6 ms·

I think this is more of a statement to how bad DB is. In Germany traveling with blablacar or mitfahrtgelegenheit is still very very popular, because trains are

by carlob 10y ago

I think this is more of a statement to how bad DB is. In Germany traveling with blablacar or mitfahrtgelegenheit is still very very popular, because trains are slow and incredibly expensive. Even if in my own country (Italy) people love to say that everything in Germany is better, but it's incredible to see how much worse trains are, and for 3x the price!

dom0 10y ago
Depends. For commuting they aren't bad at all (I've been commuting for a decade now).
mschuster91 10y ago
Slow? Okay, we don't have as much high-speed rails as France, but e.g. Hamburg-Munich (775km, once across the whole country) is 5:40h, while traveling by car is ~8h. Flight may be 1:15h pure flight time, but you have to add 1.5h of public transit time to get to/from the airports, plus ~1h for security and pre-boarding wait times, and luggage costs are enormous. Oh, and the security checks make you feel like a terrorist. Buses are f...ing cheap, but take ~10-11h. So, the train is still the fastest and most time-efficient way to travel across big distances. The only problem is that it's expensive as hell, because unlike the regional trains, the ICE trains don't get any public subsidies and have to be profitable on their own.
- jmanderley 10y ago
  But that's the same pretty much everywhere. The Austrian Railjet Vienna - Salzburg, for example, isn't subsidized at all, but still much cheaper than DB. Or check out the prices of the Austrian operator "Westbahn". They are even using brand new Stadtler train sets, not decades old DB cars like Locomore.
  - mschuster91 10y ago
    I regularly travel with Westbahn, because they partner with Flixbus... their trains and the personnel are awesome (for what it's worth, they operate a smokers lounge on the train... a blessing for every smoker!). The problem with Westbahn is that they're likely deep in debt and still not profitable (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westbahn_(Unternehmen)#Gesch.C3.A4ftsergebnisse https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westbahn_(Unternehmen)#Gesch.C...). And for the Railjet: it's cheaper because the track fees are lower - here figures from 2011: http://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?3,5403272 http://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?3,5403272
- melling 10y ago
  That seems kind of slow by train. Beijing to Shanghai is 1300km and takes less than 5 hours. http://www.seat61.com/beijing-to-shanghai-by-train.htm http://www.seat61.com/beijing-to-shanghai-by-train.htm
  - mschuster91 10y ago
    China has unique advantages over Europe: 1) it's a quasi-dictatorial regime. Which means, when the government wants something, like a high-speed train track, being built, then it's built, without many ways for affected people to impede/cancel the project or drive up its price (e.g. in Germany train projects are usually delayed or the cost driven up by environmental concerns or noise complaints). 2) Money. China doesn't care about printing money or raising debt to finance the expansion of infrastructure. In Europe, especially in Germany, this is not the case. Printing money is only acceptable to sustain banks. (A policy which I absolutely hate) 3) Local politicians. In Germany, many regional/local politicians want their village connected to the ICE network for their personal fame - one particularly wasteful example is Montabaur, it has regular ICE stops with only 12k inhabitants. Every stop creates a huge delay for trains and kills their average speed. Once again, not so much a problem in China.
  - Mithaldu 10y ago
    You can't compare a trip just by length. The total speed of a train is limited by how many stops it needs to make, and the layout of the actual tracks. Having to do lots of curves to avoid populated areas for example can slow a train down considerably. However if you can go through empty land for hundreds of kilometers in a straight line, you can go full throttle for most of it. One train on google maps for example has 7 stops between Beijing and Shanghai. Meanwhile Hamburg-Munich has 9 stops on a trip half the length.
    - melling 10y ago
      It's less than half the speed in Germany. The extra stops do not account for the difference. At any rate, yes I can compare the absolute times because that's what passengers will do when making choices on how to get from A to B. If the trip in Germany was an hour faster, more people would choose the train. In the US, it's usually always faster to drive. Traffic congestion can make the train attractive in the northeast.
- carlob 10y ago
  > Slow? Okay, we don't have as much high-speed rails as France, but e.g. Hamburg-Munich (775km, once across the whole country) is 5:40h, while traveling by car is ~8h. You don't have real high speed at all: 775km is more or less the same as Paris-Marseille and that's 3h20.
akappa 10y ago
Well, yes and no. As you know, the italian train system can be divided in two layers: "Le Frecce", fast trains that only stop in important cities and "Regionali", (relatively) slow trains that stop even in tiny towns. The former are fast, pleasant and reasonably priced (especially the Freccia Rossa, the fastest trains in Europe IIRC); while the latter are extremely cheap thanks to state subsides but the experience offered is awful: perpetually delayed, dirty and overcrowded. People usually complain about the "Regionali", also because they are used on daily basis by commuters.
- riprowan 10y ago
  > perpetually delayed, dirty and overcrowded The regional service deserves this reputation because it has been neglected for years as Trenitalia built the Frecce but I think if you return to Italy you'll be pleasantly surprised, as Trenitalia has been quietly upgrading the regional trains to newer, double-decked cars (almost 2x capacity) and from personal anecdotal experience the ontime service seems better than it used to be, as well. Obviously YMMV depending on what region you're in, the time of day, etc. but there's definitely been improvement on the regional front.
morsch 10y ago
From a brief look Trenitalia seems about the same as DB. The express train Milano - Roma is 89 EUR. I think DB would charge something like 100 EUR for that. The travel time (2h55 for ~420 km) is impressive, I'll give you that. I wonder how many stops there are on the way -- not too many I'd wager.
- johnchristopher 10y ago
  That's insane. In Belgium I could buy a `railpass` which is a 76€ piece of paper on which I can write ten different trips from any station in Belgium to any station in Belgium. Which basically means that any train trip in Belgium would cost you a maximum of 7.60€.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    And in the U.K. A a last moment train form London to say Newcastle can cost you 400£ w/ a return ticket. For 100£ an hour we don't get a happy ending either.
  - pmontra 10y ago
    Belgium is only as large as Italy's Lombardy plus Piedmont, two adjacent regions in the north west. There is no Italian equivalent of a two region pass, but Lombardy has an unlimited monthly pass for all public transportation, bus, metro, regional trains, at 107 Euro, plus an extra 40 Euro to access fast national trains (within Lombardy). Given that an unlimited monthly city pass in Milan is 35 Euro, it's about the same cost of your Belgium ticket. It's for half the area but it's unlimited. Anyway, if we had a region the size of Belgium probably the price wouldn't increase much: people tend to travel close to home.
- carlob 10y ago
  Just last week I bought return tickets from Rome to Milan for the days around Christmas on Italo (the only competitor for high speed trains) and I paid under 50 euros return. Also the distance is not 420 km, but closer to 600 (it's 480 km as the bird flies). And regarding stops, you can get one that doesn't stop at all and it's 2h40 IIRC.
rukenshia 10y ago
If you take the ICE, definitely not slow. I commuted between Hannover and Berlin for the past weeks and it takes only 1h 40m for each trip. Driving would take close to 3 hours. I'm lucky enough to have a BahnCard 100 paid by my employer, though.
- carlob 10y ago
  Except Hannover Berlin is more or less the same as Paris Lille. Paris Lille is under 1h and the price never exceeds 35 euros (which means you can sometimes find tickets under 20). Now compare the prices with the price of everything else in France and Germany and you'll see why I say that trains in Germany are terribly overpriced.
beberlei 10y ago
Imho DB is the best means of transportation in Germany, in my experience only people travelling with DB once every one or two years are complaining about it, because they don't understand how it works. You cannot compare the standard DB fares with anything competitors offer, because they include an amount of flexibility no one else offers by a long shot. Even if you only take 2-3 trips per year it already makes sense to get the 25% or 50% discount cards. A massive amount of germans have these cards (see https://infographic.statista.com/normal/infografik_3025_Besitzer_einer_BahnCard25._BahnCard50_oder_Bahncard100_n.jpg https://infographic.statista.com/normal/infografik_3025_Besi..., over 3 million BC25, 1.4 million BC50 owners). If you know when exactly you want to travel, which exact train and hour, then you can easily get a 62.5% discount and you are only at ~45 instead of 125€ for the trip, which given the comfort of DB vs all other means of transportation is well worth the price. I myself prefer to be flexible and have a BC50 which includes 50% discount on every trip. But that means I can take any train on the date of my ticket or even up to 5 days later, leave at any station in between for as long as I want. My sister had an accident with car share service, which kind of turns me off these services. She now often takes the bus that is much cheaper than DB. But then you have to have someone bring you with a car to the off site locations that bus often stop and it still takes several hours longer than DB for most destinations.
- throwaway10129 10y ago
  > Even if you only take 2-3 trips ... Yeah, and better do not forget to cancel those because the friendly DB automatically prolongs these for another year. In case you refuse to pay, they send a friendly debt collection service -- Infoscore, which conveniently also acts as a credit rating agency. If you still refuse to pay, the "independent" law firm Haas & Kollegen, which magically resides in the same building as the "independent" debt collection agency and credit rating agency, will take you to court. Did I mention that these three entities are totally independent, as required by law?
  - beberlei 10y ago
    How exactly did you communicate with them? My wife had a very nice experience with Bahncard re-subscriptions that she cancelled after the fact. But even then, you know what you get into when ordering the service. Yes, it is a subscription.
cJ0th 10y ago
Prices for long distance trains are mostly okay. It's very rare that you have to pay the incredibly high standard fee when you book in advance. Prices for short distances are making me angry, though. Here blablacar et al are indeed preferable. I once had to travel a route that was about 80k long regularily. It took me almost 2 hours and I had to pay ~ 20 € when traveling with train. Offerings on blablacar gave me the same route for 5 € and a travel time half as long.
- pluma 10y ago
  This, exactly. It takes me at least two and half hours, though generally more like three hours (if I don't miss a connection) to travel the same distance that would take me an hour and a half by car. ICE is great if you want to e.g. travel from Cologne to Berlin to Munich, but that's not what the majority of train trips in the nation look like. Even Flixbus etc offer a better and cheaper experience.
- Kankuro 10y ago
  In France, for a 5:30 hours ride, I pay most of the time 75€, 40€ in off-season, as sometimes as much as 100€. The most painful experience is buying a ticket for Christmas season when everybody is trying to buy at the opening of the sales: a few seconds late and you lose 10€. I once lost dozen of euros when my card was refused. It feels like these riots-like black Friday I sometimes see on tv...
lucb1e 10y ago
> mitfahrtgelegenheit carpooling. For the non-Germans on this site (I'm Dutch, the word is close enough that I understand it).
- dmurray 10y ago
  In this case it refers to a specific website, well known to Germans but now taken over by a competitor, that pairs up carpoolers: www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de
LeanderK 10y ago
Well, since pseudo-privatising we decided to stop subsidising the DB while the autobahn is still very heavily subsidised.

by carlob 10y ago

dom0 10y ago

Depends. For commuting they aren't bad at all (I've been commuting for a decade now).

mschuster91 10y ago

Slow? Okay, we don't have as much high-speed rails as France, but e.g. Hamburg-Munich (775km, once across the whole country) is 5:40h, while traveling by car is ~8h. Flight may be 1:15h pure flight time, but you have to add 1.5h of public transit time to get to/from the airports, plus ~1h for security and pre-boarding wait times, and luggage costs are enormous. Oh, and the security checks make you feel like a terrorist. Buses are f...ing cheap, but take ~10-11h. So, the train is still the fastest and most time-efficient way to travel across big distances. The only problem is that it's expensive as hell, because unlike the regional trains, the ICE trains don't get any public subsidies and have to be profitable on their own.

jmanderley 10y ago
But that's the same pretty much everywhere. The Austrian Railjet Vienna - Salzburg, for example, isn't subsidized at all, but still much cheaper than DB. Or check out the prices of the Austrian operator "Westbahn". They are even using brand new Stadtler train sets, not decades old DB cars like Locomore.
- mschuster91 10y ago
  I regularly travel with Westbahn, because they partner with Flixbus... their trains and the personnel are awesome (for what it's worth, they operate a smokers lounge on the train... a blessing for every smoker!). The problem with Westbahn is that they're likely deep in debt and still not profitable (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westbahn_(Unternehmen)#Gesch.C3.A4ftsergebnisse https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westbahn_(Unternehmen)#Gesch.C...). And for the Railjet: it's cheaper because the track fees are lower - here figures from 2011: http://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?3,5403272 http://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?3,5403272
melling 10y ago
That seems kind of slow by train. Beijing to Shanghai is 1300km and takes less than 5 hours. http://www.seat61.com/beijing-to-shanghai-by-train.htm http://www.seat61.com/beijing-to-shanghai-by-train.htm
- mschuster91 10y ago
  China has unique advantages over Europe: 1) it's a quasi-dictatorial regime. Which means, when the government wants something, like a high-speed train track, being built, then it's built, without many ways for affected people to impede/cancel the project or drive up its price (e.g. in Germany train projects are usually delayed or the cost driven up by environmental concerns or noise complaints). 2) Money. China doesn't care about printing money or raising debt to finance the expansion of infrastructure. In Europe, especially in Germany, this is not the case. Printing money is only acceptable to sustain banks. (A policy which I absolutely hate) 3) Local politicians. In Germany, many regional/local politicians want their village connected to the ICE network for their personal fame - one particularly wasteful example is Montabaur, it has regular ICE stops with only 12k inhabitants. Every stop creates a huge delay for trains and kills their average speed. Once again, not so much a problem in China.
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  You can't compare a trip just by length. The total speed of a train is limited by how many stops it needs to make, and the layout of the actual tracks. Having to do lots of curves to avoid populated areas for example can slow a train down considerably. However if you can go through empty land for hundreds of kilometers in a straight line, you can go full throttle for most of it. One train on google maps for example has 7 stops between Beijing and Shanghai. Meanwhile Hamburg-Munich has 9 stops on a trip half the length.
  - melling 10y ago
    It's less than half the speed in Germany. The extra stops do not account for the difference. At any rate, yes I can compare the absolute times because that's what passengers will do when making choices on how to get from A to B. If the trip in Germany was an hour faster, more people would choose the train. In the US, it's usually always faster to drive. Traffic congestion can make the train attractive in the northeast.
carlob 10y ago
> Slow? Okay, we don't have as much high-speed rails as France, but e.g. Hamburg-Munich (775km, once across the whole country) is 5:40h, while traveling by car is ~8h. You don't have real high speed at all: 775km is more or less the same as Paris-Marseille and that's 3h20.

akappa 10y ago

Well, yes and no. As you know, the italian train system can be divided in two layers: "Le Frecce", fast trains that only stop in important cities and "Regionali", (relatively) slow trains that stop even in tiny towns. The former are fast, pleasant and reasonably priced (especially the Freccia Rossa, the fastest trains in Europe IIRC); while the latter are extremely cheap thanks to state subsides but the experience offered is awful: perpetually delayed, dirty and overcrowded. People usually complain about the "Regionali", also because they are used on daily basis by commuters.

riprowan 10y ago
> perpetually delayed, dirty and overcrowded The regional service deserves this reputation because it has been neglected for years as Trenitalia built the Frecce but I think if you return to Italy you'll be pleasantly surprised, as Trenitalia has been quietly upgrading the regional trains to newer, double-decked cars (almost 2x capacity) and from personal anecdotal experience the ontime service seems better than it used to be, as well. Obviously YMMV depending on what region you're in, the time of day, etc. but there's definitely been improvement on the regional front.

morsch 10y ago

From a brief look Trenitalia seems about the same as DB. The express train Milano - Roma is 89 EUR. I think DB would charge something like 100 EUR for that. The travel time (2h55 for ~420 km) is impressive, I'll give you that. I wonder how many stops there are on the way -- not too many I'd wager.

johnchristopher 10y ago
That's insane. In Belgium I could buy a `railpass` which is a 76€ piece of paper on which I can write ten different trips from any station in Belgium to any station in Belgium. Which basically means that any train trip in Belgium would cost you a maximum of 7.60€.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  And in the U.K. A a last moment train form London to say Newcastle can cost you 400£ w/ a return ticket. For 100£ an hour we don't get a happy ending either.
- pmontra 10y ago
  Belgium is only as large as Italy's Lombardy plus Piedmont, two adjacent regions in the north west. There is no Italian equivalent of a two region pass, but Lombardy has an unlimited monthly pass for all public transportation, bus, metro, regional trains, at 107 Euro, plus an extra 40 Euro to access fast national trains (within Lombardy). Given that an unlimited monthly city pass in Milan is 35 Euro, it's about the same cost of your Belgium ticket. It's for half the area but it's unlimited. Anyway, if we had a region the size of Belgium probably the price wouldn't increase much: people tend to travel close to home.
carlob 10y ago
Just last week I bought return tickets from Rome to Milan for the days around Christmas on Italo (the only competitor for high speed trains) and I paid under 50 euros return. Also the distance is not 420 km, but closer to 600 (it's 480 km as the bird flies). And regarding stops, you can get one that doesn't stop at all and it's 2h40 IIRC.

rukenshia 10y ago

If you take the ICE, definitely not slow. I commuted between Hannover and Berlin for the past weeks and it takes only 1h 40m for each trip. Driving would take close to 3 hours. I'm lucky enough to have a BahnCard 100 paid by my employer, though.

carlob 10y ago
Except Hannover Berlin is more or less the same as Paris Lille. Paris Lille is under 1h and the price never exceeds 35 euros (which means you can sometimes find tickets under 20). Now compare the prices with the price of everything else in France and Germany and you'll see why I say that trains in Germany are terribly overpriced.

beberlei 10y ago

Imho DB is the best means of transportation in Germany, in my experience only people travelling with DB once every one or two years are complaining about it, because they don't understand how it works. You cannot compare the standard DB fares with anything competitors offer, because they include an amount of flexibility no one else offers by a long shot. Even if you only take 2-3 trips per year it already makes sense to get the 25% or 50% discount cards. A massive amount of germans have these cards (see https://infographic.statista.com/normal/infografik_3025_Besitzer_einer_BahnCard25._BahnCard50_oder_Bahncard100_n.jpg https://infographic.statista.com/normal/infografik_3025_Besi..., over 3 million BC25, 1.4 million BC50 owners). If you know when exactly you want to travel, which exact train and hour, then you can easily get a 62.5% discount and you are only at ~45 instead of 125€ for the trip, which given the comfort of DB vs all other means of transportation is well worth the price. I myself prefer to be flexible and have a BC50 which includes 50% discount on every trip. But that means I can take any train on the date of my ticket or even up to 5 days later, leave at any station in between for as long as I want. My sister had an accident with car share service, which kind of turns me off these services. She now often takes the bus that is much cheaper than DB. But then you have to have someone bring you with a car to the off site locations that bus often stop and it still takes several hours longer than DB for most destinations.

throwaway10129 10y ago
> Even if you only take 2-3 trips ... Yeah, and better do not forget to cancel those because the friendly DB automatically prolongs these for another year. In case you refuse to pay, they send a friendly debt collection service -- Infoscore, which conveniently also acts as a credit rating agency. If you still refuse to pay, the "independent" law firm Haas & Kollegen, which magically resides in the same building as the "independent" debt collection agency and credit rating agency, will take you to court. Did I mention that these three entities are totally independent, as required by law?
- beberlei 10y ago
  How exactly did you communicate with them? My wife had a very nice experience with Bahncard re-subscriptions that she cancelled after the fact. But even then, you know what you get into when ordering the service. Yes, it is a subscription.

cJ0th 10y ago

Prices for long distance trains are mostly okay. It's very rare that you have to pay the incredibly high standard fee when you book in advance. Prices for short distances are making me angry, though. Here blablacar et al are indeed preferable. I once had to travel a route that was about 80k long regularily. It took me almost 2 hours and I had to pay ~ 20 € when traveling with train. Offerings on blablacar gave me the same route for 5 € and a travel time half as long.

pluma 10y ago
This, exactly. It takes me at least two and half hours, though generally more like three hours (if I don't miss a connection) to travel the same distance that would take me an hour and a half by car. ICE is great if you want to e.g. travel from Cologne to Berlin to Munich, but that's not what the majority of train trips in the nation look like. Even Flixbus etc offer a better and cheaper experience.
Kankuro 10y ago
In France, for a 5:30 hours ride, I pay most of the time 75€, 40€ in off-season, as sometimes as much as 100€. The most painful experience is buying a ticket for Christmas season when everybody is trying to buy at the opening of the sales: a few seconds late and you lose 10€. I once lost dozen of euros when my card was refused. It feels like these riots-like black Friday I sometimes see on tv...

lucb1e 10y ago

> mitfahrtgelegenheit carpooling. For the non-Germans on this site (I'm Dutch, the word is close enough that I understand it).

dmurray 10y ago
In this case it refers to a specific website, well known to Germans but now taken over by a competitor, that pairs up carpoolers: www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de

LeanderK 10y ago

Well, since pseudo-privatising we decided to stop subsidising the DB while the autobahn is still very heavily subsidised.