Rail freight association: Germany added only 44 km of new track in 2025

In early December 2025, the association of Germany's private freight railways, Die Güterbahnen, published a tally of how much new or expanded rail line had entered service in the country that year. Its figure was about 44 kilometres.

The association, which represents operators competing with state-owned Deutsche Bahn, presented the number as evidence of how slowly Germany was growing its rail infrastructure. The count covered new and expanded lines, not renovation of existing track, and it set the year's progress against a network of tens of thousands of kilometres.

The figure mattered because successive German governments had pledged to shift more passengers and freight from road to rail as part of climate goals. Freight operators argued that bottlenecks, long planning and approval procedures and years of underinvestment limited capacity and reliability. The 2025 total became a reference point in the debate over whether the country was building fast enough, and later figures for 2026 were compared against it.