6 ms·

As usual in big cities you need to add the time for walking to your car and for finding a parking space in the end.

newaccount74 4y ago
And add 30 minutes that you are stuck in downtown traffic because your meeting starts at an inconvenient time. I can't speak for all of Europe, but here in Austria trains, trams, and subways are way more predictable than taking the car. Sure, sometimes there are delays, but 99% of the time you get to your destination on schedule. When you drive you always have the risk of random delays due to traffic.
- usr1106 4y ago
  Deutsche Bahn is very far from 99% punctuality. Statistics were published only recently and they pointed down once again. But to be fair going by car is hardly better, you can get stuck more or less unexpectedly in most somewhat busy places.
  - newaccount74 4y ago
    I can't really talk about DB, I rarely take the ICE. But I also want to point out that I didn't say that public transit is 99% on time, I said I get to my destination on time 99% of the time. Often when a train/tram/subway is late I can just take a different one and still get to my destination on time. If there is a delay on a long journey, I usually know hours in advance, and I can let people know I'm going to be late. But it's a very rare occurrence in my experience.
    - ivan_gammel 4y ago
      This week I had two business trips on ICE trains. It was exactly like in statistics (only 75% trains come on time), one of them delayed by 20 minutes just before departure due to "unauthorized people on the tracks". This was the 3rd incident with DB during my travels this year (before that I had my connection train from Frankfurt cancelled while I was on the 2 hour long flight there). One of the delays that I experienced with DB couple years ago was related to a complete change of the train route that happened after departure (!). Some unlucky passengers had to leave at the next station and check how they can get to their destinations at Reisezentrum. Travel time was increased by 1 hour for me.
      - newaccount74 4y ago
        As I said, as an Austrian my experience with DB is limited. All I can say is that public transport here in Austria in my experience is more reliable than taking the car. It feels like every direction I want to go with my car, there's always construction, with detours, closed exits, or just a section of highway with a 60km/h limit and traffic jams, because they are adding another lane, or building a new bridge, or resurfacing the road, or adding noise protection, or something.
        usr1106 4y ago
        My only experience with ÖBB was a night train to Vienna. It arrived over 2 hours late. Because I continued to Czech I could not even use the refreshment voucher. To be fair the delay occured already in Germany, the train did not even leave the origin in Cologne in time. Afterwards I had to do the paper work work to get 50% or how much it was of my money back. Those who get stuck backed-up on the Autobahn don't get any money back. Lot of the problems have been created by decades of prioritization of roads over rail. No suprise not everthing goes smoothly if you try to increase capacity on a long neglected system afterwards. Some predict complete chaos caused by the 9 EUR ticket. Such a cheap price should result in dramatic of demand. But supply can't grow a whole lot on short notice. Well, I am not in Germany. I'll read it from the news.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  Hello, southern neighbor. Czech railways were never great when it came to punctuality, but this year takes the cake, with several big works on the main railway arteries taking place concurrently. A delay of an hour is pretty ordinary and, in the last timetable, they stretched the journey times almost back to the 1980s levels, in order to have at least some semblance of regularity. We need some high speed rail like hell, there just isn't enough tracks to carry our admittedly massive rail traffic. Any irregularity will throw everything out of the loop. Unfortunately, NIMBYs and BANANAs are doing their best to prevent any development of anything anywhere ever. This is a movement that really fulfills the "the dose makes the poison" adage. In reasonable amounts, it can prevent highways from being built brutally across residential areas like in China. In current amounts, it can prevent you from building a detached house on your own property in a normal residential area full of other houses, because f-k you that's why, your lot has always been an overgrown ex-garden and will stay so until I die.
  - smcl 4y ago
    I would love it if we got high-speed rail but I cannot see it happening any time soon. One thing I can say is that rail travel here is insanely cheap and compared to UK and my experience has been that it's generally more punctual with more frequent services. I must admit though, I haven't travelled by rail a great deal this year (only a couple of local journeys like Brno->Hustopeče, and Brno->Adamov) so I haven't encountered the delays you've described, that sounds painful. edit: actually I just looked up Czech high-speed rail and found a wikipedia page. Apparently there are a set of HSR routes already approved and planned out, with a more direct Prague-Brno line via Jihlava supposedly due to start in 2025. Any idea if this is realistic, or if it should be taken with a generous pinch of salt?

And add 30 minutes that you are stuck in downtown traffic because your meeting starts at an inconvenient time. I can't speak for all of Europe, but here in Austria trains, trams, and subways are way more predictable than taking the car. Sure, sometimes there are delays, but 99% of the time you get to your destination on schedule. When you drive you always have the risk of random delays due to traffic.

usr1106 4y ago
Deutsche Bahn is very far from 99% punctuality. Statistics were published only recently and they pointed down once again. But to be fair going by car is hardly better, you can get stuck more or less unexpectedly in most somewhat busy places.
- newaccount74 4y ago
  I can't really talk about DB, I rarely take the ICE. But I also want to point out that I didn't say that public transit is 99% on time, I said I get to my destination on time 99% of the time. Often when a train/tram/subway is late I can just take a different one and still get to my destination on time. If there is a delay on a long journey, I usually know hours in advance, and I can let people know I'm going to be late. But it's a very rare occurrence in my experience.
  - ivan_gammel 4y ago
    This week I had two business trips on ICE trains. It was exactly like in statistics (only 75% trains come on time), one of them delayed by 20 minutes just before departure due to "unauthorized people on the tracks". This was the 3rd incident with DB during my travels this year (before that I had my connection train from Frankfurt cancelled while I was on the 2 hour long flight there). One of the delays that I experienced with DB couple years ago was related to a complete change of the train route that happened after departure (!). Some unlucky passengers had to leave at the next station and check how they can get to their destinations at Reisezentrum. Travel time was increased by 1 hour for me.
    - newaccount74 4y ago
      As I said, as an Austrian my experience with DB is limited. All I can say is that public transport here in Austria in my experience is more reliable than taking the car. It feels like every direction I want to go with my car, there's always construction, with detours, closed exits, or just a section of highway with a 60km/h limit and traffic jams, because they are adding another lane, or building a new bridge, or resurfacing the road, or adding noise protection, or something.
      - usr1106 4y ago
        My only experience with ÖBB was a night train to Vienna. It arrived over 2 hours late. Because I continued to Czech I could not even use the refreshment voucher. To be fair the delay occured already in Germany, the train did not even leave the origin in Cologne in time. Afterwards I had to do the paper work work to get 50% or how much it was of my money back. Those who get stuck backed-up on the Autobahn don't get any money back. Lot of the problems have been created by decades of prioritization of roads over rail. No suprise not everthing goes smoothly if you try to increase capacity on a long neglected system afterwards. Some predict complete chaos caused by the 9 EUR ticket. Such a cheap price should result in dramatic of demand. But supply can't grow a whole lot on short notice. Well, I am not in Germany. I'll read it from the news.
inglor_cz 4y ago
Hello, southern neighbor. Czech railways were never great when it came to punctuality, but this year takes the cake, with several big works on the main railway arteries taking place concurrently. A delay of an hour is pretty ordinary and, in the last timetable, they stretched the journey times almost back to the 1980s levels, in order to have at least some semblance of regularity. We need some high speed rail like hell, there just isn't enough tracks to carry our admittedly massive rail traffic. Any irregularity will throw everything out of the loop. Unfortunately, NIMBYs and BANANAs are doing their best to prevent any development of anything anywhere ever. This is a movement that really fulfills the "the dose makes the poison" adage. In reasonable amounts, it can prevent highways from being built brutally across residential areas like in China. In current amounts, it can prevent you from building a detached house on your own property in a normal residential area full of other houses, because f-k you that's why, your lot has always been an overgrown ex-garden and will stay so until I die.
- smcl 4y ago
  I would love it if we got high-speed rail but I cannot see it happening any time soon. One thing I can say is that rail travel here is insanely cheap and compared to UK and my experience has been that it's generally more punctual with more frequent services. I must admit though, I haven't travelled by rail a great deal this year (only a couple of local journeys like Brno->Hustopeče, and Brno->Adamov) so I haven't encountered the delays you've described, that sounds painful. edit: actually I just looked up Czech high-speed rail and found a wikipedia page. Apparently there are a set of HSR routes already approved and planned out, with a more direct Prague-Brno line via Jihlava supposedly due to start in 2025. Any idea if this is realistic, or if it should be taken with a generous pinch of salt?