World War I whereas Nuremberg and Munich - despite earlier attempts in the 1930s and 1940s - only opened their networks in the 1970s (in time for the 1972 Summer Olympics in the case of Munich).

To some extent this confusion was deliberate at the time of the opening of the Stadtbahn networks, as it was seen at the time to be more desirable to have a "proper" U-Bahn system than a "mere" tram system and many cities which embarked on Stadtbahn building projects did so with the official goal of eventually converting the entire network to U-Bahn standards.

Many West German cities abandoned their previous tram systems in the 1960s and 1970s while others upgraded them to "Stadtbahn" (~light rail) standard, often including underground sections.

While there have been attempts to (re)-establish tram systems in many cities that formerly had them (for example Aachen, Kiel, Hamburg) as well as in some cities that never had them, but are comparatively close to a city that does (for example Erlangen, Wolfsburg), only a handful of such proposals have come to fruition since World War II - the Saarbahn (trams defunct in 1965; Saarbahn established in 1997) in Saarbrücken, Heilbronn Stadtbahn (defunct in 1955, re-established as an extension of Stadtbahn Karlsruhe in 1998) and a few extensions across the border - the Strasbourg tramway to Kehl and the Trams in Basel to Weil am Rhein.

Short distances and the extensive network of motorways and railways make airplanes uncompetitive for travel within Germany.

[14] However, the advent of new faster rail lines often leads to cuts in service by the airlines or even total abandonment of routes like Frankfurt-Cologne, Berlin-Hannover or Berlin-Hamburg.

Germany's second-largest airline was Air Berlin, which also operated a network of domestic and European destinations with a focus on leisure routes as well as some long-haul services.

Intercontinental long-haul routes are operated to and from the airports in Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Cologne/Bonn, Hamburg and Stuttgart.

[18] Pipelines: oil 2,400 km (2013)[19] Ports and harbours: Berlin, Bonn, Brake, Bremen, Bremerhaven, Cologne, Dortmund, Dresden, Duisburg, Emden, Fürth, Hamburg, Karlsruhe, Kiel, Lübeck, Magdeburg, Mannheim, Nuremberg, Oldenburg, Rostock, Stuttgart, Wilhelmshaven The port of Hamburg is the largest sea-harbour in Germany and ranks #3 in Europe (after Rotterdam and Antwerpen), #17 worldwide (2016), in total container traffic.

Rail ferries operate across the Fehmahrnbelt, from Rostock to Sweden (both carrying passenger trains) and from the Mukran port in Sassnitz on the island of Rügen to numerous Baltic Sea destinations (freight only).