ÖBB Annual Report 2025

Step by step into the future 30 MANUELA WALDNER AND ANDREAS MATTHÄ. The Management Board team Mr. Matthä, work on the new Koralm Railway has been going on for 40 years. Now it’s finished. How does that feel? ANDREAS MATTHÄ: Really good! The Koralm Railway has in fact been a part of my entire professional life. At the beginning, it was questioned as an unrealistic and costly project and was also controversial. Now this vision has finally become reality. The Koralm Railway is a unique landmark project: it will allow a region to flourish, connect people and serve as an engine for the economy and the labor market – not only in the south of Austria but far beyond. ÖBB has massively increased its services with the Koralm Railway. How would you describe the changes? MATTHÄ: The Koralm Railway will restructure and massively expand traffic flows to the south. Until December 2025, there were ten daily connections between Klagenfurt and Vienna, which were expanded to 26 daily connections with the timetable change. With 33 connections a day, we are also running much more frequently between Graz and Vienna, and there are now also 20 daily connections on the Tauern Railway between Villach and Salzburg. With the new Interregio service, you can also travel better and more often within the Alpine region – such as from the south to the west. This means that ÖBB currently offers 30 percent more long-distance services than a year ago. What is the Koralm Railway’s track record so far? MATTHÄ: The Koralm Railway has been a complete success right from the start. People are clearly happy about this new route and use it extensively. In December and over the Christmas holidays, many people simply took advantage of the service for a quick coffee or a walk – heading to Graz’s Clock Tower or Lake Wörthersee in Klagenfurt. And why not? It takes less than three quarters of an hour. Demand is currently running at about 7,000 passengers per day. We’ll see how things develop – but I’m very confident. After decades, Deutsche Bahn is beginning to invest massively in railway infrastructure. This makes for many construction sites, which will also have an impact on ÖBB’s punctuality. How do you intend to counter this? MATTHÄ: In principle, modernizing the German railway infrastructure is a good thing. It is well known that the majority of our delays originate in our neighboring countries – such as Germany – and are brought over to us. I hope that the German repair work will improve our punctuality in the long term. In the short term, of course, it hurts when route closures near the border force us to take large detours. The additional costs of these detours are enormous, especially for freight traffic, which is under huge pressure. In any case, we are working closely with DB InfraGO to minimize the impact as much as possible. How was punctuality in general last year? MATTHÄ: 2025 was a year of ups and downs for ÖBB in terms of punctuality. Overall, we were able to maintain a stable level. Long-distance services achieved a punctuality rate of INTERVIEW. CEO Andreas Matthä and CFO Manuela Waldner on an eventful 2025 and a clear focus on a future of even greater efficiency and continuously increasing competitiveness. “Our credo: competitive quality”