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It's not insane at all. Every additional stop takes about 20 minutes - but there are a lot of people who actually use the stations between, say, Berlin and Colo
by cedilla 4y ago
It's not insane at all. Every additional stop takes about 20 minutes - but there are a lot of people who actually use the stations between, say, Berlin and Cologne.
Germany is much less centralised than France. 20% of the population is in Paris. Only 2% of Germans live in Berlin. It would be insanity to mindlessly copy the French model when the circumstances are so different.
- thriftwy 4y agoYou can play with combinatorics where there are ten trains per day, of which 2 are direct with no stops, 2 only stop in Cologne, remaining 6 stop in Cologne and some other destination as well.
- cedilla 4y agoThere are sprinter trains with only one or two stops early in the morning and in the evening.
- KptMarchewa 4y ago>Only 2% of Germans live in Berlin. Over 6 million people live in Berlin metro, in an 80 million country this is closer to 8%.
- lispm 4y agoAnd the metro area of Berlin is twice as large as the one of Paris, with not even half of the population.
- KptMarchewa 4y agoNot 2% to 20% though.
- lucb1e 4y ago(Edit: this comment was based on apparently incorrect information from GP that there is some rule that high-speed trains need to stop in any state they cross. A counter-example is given below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31548720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31548720) > there are a lot of people who actually use the stations between, say, Berlin and Cologne Sure, and a stop in the middle would make sense on that length of route, or alternating at which intermediate place(s) it stops. But with a stupid rule like having to stop in whatever state you pass means that you have to build rails around to avoid hitting a corner where nobody lives anyway because you'd have to stop for absolutely no reason. Let the trains make stops and rails be laid based on, like you say, demand. Not on arbitrary border lines.
- lispm 4y ago"with a stupid rule like having to stop in whatever state" There is no such rule in Germany.
- lucb1e 4y agoThat's literally what was said above? Did I misunderstand this sentence or was this person wrong? > high-speed trains need to have at least one stop in every federal state they cross
- lispm 4y agoyeah, that's wrong. For example the ICE from Hamburg to Berlin tomorrow at 14:35 goes directly, not stopping in Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern or Brandenburg.
- lucb1e 4y agoMight have been worth mentioning in your existing reply above to the person who said that. I'm kind of wondering who to believe now: one the one hand there's the silliness of the rule that makes me inclined to think you must be right; on the other hand there is my experience living in germany and their love for rules and bureaucracy (whoever spawned the phrase 'german efficiency' must have been sarcastic). Edit: ah I see you added an example. That settles it then, thanks!
- lispm 4y agoAnother one: I used to take the ICE Sprinter from Hamburg to Düsseldorf. It didn't stop in Bremen and Lower Saxony. Went directly from Hamburg to NRW.
- cedilla 4y agoI should have made that clear: there is no such formal rule, although there are quibbles like that where regional politicians demand additional stops. That's the system working as intended, though. People like to laugh about small cities like Montabaur or Limburg getting ICE access but it turned out that the regions benefitted a lot from that access and after two slow years the demand for high speed train access in the region exploded.