Deutsche Bahn


italic=no is a German railway company. Headquartered in Berlin, it is a private joint-stock company, with the Federal Republic of Germany being its single shareholder.
italic=no describes itself as the second-largest transport company in the world, after the German postal and logistics company italic=no / DHL, and is the largest railway operator and infrastructure owner in Europe. Deutsche Bahn was the largest railway company in the world by revenue in 2015. It carries about two billion passengers annually.
The group is divided into several companies, including DB Fernverkehr, DB Regio and DB Cargo. The Group subsidiary DB Netz also operates large parts of the German railway infrastructure and thus the largest rail network in Europe.
In rail transport, the company generates about half of its total revenue. The other half of the operating business comprises the further transport and logistics business as well as various service providers. The company generates part of its sales through public transport contracts; support will also be provided for maintenance and expansion of the infrastructure.
Passenger transport companies carried around 4.4 billion passengers in 2016 with their trains and buses. In 2016 DB logistics companies transported 277 million tons of goods in rail freight transport.

Company profile

The Deutsche Bahn Group is divided into various organizational units that perform their tasks with subsidiaries.

Personenverkehr

DB Personenverkehr is the group that manages passenger travel within Germany. Originally called italic=no, this group is responsible for the managing, servicing and running of German passenger services. This group is divided into three business areas: italic=no, italic=no and Arriva.

Arriva

italic=no placed a bid in May 2010 for the UK-based transport company Arriva. Arriva runs bus and rail companies in 12 European countries. The merger was approved by the European Commission in August 2010, subject to DB divesting Arriva services in Germany. The merger became effective on 27 August 2010.
Services in the UK formerly run as italic=no are now operated by a new subdivision of the company, Arriva UK Trains. It operates the Chiltern Railways, and CrossCountry franchises as well as open-access operator Grand Central. It also operates the London Overground concession as Arriva Rail London. The former Tyne & Wear Metro operations, already started by DB Regio UK, ended in 2017, while Arriva Trains Wales services passed to Transport for Wales in 2018.

DB Fernverkehr

italic=no is a semi-independent division of italic=no that operates long-distance passenger trains in Germany. It was founded in 1999 in the second stage of the privatisation of German Federal Railways under the name of italic=no and renamed in 2003. /Doppelstock long distance Intercity Train also from DB Fernverkehr at Köln Hbf.
italic=no operates all InterCityExpress and InterCity trains in Germany as well as in some neighboring countries and several EuroCity and EuroCityExpress trains throughout Europe. Unlike its sister companies italic=no and italic=no, italic=no still holds a de facto monopoly in its segment of the market as it operates hundreds of trains per day, while all competitors' long-distance services combined amount to no more than 10–15 trains per day.
Additionally italic=no operates a few long-distance coach services throughout Germany, called italic=no.

DB Regio

AG is the subsidiary of italic=no that operates passenger trains on short and medium distances in Germany. Unlike its long-distance counterpart, italic=no, it does not operate trains on its own account. Traffic is ordered and paid for by the italic=no or their respective italic=no.
Some states have awarded long-term contracts to italic=no, in others, DB Regio's operations are decreasing, in North Rhine-Westphalia, their market share is expected to be lower than 50%.
italic=no rail services are divided into several regional companies:
The bus services consist of 25 bus companies, which have subsidiary companies themselves.

Infrastructure

DB Netze

The infrastructure division is divided into the DB Netz, DB Station&Service and DB Energie business units.

DB Engineering&Consulting

DB Engineering & Consulting, which is responsible for construction supervision, construction planning and maintenance, is also assigned to this department without being part of a business area.
Via its subsidiary DB Engineering&Consulting, DB signed a memorandum of understanding with Iranian rail operator Bonyad Eastern Railways in May 2017 and shortly after a consulting contract with Islamic Republic of Iran Railways; both projects were abandoned after the United States imposed new sanctions against Iran and said firms doing business with Iran would be barred from doing business with the United States.
The California High-Speed Rail Authority's board approved on November 15, 2017 an early train operator contract with DB Engineering & Consulting USA. The firm is the U.S. arm of Deutsche Bahn AG. As early train operator, DB Engineering & Consulting will assist CHSRA with planning, designing and implementing the state's high-speed rail program.
In Germany, DB E&C acts as a planning office and in construction supervision for Deutsche Bahn construction sites.

Logistics

The Transport and Logistics division acted in the market with the business units DB Schenker Logistics and DB Schenker Rail, which were combined under the umbrella of DB Schenker, and the Intermodal division, which operates in combined transport. In 2016, rail freight transport was separated from logistics and DB Schenker Rail was renamed DB Cargo.

Foreign firms

DB also has interests abroad, owning the United Kingdom's largest rail freight operator, DB Cargo UK, which also operates the British Royal Train and also has interests in Eastern Europe. It is possible to obtain train times for any journey in Europe from italic=no's website.
Trans-Eurasia Logistics is a joint venture with Russian Railways that operates container freight trains between Germany and China via Russia.

Key persons

Board of directors

While the railway network in Germany dates back to 1835 when the first tracks were laid on a route between Nuremberg and italic=no, italic=no has been a relatively recent development in German railway history. On January 1, 1994, italic=no and italic=no were merged to form one company, and so, they became italic=no. At the same time, italic=no adopted its current logo and DB abbreviation. italic=no modernised the logo and typographer italic=no designed a new corporate font known as DB Type. When Deutsche Bahn was formed in January 1994, it became a joint stock-company, and were designed to operate the railways of both the former East and West Germany after unification in October 1990 as a single, uniform, and private company. There are three main periods of development in this unified German railway: its formation, its early years, and the period from 1999 to the present.
Originally, DBAG had its headquarters in italic=no but moved to italic=no in central Berlin in 1996, where it occupies a 26-storey office tower designed by italic=no at the eastern end of the Sony Center and named italic=no. As the lease was to expire in 2010, DB had announced plans to relocate to italic=no, and in 2007 a proposal for a new headquarters by 3XN Architects won an architectural competition which also included Foster + Partners, Dominique Perrault and italic=no. However, these plans were put on hold due to the financial crisis of 2008, and the italic=no lease was extended. Construction of the new headquarters building was started in 2017 under the title ":de:Cube_Berlin|Cube Berlin" according to the designs by 3XN. Finished in February 2020, the Cube will house the legal offices of Deutsche Bahn, but not become the main headquarters.

1999 to present

The second step of the italic=no was carried out in 1999. All rolling stock, track, personnel, and real assets were divided between the holdial subsidiaries of DBAG: italic=no. This new organisational scheme was introduced not least to implement European Community directive 91/440/EEC that demands access to railway systems free of discrimination.
In December 2007, DB reorganised again, bringing all passenger services into its italic=no arm, logistics under italic=no and infrastructure and operations under italic=no.
The DB is owned by the Federal Republic. By the Constitution, the Federal Republic is required to retain a majority of the infrastructure stocks.
In 2008, it was agreed to "float" a portion of the business, meaning an end to the 100% share the German Federal Republic had in it, with a plan that 25% of the overall share would be sold to the private sector. However the onset of the financial crisis of 2007–08 saw this cancelled.
In 2014, the Jewish community of Thessaloniki demanded that the italic=no, which is the successor of the italic=no, should reimburse the heirs of Greek Holocaust victims of Thessaloniki for train fares that they were forced to pay for their deportation from Thessaloniki to italic=no and Treblinka between March and August 1943.
In June 2018 controversy grew in the United Kingdom over widespread cancellations of railway services and numerous delayed services operated by Deutsche Bahn in Britain, under its Northern brand. This resulted in Britain's Minister of Transport, Chris Grayling, setting up an enquiry into whether the Deutsche Bahn subsidiary had breached its contractual agreement to provide railway services in the north of England. He warned that if the company was found to be in breach of its contractual agreements it could be banned from running railway services in the United Kingdom.

Logo history

Structure and subsidiaries

Trains in Germany are classified by their stopping pattern:
Train categories no longer used include:
In the early days of DBAG, the most basic train categories, which were in use since the early days of rail travel in Germany, were also used:
There are several other operators in Germany which sometimes offer other categories, also, a local transport authority or tariff associations might brand the trains in a different way than DB does. For example, in the Nuremberg region, RE and RB trains are not differentiated, but called R instead. In some regions, such as italic=no, private operators do use the RE and RB labels, in others, such as Saxony, they do not. In online and print information systems of DB, private trains officially labelled RB and RE by their operators, might get a different label, for example "ABR" for trains operated by Abellio, though on platforms, trains and maps or timetables issued by the local transport authority overseeing regional train services, these abbreviations usually do not appear.

Codeshare agreements

In conjunction with Emirates, China Airlines, TAM Airlines, Turkish Airlines, Biman Bangladesh Airlines, and italic=no, italic=no operates the AIRail Service between Frankfurt Airport and Köln Hauptbahnhof/Bonn Hauptbahnhof, italic=no, italic=no, Hamburg, Hanover, italic=no, Munich, Nuremberg, and italic=no. italic=no has the IATA designator 2A.

Tickets

DB offers two different pricing models:
Local trains also accept tickets issued by local transport associations, which can also be used on buses, trams, and U-Bahn trains.
DB offers concessionary fares with the BahnCard, which is available as BahnCard 25, BahnCard 50, and BahnCard 100.
Other special tickets, such as Interrail or the Länder-Tickets, give unlimited journeys on local trains and in many transport associations within a state, are also available. These Länder-Tickets offer group tickets, where up to five people can travel on a single ticket.