New cars for the Berlin subway are significantly delayed

A few days ago Berlin was the center of the railway world. Every two years, international train manufacturers present their inventions at Innotrans, the world’s most important railway trade fair. This time there was a small, yellow rectangle in the middle: the latest generation of subway cars for Berlin – with Swiss DNA, because the cars are built by Stadler Rail. “Everyone look forward to it, it’s going to be really good,” promised Rolf Erfurt, board member of Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG), the largest local transport company in Germany.

Berliners have been looking forward to these cars for a long time. Much longer than you would like: Stadler is significantly behind on delivery. In 2020, the Swiss received the largest order in the history of the BVG. The entire framework agreement covers the delivery of up to 1,500 cars for 3 billion euros.

Stadler is now threatened with contractual penalties

The first tranche includes 376 cars for 1.2 billion euros. They should have rolled through the subway tunnels from 2022. But Berlin is still waiting for that today. The delay is exacerbating the problems of the lifeline of Germany’s largest city, which transports 530 million passengers a year. The failures are increasing. In September, the BVG thinned out the timetable in order to stabilize the cycle. The trains are old and vulnerable, and the new rolling stock is sorely missed.

The delay could have financial repercussions for Stadler: “Of course, with a contract of this size, contractual penalties for delayed deliveries are also an issue,” the BVG said upon request. There is still a lot to do: There are currently only three Stadler vehicles in test operation; The findings are incorporated into series production. According to the BVG, more vehicles are expected from spring 2025, but initially only for tests and driver training.

 

For Stadler Rail, the delay is no trivial matter. The Berlin order is one of the company’s large, important orders, says Bernd Laux from Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB). The framework agreement represents more than 10 percent of the rail vehicle manufacturer’s order book from Bussnang. “It is a prestigious order in a very competitive market that is home to the two largest competitors,” says analyst Laux, referring to Siemens and Alstom.

But how could the Stadler company, which is otherwise considered reliable, get into such trouble in Berlin? One role is played by the fact that subway cars are always custom-made for the respective rail network, for example with regard to tunnel sizes, curve radii and platform lengths. And in Berlin there are double standards because there are actually two subways: one with small cars and one with larger cars, although these larger cars are also small by international standards.

In times of need, Berliners get creative

There are historical reasons for this. The so-called small profile goes back to a development by the companies Siemens and AEG around 130 years ago – designed for demonstration purposes for the then Kaiser Wilhelm II (who once knocked his spiked helmet off his head while getting into the small car). These cars run on four of the nine Berlin subway lines. The large profile was created around 100 years ago by resolution of the Berlin Senate. Since then, two types of wagons have been required, which cannot be easily exchanged despite having identical track widths.

There is a significant shortage of vehicles, especially for large profiles, says Markus Hecht, an expert on rail vehicles at the Technical University (TU) in Berlin. As a remedy, “flower boards” are already being installed on small cars: boards on the door areas in order to bridge the distance to the platform on the large-profile routes and thus strengthen the cars.

“This has only happened twice before in history, in 1920 and 1946,” says Hecht. Cars from the 1960s are also still in use, which reduces reliability. Staff shortages and high levels of sickness also contribute to the absences.

 

The replacement by Stadler would be all the more valuable – and theoretically it shouldn’t have been so difficult: “The cars ordered from Stadler are standard systems without high technical requirements,” says TU expert Hecht. All the more so since they were ordered without air conditioning. “These vehicles are also less complex than other subways that Stadler has already built, for example for Glasgow.” On top of that, Stadler has already developed a series of cars for the Berlin small profile; it has been in operation since 2015.

“The new subway is unfortunately a Corona child”

There was great joy when we were awarded the new contract in 2019. It will be processed at the Berlin-Pankow location, where 1,500 employees are employed, and is currently the largest order there. However, a lawsuit filed by the defeated competitor Alstom against the outcome of the tender delayed the start of the work.

This lawsuit meant that Stadler was only able to get started in spring 2020 – exactly when the corona pandemic broke out. “Unfortunately, the new subway is a real Corona child,” Stadler explains when asked about Berlin’s problems: The engineers couldn’t communicate well because they were working from home. Supply chains were later broken by the Ukraine war. According to Stadler, there are still delivery bottlenecks today, for example for small parts for interior work.

Nevertheless, one can ask whether Stadler has planned robustly enough. “Generally speaking, delays in the delivery of rolling stock are often due to errors in project management and management, for example in timely procurement,” says Markus Hecht from TU Berlin. Other manufacturers could currently deliver subways on time.

 

Bernd Laux from ZKB has a certain understanding of Stadler’s material problems: It is true that the distortions in the supply chains in railway technology have not yet been completely resolved, unlike in large parts of the rest of the industry. “There are still isolated bottlenecks in the industry,” says Laux. This is due, for example, to the generally high order intake – Stadler Rail also generally has very good prospects – as well as to individual events such as the flood damage to aluminum parts supplier Constellium in Valais.

Stadler: We didn’t overextend ourselves

But it’s not just the hardware that’s a problem. Even with the software, not everything runs smoothly, for example for the controls. The trains should drive semi-autonomously and the compositions should be able to be put together very flexibly, which makes the digital communication of the systems challenging. Not everything works properly there, says Stadler.

Nevertheless, they are combative: “Stadler has not overextended itself with the BVG order,” explains the rail vehicle manufacturer, known for high quality at high prices. The issues are being worked on together with the BVG.

The transport companies have no other choice. With the large order, they put a lot of eggs in one basket because their hodgepodge of vehicle types was becoming a burden. Instead of buying a hundred cars here and a hundred cars there, a long-term, homogeneous fleet should be built, as the BVG manager Erfurt said at Innotrans. They want to be “future-proof”. The future in Berlin has not yet begun.