So it is still a state enterprise in all but in name.
The swiss federal railyway has the exact same model (a company fully owned by the federal government) and it works very well.
Blaming the ownership model for the DB's woes is just wrong in my opinion. German railways have been chronically underfunded, overburdening the company with below cost ticket and the company has some perverse incentives with respect to rail maintenance and other things.
If the state had any control over DB, they wouldn't have been invested in Arriva (a bus company) until a few months ago, and they wouldn't make most of their cargo revenue with trucks (DB Schenker).
The state is the owner of the DB company. If they didn't like where the company is going they could just fire the CEO and board and pick other people and then define any goal they want. To me it looks that the bund is not active enough in their oversight (as 100% owners) of the DB. I assume no one wants to take the blame because it is such a shitshow.
I can't answer why DB is doing certain things which Arriva and their cargo division.
The DB is losing more than EUR2 billions per year[1] so the managment is probably trying hard to get this trainwreck under control. Kinda ironic that their truck business is actually doing the heavy lifting. It's one of the only divisions besides energy that actually makes money subsdizing the other failing parts of the railway. Withouth those you would be looking at EUR2.6 billion losses per year[2]. Great thing they have DB Schenker going for them! I don't undestand the complaints about that.
Also I don't think it is possible to fix the DB without more government subsidies. It looks like they barely get any (sometimes discounts on power but thats it)[2].
If you check the SBB (a very well run operation) you can see from the public finances
that about half of the operating income is from public-sector funding (aka government subsidies) without that it would be in deep red[3].
The swiss federal railyway has the exact same model (a company fully owned by the federal government) and it works very well.
Blaming the ownership model for the DB's woes is just wrong in my opinion. German railways have been chronically underfunded, overburdening the company with below cost ticket and the company has some perverse incentives with respect to rail maintenance and other things.