Strategic area: MORE ROBUST

With the strategic area MORE ROBUST, we have set ourselves the target of expanding capacity in terms of the infrastructure, vehicles and personnel to transport significantly more people and goods with a higher level of quality.

• Despite the Covid-19 restrictions, we have stuck to our course and continued to build at record levels. Of the about 13,000 construction projects, fewer than 1% had to be canceled or postponed. From February to May 2020 alone, more than 850 km of tracks were built, 675 switches and 600,000 tons of gravel were replaced, and work commenced on modernizing about 330 stations. The capital expenditure volume increased correspondingly.
• At the same time, expansion of existing depots and the establishment of new maintenance depots are continuing without restriction. From 2023, we will continue to plan for significant increases in the capacity of our depots in Berlin, Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main, among others, and consistently continue to drive the planning for new depots in Nuremberg and Cottbus forward.
• With the Strong Rail strategy, we have also set out to recruit, qualify and retain about 100,000 new employees in order to make DB Group as a whole MORE ROBUST. For 2020, we had set ourselves the target of attracting about 23,000 new employees (plus young professionals). By means of digital recruitment and compliance with distancing rules, we have been able to continue to drive our staff recruitment forward despite the Covid-19 restrictions, and have already made over 11,460 hires.
• Moreover, we were able to find solidarity mechanisms for our employees so as to minimize the social consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and to enable individuals to work as effectively as possible (Alliance for our railway, Together against Covid-19 and arrangements for working from home).