Regionalverkehre Start Deutschland GmbH is a German railway company that operates local rail passenger transport in Bremen, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. The company is owned by Deutsche Bahn through DB Regio.
According to its own statements, the company would like to act “lean and dynamic” like a start-up company[1] and thus meet the increasing cost and performance pressure in German local rail passenger transport. This came about, among other things, as a result of the liberalisation of local transport in Germany and the associated tenders in German states. The DB Regio company has lost many routes under this pressure in recent years.[2]