By: Benjamin  He

With the Euro 2024 men’s soccer tournament happening, fans have been darting in and out of different countries, hoping to keep up with their favorite teams and watch the games. Which would be completely fine, if the German train systems weren’t notorious for their plethora of cancellations, delays, and other adversities, all of which have built up due to years of neglect for the train system. In short, the German train systems are a complete mess.

The crumbling backbone of the transportation is the infamous Deutsche Bahn. The Deutsche Bahn was Germany’s national railway carrier. Already the system is beginning to disintegrate. In Stuttgart, Hungarian fans showed up at the city’s main train station to watch a game on Thursday, only to find that due to a major renovation project, the station had unfortunately been replaced by a giant hole.

It got so bad that some fans were preferring to walk rather than wait for the trains. In Gelsenkirchen, a city in the Ruhr valley, fans from England decided to suck it up and hike the three miles to the city stadium.

The stations weren’t just becoming a problem for the passengers, either. The German national team was to be hosted at the city of Herzogenaurach. The staff at Herzogenaurach stadium were told the players would be arriving on Monday. But Niclas Füllkrug, one of the team’s forwards, who had taken the Deutsche Bahn, arrived on Sunday.

The trains have become such a problem that passengers are now shunted towards wooden tunnels that lead to the cities. But these tunnels are becoming problems too. Many passengers, even after almost completely navigating the tunnels, have found them so disorientating and confusing that they went back in hopes of leaving the train stations sooner.

Additionally, long distance trains, which are now being offered to passengers at a reduced rate, are just as unpredictable. Only 63 percent of the system’s trains reached their destination on time last month, according to Deutsche Bahn. France and Austria’s rates are 87% and 94%, respectively.

Many critics say that the root of a problem was a lack of investment in the years earlier.

“It has long been strategically clear that there is a lack of money,” said Andreas Knie, a professor at the Berlin Social Science Center whose research covers transit and technology. “The sums that should have been invested in the railroads, as a rule of thumb, should have been twice as high as what was actually invested.”

So far, Germany has set aside 40 million euros or around $42.7 billion US dollars to work on the railways.