Friday, December 12
From Sunday, regular operations will begin on the Dresdner Bahn. After three decades of official planning, setbacks and construction, Federal Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder (CDU) stated, “This project has taken a long time.” According to Peter Schulze from Deutsche Bahn, the first preparations were initiated in 1991.
The train provides a much faster route to Dresden than before, dropping the travel time to 99 minutes between the two cities, even with the addition of extra stops like Zossen and Rangsdorf.
The route to the airport will also be much faster, in an express service that will run four times an hour from Sunday. “The travel time from the main station to the airport decreases from 39 to 22 minutes,” said Transport Senator Ute Bonde (CDU).
The so-called airport curve, a junction behind the city border that links straight to BER, allows for this increased speed of travel. The first passenger train on this new route will leave Südkreuz at 1:43 am on Sunday.
UVB boss Alexander Schirp has called the opening of the Dresdner Bahn “a holiday for Berlin and Brandenburg”. The whole project has cost over €1 billion.
