Three days after the freezing rain The Berlin tram is still in a state of emergency. “All our forces are out there, we are working flat out to eliminate it,” assures a press spokeswoman for the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG).
On Monday night, freezing rain covered the overhead lines like a cloak and brought the entire tram fleet in the capital to a standstill. Now the network is being removed from the crust meter by meter by BVG employees standing on crane trucks using manual tools. There are 22 tram lines covering 200 kilometers, but only three dedicated crane vehicles. That takes time.
In nearby Potsdam and Dresden, the tram continued to run, despite the freezing rain. And there were hardly any restrictions on Deutsche Bahn’s regional transport either. And the criticism is increasing that the spoiled capital isn’t getting it together again. “It cannot be that all tram traffic is canceled,” complains Berlin mobility researcher Andreas Knie. “The BVG should have taken precautions; that was also possible in Potsdam.”
Christian Böttger, university professor for transport and railways in Berlin, sees it similarly. BVG chairman Henrik Falk always talks about big visions, “but making your vehicles winter-proof should come first,” says Böttger.
Frozen from one minute to the next
40 cars that were traveling during the night had to stop on the open road. It is said that the overhead lines froze from one minute to the next. Are the trams in Potsdam more robust or was Brandenburg’s capital simply lucky because the weather there was actually a little milder than in neighboring Berlin? There are reports from Dresden that a special vehicle is lubricating the overhead lines with glycerin.
The manual de-icing efforts had progressed so far on Wednesday that some of the routes were passable again. But there are still restrictions. The weather doesn’t make the work any easier, The frost will last for the next few days to. Those hardest hit are the people in the outskirts of eastern Berlin. The BVG uses buses there as a rail replacement service.
When asked whether there were faster and better options for de-icing, the BVG spokeswoman replied: “It is completely clear that we will now prepare ourselves differently for harsh winters.” Why hasn’t this happened already? “All of our drivers say they have never experienced anything like this in 40 years,” says the spokeswoman. It was a very unusual combination of frost and moisture.
Vienna as a model
As a shining example of one that works Tram transport applies to Vienna – although there was also freezing rain recently in the Austrian capital. Call to the press office of Wiener Linien: From November to March, tracks, switches, operating areas and selected stops will be cleared and gritted, the press spokesman said. At low temperatures, the point heaters would be activated. In the event of freezing rain, the overhead lines would be used continuously and thus kept free of ice. However, several of Berlin’s tram lines run regularly throughout the night – and they also froze up.
A total of 150 employees and 80 vehicles such as rail clearing and gritting vehicles were also on winter service duty in Vienna on days with freezing rain, said the spokesman. “This meant that all lines could run continuously.” The basis for the operations are ongoing weather forecasts and phased deployment plans. “However, the extent of the situation in Vienna was not comparable to the extraordinary situation in Berlin.”