GERMANY: A court has rejected Deutsche Bahn’s argument that the financial responsibility for cost overruns on the Stuttgart 21 project should be shared with its partners, which include the Land of Baden-Württemberg, the Stuttgart regional authority, Stuttgart city council and Stuttgart airport.
When launched in 2010, the project to remodel the local rail network, which includes 57 km of new line and a rebuilt Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof with underground platforms, was expected to cost €4·1bn.
It has since undergone steady cost increases, and is now projected to cost more than €11bn. It was originally expected to be completed in 2019, but has been continually delayed and partial opening is now to take place in December 2026 with full completion in 2027.
DB has long unsuccessfully argued that the cost increases should be shared between the project partners, first taking its case to court in 2016. After losing its argument in a Stuttgart court in 2024, DB sought an appeal. This was denied by Baden-Württemberg’s administrative court on August 5.
After the ruling DB said it was considering the legal consequences; while the decision of the administrative court cannot be appealed, taking a case to the federal constitutional court is in theory possible.
Responses
In a joint statement, passenger and freight industry groups Mofair and Die Güterbahnen said that neither the regular transport budget nor Germany’s special infrastructure fund should be used to cover overruns for what they described as a ‘miscalculated one-off’ scheme.
‘Stuttgart 21 was never a normal railway project,’ they said, ‘rather an atypically funded real-estate scheme, accompanied closely politically through to the Federal Chancellery’.
Despite having argued for the overruns to be shared, DB said it would be able to cover the entire cost of Stuttgart 21 from its own budgets. It said there were ‘no direct consequences for ticket prices, or the current financial situation of Deutsche Bahn or other projects’.
