In mid-December the German railroad administration implements its annual schedule change, in close collaboration with its European counterparts. This is normally hardly global news: a few new connections, a few time changes, some connections dropped and a little price increase. What the demanding passenger does not know and hardly appreciates is that designing a network schedule is a Herculean and almost impossible task: finding connections from somewhere in the woods to Paris via Cologne and back, satisfying the commuter, the business traveller and the shoe-string tourist at the same time.

This year the schedule change takes place in an atmosphere of demands for much bigger changes: of the economy, our lifestyle and the political system – in order to prevent the ultimate change, the climate. The recent global forum for the discussion of these demands was the not entirely successful Climate Change COP 25 in Madrid. Lo and behold, on her way from Madrid back to Sweden, our chief climate activist Greta Thunberg fails to get a seat on an overcrowded Deutsche Bahn ICE train. All of a sudden, the Deutsche Bahn makes global news and the global hyperventilating social media community pours ridicule and more on the company, even though Greta is quite relaxed and serene about her Bahn experience.

Almost since their beginning, railroads have had to meet conflicting objectives. The more politics got involved, the more it became impossible for the railroad companies to reconcile, let alone achieve these objectives. They had to be technology innovators (during their first 60 years railroads were the carriers of the industrial revolution), provide affordable transportation for the work force, ensure economically sound and safe operations, and often act as the largest employer and a key partner in maintaining social peace.

With the over-heating climate change debate German politicians now expect the railroads to be a key change agent in combatting climate change as well, adding yet another objective. Ultimately, decision makers require the Deutsche Bahn to become the proverbial “eierlegende Wollmilchsau” (an egg-laying-wool-milk-pig, best translated as a jack-of-all-trades-device). But the Bahn in its current form cannot deliver this – and is not to be blamed for it. What many politicians do not seem to understand is that the number one factor making passengers switch from planes and roads is not price, but convenience, convenience, convenience. This includes the choice of destinations, frequency of trains, comfort, connectivity and reliability. Customers now stuck in traffic jams and check-in queues will be prepared to pay for modern convenient train travel.

Maybe politicians and ministerial bureaucrats should make themselves a bit more familiar with the Bonn-Cologne-Berlin railway schedule to experience the changes needed.