Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:

It has been well document in a number of press reports that the
service disruptions of 2009/2010 were caused by a lack of rolling
stock, which was in turn caused by a lack of maintenance, which was
in turn caused by a closedown of an important workshop, which had
been ordered by the management to reduce costs, which was in turn
done to transfer higher profits to the owner company DB.

So the root cause of all the problems is the desire to make profit in
the management,

The desire has been to convert the S-Bahn Berlin GmbH into a company
showing comparable efficiency than other S-Bahn Systems in Germany.
Is this a mistake?

It wouldn't be a mistake if it actually had been the management's
desire. Did you actually read what I wrote above?

Yes. But this is not the full story. You forgot the technical problems
existing on a distinct type of EMUs of the S-Bahn, which roots in the
construction, not in their maintennance. And cutting maintenance
facilties to a level showed to be adequate to other S-Bahn systems in
Germany should have worked oerfectly. But the staff brushed the management
when working according to the book.

Even after this cut the S-Bahn Berlin is still quite unefficient.

You should have said: Because of this cut. Without it there wouldn't
have been any service disruptions.

It has been inefficient vefore and still is, or hwo would you call that,
when S-Bahn Berlin needs to employees where one can do the job at other
S-Bahn systems?

The mentality to run something efficient is "disastrous"?

Could you try to address what I said?

I do all the time.

Please tell me then, how Deutsche Bahn manages to do well in other
S-Bahn systems in Germany like Hamburg. Munich or Stuttgart.

Are they?

Yes, they do.

I don't live there and I don't follow the local press. Are
there really no problems there?

It may be not 100% perfect, but all the other systems are well run,
and usually work well and need far less staff per passenger kilomerte,
train kilometre, network length etc.

How to make profit with a company with a lack of
50% in efficiency compared to other ones, when all bidding for the
same tender?

The subsidies are coming in regardless.

Do they?

Yes. And that is why privatisation is pointless.

The amount of suibsidies has not to be a fixum. This is one of the
key results in 15 years experience of tendering rail services in Germany,

I snipped everything else you said, because you never addressed the
problems of privatisation.

There is no problem in privatisation. There is a problem of of
badly run companies, a problem which per definition not bound to
the type of company (public or private). And the Berlin S.Bahn is
such a badly run company.

I can well understand that you snipped all, as you have no arguments
to explain, why the S-Bahn Berlin needs so much more staff to offer
a worse product than elsewhere.


Oliver Schnell