I think your experience may be jaded from the one side as much as mine is from the other side. Your example assumes the same level of quality and guarantee of

I think your experience may be jaded from the one side as much as mine is from the other side. Your example assumes the same level of quality and guarantee of timely arrival. Maybe it's just me but I've had such bad luck with trains in Germany that if I need to be somewhere I will fly or take a train one hour earlier. Or two. It was a running joke at my former company that every single time I visited our other office my reserved spot in an ICE was cancelled or the whole train was changed to an IC (yay, working with a laptop on your lap). I think of all the times I've taken a plane in my life there was major delay twice - and one was at the other end of world, so a single time starting from here. And no, I'm not one to regularly fly (and I hate to do it) but if you for example take Munich - Berlin or Munich - Hamburg, if I need to be there in the morning I'd need to take a train the day before and pay for a night in the hotel, or I fly in the morning. Proper night trains would solve that but then it might still be a wasted evening in a hotel room whereas I have no problem getting up at 4 am and catch a plane at 7. For clarity: while part of my story doesn't apply for "train rides of 2.5h" the gist is the same. If I don't trust that the 6:30 train will make me arrive on time at 9:00 I'd need to take one at 5:30 or 4:30. Also I fully support this ban. I'm just not buying the time+stress argument.