7 ms·
As someone using the German railway for a large distance destination couple a weeks ago it was a total disaster, we got stranded in a unfamiliar German city. D
by winkelwagen 4y ago
As someone using the German railway for a large distance destination couple a weeks ago it was a total disaster, we got stranded in a unfamiliar German city. Deutsche bahn told us they didn’t have any of their (partner) hotel rooms left. Just arrange something yourself. That was very nice because all the hotels were full anyway. It took us another 2 hours of calling to find something. I was exhausted when I finally checked in somewhere at 1 am.
I try to avoid flying, but the German railway is giving me nightmares. I frequently travel through Germany and it is the exception if there aren’t any large issues.
The article itself is very thin when giving its reasons. I’m sure it’s oké for people without the money to spend, but I would rather pay more for increased reliability. If the German summers are similar to how the Dutch maintains their railways, I’m sure they will plan a ton of construction while the masses of people that usually take the trains for work are on holiday. So I’m inclined to see this promotional as compensation for bad summer train service.
- guerrilla 4y agoOkay, but when you compare to the US, it's still amazing.
- 88840-8855 4y agoOkay, but the US is 50x larger.
- f6v 4y agoChina has trains.
- bombcar 4y agoI like trains.
- durnygbur 4y agotrains
- rat9988 4y agoWhy is it downvoted? He has a point.
- 88840-8855 4y agoAnd China has an agenda and a government that is supporting the building of railways. It's successful. In US the government was supporting the development of roads a century ago. It was very successful.
- objektif 4y agoSo is it about the size of the country or corrupt government?
- rat9988 4y agoI'm pretty sure Europe is bigger than US surface wise.
- jtc331 4y agoAnd we’ll over 2x the population.
- guerrilla 4y agoEh?? I thought they were quite similar... Mmm, yeah, EU population is only 447 million. You must be counting Russia and other countries too but those are outside of the socioeconomic system we're talking about.
- naniwaduni 4y agoThe EU alone is under half the surface area of US, though, so it's like 3x the population density.
- layer8 4y agoYou’re right (had to look it up), though it’s only bigger by 3.5 %.
- Reason077 4y agoIf you take a traditional definition of Continental Europe, including islands like Britain and Ireland, and going all the way into Russia as far as the Ural and Caucasus mountains, then Europe is slightly larger than the USA. But if you're talking about just the European Union, then the EU is much smaller than the USA. Less than half the land area.
- guerrilla 4y ago> Continental Europe, including islands like Britain and Ireland, Continental Europe doesn't include Britain and Ireland.. That's kind of the point of the phrase.
- guerrilla 4y agoOkay, but with a GDP and population to (out)match, sooo not really relevant. Per capita and per square km, "German train system quality" is a bajillion times better than in the US.
- Georgelemental 4y agoThe US has lower population density than Germany, so you need more km of rail to serve the same amount of people. But that only accounts for part of the difference in quality, to be sure
- esrauch 4y agoSure, feel free to compare the trains in New York State vs Germany then.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoThe primary issue in NY is the subway service and the Amtrack trains coming in via the soon to be replaced portal bridge in NJ plus general Amtrack crappiness from other routes (not an NY problem). The commuter lines are decent. Though, with ridership destroyed it remains to be seen what impact the revenue shortfalls will have going forward.
- esrauch 4y agoThat's only NY City though. If we consider the trains in Buffalo/Utica/Syracuse/Rochester/Albany I think you'll find it way more grim compared to equivalent German cities than what you're describing.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y agoThat's an Amtrack problem not NY specific.
- esrauch 4y agoI'm not sure how that's relevant though when just trying to compare travelling by rail in NY State to Germany; is the claimed problem with Amtrak that they have to cover more states than the German train system, and train system management doesn't scale directly causing rail to be worse in NY State than in Germany?
- f6v 4y agoYou book a train from Aachen to Berlin. The first leg in your connection is late, you miss the ICE in the middle of nowhere. The next one is in four hours. You get in, the DB staff looks at you like you shit in their coffee. Booked a bike place and reserved a seat? The best they can do is to offer to stand between the carriages.
- ThePhysicist 4y agoThat's really unlucky. Before the Covid thing I took a long-distance train at least once per month for two decades, and I never managed to get stranded anywhere even when I chose late connections. Normally DB knows the connections passengers have, and it seems that if the last train of the day gets delayed the other trains wait for it to make sure no one gets stranded. I would really have enjoyed staying in one of those Intercity hotels at DB's expense. The worst thing that happened to me was that the ICE train broke down in the middle of nowhere and the DB had to send another train and evacuate everyone from the original one over a gangway (it's not allowed to let passengers deboard in the middle of nowhere). Took more than four hours of waiting in an overheated train during summer. They sent me a box of really good chocolates as a "We're sorry" gift.
- alexott 4y agoDB is nightmare. I had so many cases of missing trains when they had 1 hour delay on 1.5h track, connecting trains no waiting even for 5 minutes, cancelling train in last minute, etc.
- rad_gruchalski 4y agoLucky you. I was taking Koblenz to Utrecht some years ago and every week there was something going wrong in Germany on the way back. Once they just dropped me off in Bonn, no further service to Koblenz at midnight „sleep on the bench, we aplogize but can’t do anything”.
- chromanoid 4y agoI do not share your experience. I used to commute weekly for 1,75 hours in one direction with ICE. I had rarely problems that lasted more than 5 minutes. There was no change of trains required which might help here.
- DocTomoe 4y agoLet me guess: Your commute was in East Germany? Reliability is a lot better there [1] [1] https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10652-bahnmining_-_punktlichkeit_ist_eine_zier https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10652-bahnmining_-_punktlichkeit...
- chromanoid 4y agoNo, it was the route from Hamburg to Munich or similar.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wink 4y agoI worked for a company for 7 years and the only ICE (between our Munich and Würzburg office) I took that was not either: replaced with an IC, cancelled, or my reservation messed up... was the one to a company christmas party. So the table seat to be able to work on the ride happened exactly 0 times out of X where I tried. But I think they were at least on time and I wasn't stranded. Not that I should need to mention this...
- jotaen 4y agoSame here: I regularly take long-distance train rides throughout all Germany, both with ICE (the fast one) as well as RE (the regional one), and for me it works smoothly for the most part.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rjzzleep 4y agoThe mess of DB isn't that much different from how the oligarchs in a lot of eastern European countries came to be. Privatization without real plan. Privatize the profits and socialize the losses. The rails near Hamburg Altona are rotting, but the Bahn didn't want to foot the bill. So they came up with a horrible new station somewhere else. As a result the city chipped in to make a better one and pay of it from tax money. I'm the last person to favour the government institutions in Germany. They're slow, lazy and full of old lazy hierarchies that must have been productive 30 years ago, but what is the point of privatizing something when the structure itself doesn't change and the privatization does nothing but siphon money out of the system and pump tax money in anyway? Half the ICE fleet is out of commission nowadays.
- serial_dev 4y ago> what is the point of privatizing something when the structure itself doesn't change and the privatization does nothing but siphon money out of the system and pump tax money in anyway? That is the point. Gigantic projects like nuclear reactors, stadiums, high ways, bridges, airports (hallo Berlin) trains (and big software projects and wars, too) are just different ways of funneling a significant percentage of the tax payer money funding the project into the politicians' and decision makers' circle's wallet.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoIn summary: because corruption.
- eisstrom 4y agoDB is not privatized, it is 100% state-owned. As far as I know, all ICE power cars are still in use today, except for the one destroyed in the Eschede accident.
- tpmx 4y agoSo, echoing what eisstrom wrote: Deutsche Bahn is fully state owned. That phrase about "privatizing the profits and socializing the losses" is a common but still mindless form of dross in this case. I do understand why it gets a particular group of uninformed people to upvote your comment out of reflex though. You use it as click-bait, sort of, while building a convoluted argument that presumably very few of those upvoters actually grok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Bahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Bahn Deutsche Bahn AG is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a private joint-stock company (AG), with the Federal Republic of Germany being its single shareholder.
- jotaen 4y agoMaybe worth noting that the 9-euro ticket is only for local public transport, such as buses, subways, or regional trains. Only the latter (RE) are operated by Deutsche Bahn, whereas buses and subways are mostly ran by local companies.
- geff82 4y agoIf you beed to be on time, national flights with Lufthansa for me are close to 100% reliable whereas Deutsche Bahn turned out to be a catastrophe in about 50% of the cases. I still don’t get it: they own the complete network, they control every train on it and arriving on time at a place is like playing roulette. Neither air travel nor traveling by car gives those headaches (especially when you listen to your dynamic GPS that routes around traffic jams). You can reduce the bad luck a bit by planning longer stops when changing trains, still making pauses longer reduces the attractiveness of trains even more. Personally, I love taking trains when it works. It is comfortable, fast and you arrive in city centers. Even first class tickets have acceptable prices. But as I usually don’t travel for pleasure, but for business and don’t want to waste my time, German trains have become a no-go for me.
- _Microft 4y agoLufthansa rarely gets "Personenschaden" ("injury to persons", an euphemism for "suicide") on their flight paths while Deutsche Bahn has frequently to deal with that. A delayed intercity express train definitely delays departure of other trains that are considered Anschluss(züge) ("connecting trains"). It then ripples through the network.
- geff82 4y agoThen how do other countries get to a reliable service? Japan, Switzerland, France…
- pjmlp 4y agoHaving travel a few times TGV trains across france, while connecting to Switzerland, Belgium and Germany, I wouldn't consider them much better than German ones. I still have a good story from a TGV travel from Paris back to Geneva that took the double of the time, partial return travel back to Paris, again reversed mid-way back to Geneva, being blocked on a trainstation on the middle of nowhere waiting for restaurant wagon supplies trying to calm down everyone, and finally arriving into Geneva several hours later than expected. I cut lots of details on that reliable train trip.
- dmd 4y agoWhat does large/long distance mean here? Do german railways extend outside of Germany proper? I'm confused because the longest distance I can find between two major cities is Munich to Hamburg, and that's only about 400 miles!
- pftburger 4y agoIve had a Bahncard 100 (yearly pass for all fast trains in the country) for six years now and while there are problems, its about once a year, working out to about 1% of my train trips. For air travel, Id guesstimate I get delays about 10-20% of the time.
- Tainnor 4y agoI've definitely had my "I hate DB" moments in my life and experiences similar to the one you describe, but for me, most of the time, I don't experience major issues (I don't count "train is half an hour late" to be a major issue, although I agree that it's kind of laughable that this happens so often - but I got used to it). It's definitely easier if you don't have to change trains or you don't take a super late train or anything. Then there's also things that are consistently bad, like regional trains in NRW. They're never on time.
- chrisandchris 4y agoThat's an interesting viewpoint and as someone living in the south of you, I have a hard time to understand why 30min is not a major issue. I feel more like after 5min, it's way to late :D ...
- ygra 4y agoMost times I take the train is visiting my parents and it's a 9–10 hour journey. Considering that total time, half an hour certainly isn't that big of a deal. And by car the same distance would take nearly the same time, if not more, as the motorway isn't clear of other cars whenever you travel. Admittedly, the most probable leg of the journey to get late or be disruped in any way is the very first one. Living in a town that has no long-distance rail connection you're forced to use local trains to the next major city anyway.
- Tainnor 4y agoWell, it depends. For a half or one hour trip, of course that would be a huge delay (but that also doesn't happen so often except for some areas like NRW...), but I'm talking more about >4h trips without changing trains, and I really don't care that much about half an hour more or less in that case. Of course, I'd prefer that trains were as punctual as in Switzerland but what can I do?