Waterways

The Rhine has the great advantage of having a remarkably even flow, with a spring-summer high water from the Alpine snowmelt supplemented by autumn-winter rains in the Central German Uplands. It is navigable from its mouth to above Basel, Switzerland, with the support in its upper course of the French Grand Canal d’Alsace. Typically, river transport is accomplished by using push units propelling several barges. Since World War II the Rhine tributaries have been opened up for travel and transport. Navigation on the Moselle has been improved to the Saar region and Lorraine, on the Neckar to Stuttgart, and on the Main to provide a major European link to the Danube. Canals through the Ruhr region allow access to the northern German ports of Emden, Bremen, and Hamburg; waterway connections eastward to Berlin were once inadequate, especially at the crossing of the Elbe, but are being improved.

Seaports

Hamburg, which handles some one-third of the overall tonnage by weight, is Germany’s principal port, accommodating the largest share of containers, as well as various ores and a wide range of general cargo. But because the largest tankers can no longer reach the Hamburg refining centre, Wilhelmshaven has become the prime destination for Germany’s oil imports, as well as a major port in general. The Weser ports (Bremen and Bremerhaven) also handle a significant amount of total tonnage and containers; Bremen has an important general cargo trade. Although Hamburg, the Weser ports, and Emden are able to transship heavy goods to the interior by waterway, they play a less important role in this area than Rotterdam (in the Netherlands) and other ports located at the mouth of the great Rhine waterway and closer to the Rhine-Ruhr area than the northern German ports are. Because the Elbe River leads to the port of Hamburg in what was West Germany and the Oder River to Szczecin (Stettin) in Poland, East Germany developed a new deep-sea port at Rostock, which was served by motorway and rail but had no waterway link. Some commodities needing fast service continued to arrive at special East German quays at Hamburg. Hamburg has regained much of its former Elbe trade since unification, but Rostock remains busy. Ferries for passengers, road vehicles, or railcars link Germany with Scandinavian destinations.

Railways

During the country’s partition, the rail system was divided as well. In West Germany the Deutsche Bundesbahn (German Federal Railroad) reconstructed the old system, converting it to electric and diesel traction. The configuration of the country placed the emphasis on north-south routes. The burdened Rhine valley lines and the difficult routes through Hessen were augmented by a superbly engineered (and extremely expensive) high-speed track that permitted speeds up to 155 miles (250 km) per hour.

East Germany retained the old name of Deutsche Reichsbahn (“German Imperial Railroad”) for its system. Postwar reconstruction was slow, with efforts centring on rail links with the country’s eastern European neighbours and the port of Rostock. The once-important east-west routes across the inner-German boundary were either removed or neglected. The Berlin outer-ring railroad was completed, enabling mainline and local traffic to avoid West Berlin. Unification revealed the dilapidated state of the system. Within Berlin, the trains, buses, and trams of the public transport were totally divided. Yet, when the border reopened, both the S-Bahn (Stadtbahn), an elevated railway system, and the U-Bahn (Untergrundbahn), the subway, were immediately able to resume service from east to west. (Two U-Bahn lines had continued to cross through areas of East Berlin but were not permitted to make stops at intermediate stations.)

A lengthy and costly process of fully restoring a unified system, both within Berlin and nationally, began in late 1989 and resulted in significant progress for eastern Germany’s railway network. Deutsche Bundesbahn and Deutsche Reichsbahn were officially merged under the name Deutsche Bahn in 1994. The railway operated under state ownership into the 21st century, although plans were made to privatize at least a portion of it. High-speed passenger rail service now links major German urban centres with one another and with other European destinations.

Highways

Germany’s first high-speed roadway was actually a closed-circuit experimental racetrack that covered some 12 miles (19 km) near Berlin. Unveiled in 1921, this proto-autobahn inspired several other countries to follow with their own versions of high-speed expressways. In the 1930s Hitler exploited the autobahn for economic, military, and propaganda purposes, but during World War II this German innovation—regarded as a model for modern expressways—was battered. The West German government greatly extended the system from 700 miles (1,125 km) in 1950 to more than 5,000 miles (8,000 km) by the time of unification. With powerful German automobiles able to cruise at their top speeds without speed limits, the autobahn gained an aura of automobile-centred romanticism throughout the world in the second half of the 20th century. However, road construction has encountered serious opposition from the country’s environmentalist movement, and in inhabited areas the roads sometimes have been narrowed rather than widened to reduce traffic speed. Because the growth of the system has been slower than the growth of traffic, congestion is a serious problem, especially on motorways in industrial areas. Attempts to divert shipment of goods to the railways have not prevented a steady rise in the transport of goods by road. The current length of the entire network is more than 7,400 miles (12,000 km), making it the third largest system in the world, after those of the United States and China. Western German motorways have direct transfrontier connections with the similar systems of Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Austria.

With a lower growth rate of motor traffic (and an official policy of giving preference to the railroads), postwar construction of motorways was less advanced in East Germany. There were some improvements in central Germany, and new links to the ports of Rostock and Hamburg were constructed. The Berliner Ring, a circle of expressways around the city, was completed in 1979. With reunification, many transboundary roads were reopened and road surfaces improved. However, the construction of new roads has been hindered by conflicts between those seeking greater accessibility for automobiles and those seeking to protect the landscape and reduce air pollution.

Air transport

Germany’s major long-distance airline is Lufthansa, though there also are a number of other carriers that service European and North American destinations. Frankfurt’s airport, one of the world’s busiest, is the country’s largest. Airports in Düsseldorf, Munich, and Berlin (Tegel) are also of major importance. During the period of partition, passenger traffic from West Germany to West Berlin was restricted to the airlines of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. After unification Berlin was opened to German carriers and indeed to carriers of other countries. East Germany had discouraged internal air traffic and the growth of regional airports, using the rail and Berlin subway systems to serve its major international airport, Berlin-Schönefeld, south of the city. During the late 1990s, expansion of Schönefeld began. The expanded Schönefeld would, upon its completion, be renamed Berlin Brandenburg Airport. With the closing of Templehof Airport in 2008 and the planned closing of Tegel, Berlin Brandenburg was scheduled to become Berlin’s only commercial airport by 2011. However, planning errors, cost overruns, and mismanagement led to massive delays in the completion of Berlin Brandenburg, and the airport’s opening was pushed back to late 2017. Tegel remained open in the interim.

Telecommunications

After World War II West Germany developed an advanced telecommunications system. By contrast, the East German telephone system was completely insufficient; people requesting a telephone often were faced with a wait of up to 12 years. The deficiencies of the telecommunications system were a major impediment to the restructuring of the administration and the economy following unification, but by the late 1990s rapid reconstruction of the system using current technology made eastern Germany a world leader in advanced telecommunications infrastructure.

The leading German telecommunications company is Deutsche Telekom AG. During the late 1990s the entire sector was liberalized, increasing the number of telecommunications firms and competition for Deutsche Telekom from companies such as Vodafone and Telefónica Germany. The adoption of telecommunications services by German consumers has been widespread, particularly for cellular services. By the second decade of the 21st century, cellular subscriptions outnumbered people in Germany by a ratio of more than 1.25 to 1. By 2013 almost 85 percent of the population used the Internet regularly.