We have that in Germany too. Any delay between 0 and 4 minutes 59 seconds is "no delay". Any delay between 5:00 and 9:59 is "5 minutes". Any delay between 10:00

We have that in Germany too. Any delay between 0 and 4 minutes 59 seconds is "no delay". Any delay between 5:00 and 9:59 is "5 minutes". Any delay between 10:00 and 14:59 is "10 minutes", and so on... In Germany the whole fiasco started with the "privatisation" of the Federal Railways (Bundesbahn) in the mid-nineties. Since then, Deutsche Bahn behaves like a private company, but is still 100% owned by the federal government (who sometimes taps them for money), and is three things at once: train operator (in which role it competes with other operators), infrastructure owner (in which role it sells track usage rights to itself and other operators) and station owner (in which role it sells station usage rights to itself and other operators, plus makes a lot of money as landlord at bigger stations while neglecting smaller ones). Which leads to all kinds of conflicts of interest. Mainly, DB is "profit-oriented", i.e. it tends to dislike investing any of its own money in infrastructure expansion or maintenance - all such works must be requested and paid by either the federal government or the state (Bundesland) governments. And since these governments hate to be seen as "subsidizing" a "private company", most of the infrastructure (except for a few shiny new projects that make politicians look good) is just languishing in the state it was almost 30 years ago, with minimal maintenance.