Düsseldorf (dpa / lnw) - Due to a lack of staff at Deutsche Bahn (DB), train travelers in North Rhine-Westphalia will have to be prepared for further inconveniences in regional transport over the next seven weeks. Due to a high level of sick leave due to increasing corona cases among staff, there are further restrictions on train traffic, DB Regio NRW announced on Friday. In addition, the very high level of construction activity would tie up capacities in the control centers and among the train drivers. A "restricted summer timetable" with around 95 percent of the regular train service applies up to and including September 18.
Where regular connections fail, there are “usually parallel lines” in coordination with the local transport associations Rhine-Ruhr (VRR), Rhineland (NVR) and Westphalia-Lippe (NWL), it said.
The list of affected lines and connections is long:
The regional train (RB32) from Duisburg to Dortmund only runs eight times a day from Monday to Friday in each direction. The RB32 trains are canceled at the weekend. As a substitute, passengers can use the S2 trains that run parallel on sections of the route. In addition, buses are mainly used in off-peak hours and on weekends.
From Saturday (30 July) there will be no RB40 trains between Essen via Witten and Hagen on weekends. There, travelers could switch to the regional express (RE16), among other things, the railway wrote. Numerous other local transport lines operate between Essen and Bochum as well as Witten and Hagen.
According to the information, the RE5 and RE19 as well as the S3 and S9 are still available as alternatives for the RE49 line from Wesel via Oberhausen to Wuppertal, which has been omitted for a long time.
Line S6 runs regularly between Düsseldorf Hbf and Langenfeld. Replacement buses will continue to run from Langenfeld to Cologne-Mülheim, and line S11 will be available from Cologne-Mülheim to Cologne-Worringen. In the Cologne area, line S6 will be canceled until September 18th.
On the RE16/RB91 line, the feeder between Letmathe and Iserlohn is no longer available. DB Regio has set up a bus service on the route section, it said.
The RB46 from Gelsenkirchen via Wanne-Eickel to Bochum runs every hour from Monday to Friday. There is a rail replacement bus service on weekends.
There is no intermediate cycle on the RE42 between Münster and Essen. Passengers could switch to the parallel RE2, which also serves the stops of the RE42 between Münster and Essen on selected connections in the morning and in the evening.
From August 15th, the RE8 will be cancelled. From Monday to Friday there are only the two trips at 6.01 a.m. from Kaldenkirchen to Cologne Messe-Deutz and at 4.26 p.m. in the opposite direction. Parallel lines run along the entire route, including the RB27.
Customers can find information about the timetable at "zuginfo.nrw", "www.bahn.de" and in the DB Navigator. The timetable information shows canceled connections at short notice. In addition, DB Regio NRW informs travelers via Twitter.
The Wuppertaler Stadtwerke (WSV) announced on Friday that bus transport was struggling with an “unusually high level of sick leave” among staff. Therefore, the travel offer must be “temporarily adjusted”. Individual journeys would be removed from the timetable. In the middle of the summer holidays, more than 80 drivers were reported sick on individual days. With a total of around 850 employees in the driving service, the failures could no longer be fully compensated for with substitutes, the WSV announced. This is all the more regrettable because the 9-euro ticket is intended to attract more people to public transport.
