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Germany's terrible trains are no joke for a nation built on efficiency

144 points by zolbrek 3y ago

AnotherGoodName 3y ago
I used to complain about trains being late in my home country before moving to the USA. I had a 90minute commute each way which sounds terrible but it was actually wonderful. It was 3 hours of bliss each day. I would board the train near my home, sit down and enjoy a smooth, quiet ride (electric and quiet carriages) all the way into the stop next to my work (no changeover). I had internet for almost the whole way. Anyway i would complain when it was 5minutes late. "This is ridiculous!! How can the trains be so bad here!!!". Now having lived in the USA for almost a decade i will never again complain like this. I long for the 90minute each way commute on a train that was silent and silky smooth. The 5minute delays here and there wasn't nearly as bad as i thought at the time. I just didn't have perspective. This article has no precise details on the time trains are delayed. It just says they often run late and gives vague non-specific "The degree of lateness ranged from minutes to several hours" and it's really not based in fact. You can ask anyone anywhere in the world what they think of the delays on their train system and even for the world class train systems people will complain due to the lack of perspective while not realising just how lucky they are.
- flohofwoe 3y ago
  On my connection from bumfuckville in south-east Germany to Berlin, all involved trains run on a 1 hour schedule, but they are not perfectly connected to each other (for instance in Leipzig I miss the ICE to Berlin by just ten minutes). Sometimes when the previous train is delayed I'm lucky and catch that. Paradoxically saving me time despite a train being delayed ;) All in all I can't complain, last 6 months were bad because of an unbelievable amount of construction work so some flexibility was required (eg going over different cities or taking an "express bus" between two cities, but now the connection is working normally again. With at most one hour until the next train, I guess it's mostly ok if one plans ahead with some wiggle room. People are really getting riled about the tiniest things these days. PS: the most likely delay on that connection is the ICE between Munich and Hamburg via Leipzig and Berlin, the regional trains are pretty much always on time (except when there are construction sites of course).
- MandieD 3y ago
  My perspective: grew up in Texas where I was not able to leave my little housing development (void of anything but houses) independently until I got a driver's license and car at 16, then went to university in Baltimore with its sketchy buses, subway that appears to have been built to bring housecleaners from the inner city to the wealthy suburbs, and commuter trains that were mostly good for getting to the stadium downtown from various suburban Maryland parking lots. Germany's rail system, despite irritating delays, is a wonder to this Texas gal, and changed my relationship with driving. Intercity rail is about as irritating as flying, delay wise. Getting good with the schedule app adds a lot of agency - I've made lots of spur of the moment connection change decisions (having the 50% off flexible fares card also helps). The rail system has been a bit of a victim of the Deutschlandticket's success. When everyone who kind of takes the subway or train sometimes and can commit to 49 EUR/mo now has unlimited rides on everything but the high speed trains, they use it. And Germany had a really nice summer that extended well past the usual summer time, resulting in packed trains to anywhere vaguely scenic up to this weekend.
  - fidotron 3y ago
    > subway that appears to have been built to bring housecleaners from the inner city to the wealthy suburbs Yep. This right here is why North America, with tiny exceptions, has terrible public transit; it is built under the assumption only the poorest will use it and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
- ghaff 3y ago
  People who commute regularly remember the days when there was some problem--not all the days when things worked pretty much as expected. I will say that I went in maybe 50% of the time into my city office at one point and it was about 90 minutes each way. It got old. Get up at 6am, drive to train station, take train, 10 minute walk to office. It's just a big chunk out of your day and the train could get very crowded. Almost never go into another office these days and that's about 2 hours each way.
  - AnotherGoodName 3y ago
    The difference for me was that my home was a 2 minute walk to the train station and work 5minutes. Without changeovers it was essentially 3 hours of "Do what you want to do online guilt free without distraction" sitting in a seat on the train. I'd hate to do any form of intermodal commute but zoning out on a single train? Easy! In fact kind of a nice forced escape.
- vlz 3y ago
  Here is a quote from a different article with numbers (apparently self reported by Deutsche Bahn) for January 2023 for one station: > Less construction work in cold weather normally means fewer delays. But only 71,8 percent of Deutsche Bahn trains that ran between January 1 and February 9 managed to pull into the station on time, or with a delay of no more than five minutes and 59 seconds. https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/2023-deutsche-bahn-delays-already-worse-expected https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/2023-de... Notice that trains which are about five minutes late are not reported as such. These included, the ratio of delayed trains might well be more than half. (Canceled trains are also sometimes not included as delayed, it is unclear if that is the case here.)
- fsh 3y ago
  The reliability of German long-distance trains is objectively bad (and getting worse). Here are the official statistics: https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen_fakten/puenktlichkeitswerte-6878476 https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen... The middle tab ("DB Fernverkehr") shows the percentage of trains arriving less than 16 minutes late (black) and less than 6 minutes late (red). In September 2023, 23% of trains were more than 15 minutes late! Compare this to Switzerland's SBB: https://reporting.sbb.ch/punctuality?highlighted=e68508fb2043b7a18b16ea59ebcdd868 https://reporting.sbb.ch/punctuality?highlighted=e68508fb204... The SBB already considers a train late when it arrives more than 2 minutes after the scheduled time. Yet, they routinely achieve more than 90% punctuality rates.
  - josefx 3y ago
    > Here are the official statistics: https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen... A few years ago David Kriesel did some independent data mining on the reported delays. One point that came up is that official statistics do not even cover train stops that where cancelled and I think it was also mentioned that cancelling stops was one of the ways used to make up for lost time if needed to avoid knock-on effects. German presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rb9CfOvojk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rb9CfOvojk
    - mro_name 3y ago
      popcorn!
    - majewsky 3y ago
      The same presentation without Google tracking: https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10652-bahnmining_-_punktlichkeit_ist_eine_zier https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10652-bahnmining_-_punktlichkeit...
  - JW_00000 3y ago
    Interesting. As a point of comparison, here are the official statistics of the Belgian railways: https://punctuality.belgiantrain.be/nl/dashboard https://punctuality.belgiantrain.be/nl/dashboard Last year, 10% of trains were delayed by > 6 minutes; this year 12%. Note, some common complaints about these statistics are: 1. They measure delay at arrival at the end station. However, many trains have some margins built in during their ride, so they may be delayed en-route but "catch up" by the time they reach their end destination; resulting in more favorable numbers. 2. Cancelled trains are not counted in the statistics. So ironically, to improve punctuality statistics, it is "better" to cancel a train than having it run with a delay. 3. Trains are more delayed during peak hours than off-peak or during the weekend, but all trains count equally in these numbers. 4. If a (e.g. 5 minute) delay causes you to miss your transfer, you arrive much later at your final destination (e.g. 30 or 60 minutes). 5. If you inflate travel times (adding some extra "margin"), you can avoid bad statistics but passengers still don't get at their destination faster. This has happened in the past. A fairer way to calculate delays would be to take a sample of all passengers and measure how delayed they arrive at their (final) destination. An organization that advocates for public transport users (TreinTramBus) has done this in the past, I thought, but I can't find it back.
- exitheone 3y ago
  Having commuted 55 minutes each way into Munich for more than a year, I'd say my average daily delay is about 15 minutes with >30 minutes delay happening at least once a week. That's a level of regular delay that makes early morning meetings impractical because I'll be late more likely than not.
  - musha68k 3y ago
    Are there any investigations into what changed? I remember DB had always been looked up to by Austrians but now OEBB seems to run a better service?
    - marsa 3y ago
      anecdotal, but my experience a year ago when i travelled international was: 2/2 delays by OEBB that made me miss connections (and absolutely rude and inconsiderate customer service reps in Vienna HBF on top of that), 1/1 on time trains by DB ICE
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > Anyway i would complain when it was 5minutes late. "This is ridiculous!! How can the trains be so bad here!!!". > Now having lived in the USA for almost a decade i will never again complain like this. The German way is rather to compare the punctuality of the German trains to Swiss or Japanese ones: these are a lot more punctual, so this problem is mostly solvable. Thus German citizens legitimately ask why are the Swiss and Japanese able to solve this problem, and we can't? In particular in consideration that this is considered to be an engineering problem where many German citizens consider Germany to be better in than Switzerland or Japan (legitimately or not shall remain undecided).
  - lispm 3y ago
    Japan has dedicated lines for high-speed trains and a mostly north-south corridor. Germany has mixed-use lines in a meshed network directly connected to neighbour countries. > where many German citizens consider Germany to be better in than Switzerland or Japan (legitimately or not shall remain undecided). I think you made that up. Germans complain a lot about their infrastructure and you can read&see a lot of reports&comparisons with other countries train infrastructure.
- solarkraft 3y ago
  I don't really mind a few minutes here and there. I mind random cancellations, platform changes (announced at the last second of course), mind-bogglingly unreliable (late, overcrowded, unable to carry bikes) replacement buses and incorrect (and sometimes conflicting - this has gotten worse!) information about all of it on the apps. Never take the last long-distance route of the day.
Beijinger 3y ago
Most of the time, Germans complain about the wrong things (e.g. their postal system, which is outstanding). The trains suck a little bit. But this is mainly caused by two reasons: 1. Years of under-investment 2. No separation between bullet trains and freight trains (compare to China!) 1 can be solved over time. Point 2 is trickier. In general there is some but not enough fantasy. I would suggest: a) more investments b) several bullet trains connecting Europe. c) more sleeper trains d) self coupling trains. Yes, you can go from Frankfurt to Paris in the same train. But why not from Warsaw to Madrid? With self coupling cars this might be feasible. OT: This is interesting for freight. https://www.cargobeamer.com/ https://www.cargobeamer.com/
Akashic101 3y ago
> When he began his daily commute in January 2016, he had few problems with the hour-long journey on a high-speed intercity train, bookended by cycle rides. The trip would have taken three times as long by car This part confuses me a bit. Deutsche Bahn was bad 7 years ago and it has only gotten worse, but travelling more than 230km a day while depending on DB seems like a bet that can only go wrong, no matter when this started
bradley13 3y ago
There are many international routes where the same train continues from Germany into Switzerland, and then possibly into other countries. Germany has gotten so unreliable that Switzerland is stopping this practice on some routes, because late German trains have a knock-on effect throughout the system. So now, the German trains stop at the first Swiss station, when they finally arrive, and people gave to switch trains. Germany is also years behind on their commitment to getting cargo on trains. Switzerland built a rail tunnel especially for trans-European traffic, but Germany is apparently incapable of getting cargo onto trains. It ought to be mortally embarrassing for the supposed industrial powerhouse of Europe. But that's OK, they are building more autobahn.
- fsh 3y ago
  The Swiss trip planner now completely ignores DB trains for trips within Switzerland. They don't want to disappoint their customers.
  - nic547 3y ago
    Doesn't seem so, just checked Chur -> Zürich HB, for Sunday "SBB Mobile" offers a ICE starting from Chur at 12:35. Basel SBB -> Zürich also offers ICE connections. AFAIK there are less ICE trains running in Switzerland due to the issues, but the remaing ones still seem to appear in the trip planner.
    - fsh 3y ago
      You're right, it seems like this is exclusive to the EuroCity between Munich and Zürich which is a cooperation of DB, SBB, and ÖBB.
      - idiliv 3y ago
        I happen to take this train on a regular basis, and it is reliably delayed :-). Conveniently, my connecting train is also usually sufficiently delayed so that I do not miss it.
- 3y ago
tannhaeuser 3y ago
With the UK having their share of railway reform (and love/hate relationship), I'm wondering if there's an objective assessment of the two countries' systems according to being on-time, being broadly available wrt place/time, pricing, and general customer satisfaction. The article mentions people blaming service deterioration on Deutsche Bahn being state-owned and without competition. UK should be quite different after Thatcher's privatization campaign starting in late 80s (been there in early 90s on a London station heading to the east, totally confused which train to board while being yelled at ^H informed over the speaker about the service provider/operator but not much else).
- fredley 3y ago
  At times it can feel like being trapped in a nation of self-saboteurs.
notrlyskeptik 3y ago
Look at the management boards of German transport and telco companies in the past twenty+ years. Scrape it together. Check previous positions and countries and so on. That's enough for a fun start. Build your knowledge graph from there. Or rather let an AI have the fun and you just watch the pathetic mess unfold.
- CommieBobDole 3y ago
  I don't think anybody is going to do this (I wouldn't even know where to start, not being in Germany), and you've clearly done so and discovered something that's not clear from context, so could you just tell us what you've found out?
bjourne 3y ago
The same situation in Sweden. My assumption is that German train operators maximize profit. So they calculate. Either run trains on time, have redundant train sets in nearby depots, have locomotive drivers on standby in case one gets sick (not an uncommon reason for delays). Or don't have any redundancy at all and hand out refunds and gift vouchers to the passengers affected by delays. Also make the claims system as Byzantine as possible to make it difficult for passengers to make claims. Think it's an easy choice for most operators.
bluerooibos 3y ago
The UK: "Hold my beer." At least Germany has high speed rail. The fact that the Beeching cuts of the 60's happened should be a point of national embarrassment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts - the country is still suffering the consequences of this "strategy".
- kmlx 3y ago
  i don’t think you realise just how worse train travel is in germany compared to the UK
- laurencerowe 3y ago
  Despite the Beeching cuts the UK still has a pretty dense rail system. I think the bigger problem has been the lack of S-bahn like development in the major cities outside of London.
thesaintlives 3y ago
Amusing article. Yes German trains are often late. One of the main reasons was suicides. Previously all trains in that area would be stopped until all body parts were found and collected. This practice is no more. Trains have to go slower in the clean up area but not stop. Comparing Deutsche Bahn and the UK train service is like comparing night and day. With DB you get value for money and comfort. With UK trains you get something else entirely, must not forget to mention most of them don't pay tax and are run as offshore entities..
- fbdab103 3y ago
  According to random search result[0], there are ~800 annual suicides by train per year in Germany. For the number of lines in the country, that does not seem like a sufficient number to explain away train delays. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/rail-suicide-a-train-driver-struggles-with-lives-taken-a-1191500.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/rail-suicide-...
  - lispm 3y ago
    If you have two of those each day, you'll get lots of network effects. Imagine a train track from Hamburg (where a lot of ICE trains are starting) to the south being delayed for two hours in the morning. That means a lot of effects since the train lines and train stations are often operating at the higher end of the capacity. For example recently two girls im my hometown were doing Tiktok videos for a challenge on a high-speed train track. One got killed and one barely survived. The whole track between Hamburg and Berlin was closed for hours. Whenever there are reports of people on the tracks, they need to be checked and trains are stopped.
  - permo-w 3y ago
    I mean that is on average >2 lines per day, which doesn't sound like much, but how many people use a line per day? and I'm guessing suicides occur more often on busy lines, so it's significant still
- permo-w 3y ago
  UK trains are very expensive but it's a myth that the service is poor. when I was last in Germany, I took 3 trains. 2/3 were more than 15 minutes delayed and the third was 5 minutes late. obviously 3 is a small sample size, but I've taken tens of trains in a row in the UK without a delay of even 5 minutes. the trains also appeared to be a lot older and in worse condition than the average British train I've been on
lispm 3y ago
> Earlier this month, after weeks of speculation over the future of Britain’s planned HS2 high-speed rail link from Birmingham to Manchester, the prime minister finally announced that the northern leg was to be scrapped. Actually Germany has and is building&upgrading new train lines and is buying new trains. It's also building/upgrading new train stations in major cities. There is an extensive public transport system with regional trains and also long distance trains. Core technical infrastructure in many places for them is old. Especially computer controlled train operations have to be introduced in many places. Upgrading this takes a decade or more and this process is very expensive and will cause even more delays during the update phase. It will partly get worse, before it gets better. For example the high-speed connection between Hamburg and Berlin (roughly every 30 minutes ICE trains travel in both directions) will be upgraded during the next two years and there will be longer travel times for several months. Upgrading the major train stations is also very difficult, since most of them are in the center of already dense cities. Here in Hamburg one of the important ICE train stations (Altona, where several ICE trains are starting) will be moved to a new place in the city (a few km apart). The train station then will no longer be a terminus (trains now enter/leave only in one direction), which will improve travel times. Cost will be more than 0.5 billion Euros. One factor which also makes upgrading the infrastructure difficult is the very low unemployment rate, which makes it difficult to find trained workers...
- layer8 3y ago
  [flagged]
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  > One factor which also makes upgrading the infrastructure difficult is the very low unemployment rate, which makes it difficult to find trained workers... Does the German government have a history of offering competitive pay to train system workers, sufficiently high to make it a more attractive option than a Mon to Fri 8AM to 4PM desk job?
  - lispm 3y ago
    Try to find skilled workers now. There are many industries/professions in competition. It's also not the "german government", which employs train system workers.
progx 3y ago
Not only our trains!
Waterluvian 3y ago
You know that experience where as a company ages and grows, as a product evolves, it becomes harder and harder to do anything? Sure, if you do a great job planning and designing your runway is longer, but the music always slows. This also seems to happen with cities. The bigger and more established, the harder it is, for obvious reasons, to retrofit mass transit and whatnot. Downtowns of large cities always feel kinda hacked together. Does the same happen with a country? The longer a country’s current established governmental system exists, the more it inevitably bogs down?
- usrnm 3y ago
  > The longer a country’s current established governmental system exists, the more it inevitably bogs down? Doesn't really apply to Germany all that well.
- thatfrenchguy 3y ago
  Have you seen the subway extensions in Paris?
InTheArena 3y ago
Jetlag's current season involved a lot of german trains. It didn't go well.
Febra33 3y ago
> The delay is now such a common occurrence that the train manager does not even both to mention it to disembarking passengers. Do these corporations even have proofreaders?
- kingofpandora 3y ago
  > Do these corporations even have proofreaders? It's called The Grauniad for a reason!
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SeanLuke 3y ago
This Adam Something video was really enlightening as to just how bad Europe's international train situation really is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxz4oY0T85Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxz4oY0T85Y
xenospn 3y ago
I was just in Germany and my train to the airport arrived over an hour and a half late. I was shocked.
- flarg 3y ago
  Don't be. It is such a nightmare esp around places like Frankfurt.
whoisstan 3y ago
may I add to the list: - Covid Vaccination Rollout - Government plane routinely breaking - Berlin Airport Construction - Military Weapon Procurement - last but not least, German National team
kaffeeringe 3y ago
Today I tried to travel 80km. By car it's about 1 hour. By train it's almost 2 hours. 10 minutes in the ride, the train stopped because a tree was about to fall into the rails. 20 minutes later we continued and I missed my connecting train by 10 minutes. Next train in 2 hours. I tried to find another route but the trains were cancelled. So I abandoned my plan an decided to go back home. That train was delayed 5, then 10, then 15 minutes. It stopped right outside my home station and waited 5 minutes. Almost 2 hours on the Deutsche Bahn and I was back again, where I started.
f_allwein 3y ago
This is partly by political choice. The Germna traffic department has been held by the conservatives (CSU) for years, and ministers like Peter Ramsauer, Alexander Dobrindt, and Andreas Scheuer were more concerned with investing in roads (particularly in Bavaria, their home state) than in rails. Now the ministry is with the liberals (FDP, Volker Wissing), who also seem to be more concerned with defending drivers’ freedom.
mro_name 3y ago
German railway is managed by former car managers for decades. Doesn't work out. Surprising?
Moldoteck 3y ago
Germany is rulled by car makers lobby, it's obvious train infra is let to rot and underfunded
mro_name 3y ago
oh, the railways recently became measurably more on schedule. Simply by raising the threshold value for 'belatedness' for the statistics. Magical.
consp 3y ago
Fyi N=1. I remember a train from Stuttgart to Amsterdam, even quite a few years go, the end result was we would be quite close to missing the last trains to final destination in Amsterdam due to mishaps at Frankfurt. We (the Dutchies) got better support from the NS (Dutch railways) than the Germans at all places. We could call a number to get alternative routes, get advice on where to go, what to ask and got notice on what to do when. Eventually we were told to board a train by taking a local train to Frankfurt Flugplatz but first get our tickets transfered so we would get prefered seats. Afterwards we even got all tickets back, including transfers, due to delays and even the transfer tickets back with a few online clicks while the Germans had to fill in all kinds of forms. On the final train the Germans were surprised when the Dutch officers were asking everyone their end destination (stil in Germany) to know if they could delay the transfer trains in the Netherlands so everyone could get home. If you could not a cab would be free of charge. For me that was the day I realised the Dutch trains weren't as bad as I thought. edit: I did have a first class ticket but the end line -make sure every one got home- was in general no questions asked.
secretsatan 3y ago
Seems and odd focus for a british paper, a nation that pretty much invented railways, to look outward and criticize another country like this.
resolutebat 3y ago
> Germany may be the home of an ever-powerful carmaking lobby and an autobahn which includes some sections free of speed limits I recently spent a week driving around southern Germany. The freeways around Munich seemed to be in permanent Stau (jam) mode, even off peak on weekdays. Outside cities, on the notionally-unlimited stretches, I could rarely even drive at 130 (the advisory limit) because there was simply so much traffic.
orwin 3y ago
I want to give props to Italy and Spain. Highly efficient trains, the rail building is as fast as Switzerland and France, and cost way less (Italy used to have cost issues but it seems fixed now). I think they will have the 2nd and 3rd best railroad network in a decade if they keep up (behind Switzerland, and maybe ahead if Lausanne hub keep getting slowed down) (i'm forgetting about Benelux, let's say the 3rd and 4th, and let's not count countries like Luxembourg or smaller).
HayBale 3y ago
I emigrated to Germany 4 years ago when I still belived in the myth of German efficiency but at this point I am completely disillusioned. It's a myth that is problematic because even Germans started to belive in and it's holding it back. German rail is in horrible state, internet speed is a joke, banking system is ancient and you still have problems with paying with cards. Also dealing with even simple stuff require a crazy amount of documentation and personal visit for no good reason. And the worst part is that due the German mentality and their feel that their are the greatest nothing will be improved and any insight from abroad used. Their approach is always just "Well what can we or oh it's definitely the best system". Germany is the best in marketing and eating the benefits of the previous generations.
lycopodiopsida 3y ago
I recently traveled from my small town to Cologne - it is such a shit show, I cannot imagine how people cope with it for years. I took more or less a direct connection, but trains would be late (30 min or even 2h late), skipped parts of the route, 1st class is a joke (it is like in a tram, people with flat-rate tickets can run there without a reservation and occupy free places) - it is certainly a very bad deal if you already own a car, since even not considering that every journey with DB is an adventure, is pretty expensive, even with discounted tickets. If you travel with a family, it is a terrible and very expensive choice overall. In my bubble even people who where holding out for decades are giving up and getting a car. DB is falling apart and needs to scale down the number of trains until the network can manage it, from this point on it is about investments. I am not even that bullish on rail network, since I mostly drive from one small town to another one and public transport does nothing for me. But at least big town to big town connection should work like a clock.
kakaz 3y ago
First where idea that Germany is build for efficiency came from? Is it Germany government paid material?
mmonksi 3y ago
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144 points by zolbrek 3y ago

I used to complain about trains being late in my home country before moving to the USA. I had a 90minute commute each way which sounds terrible but it was actually wonderful. It was 3 hours of bliss each day. I would board the train near my home, sit down and enjoy a smooth, quiet ride (electric and quiet carriages) all the way into the stop next to my work (no changeover). I had internet for almost the whole way. Anyway i would complain when it was 5minutes late. "This is ridiculous!! How can the trains be so bad here!!!". Now having lived in the USA for almost a decade i will never again complain like this. I long for the 90minute each way commute on a train that was silent and silky smooth. The 5minute delays here and there wasn't nearly as bad as i thought at the time. I just didn't have perspective. This article has no precise details on the time trains are delayed. It just says they often run late and gives vague non-specific "The degree of lateness ranged from minutes to several hours" and it's really not based in fact. You can ask anyone anywhere in the world what they think of the delays on their train system and even for the world class train systems people will complain due to the lack of perspective while not realising just how lucky they are.

flohofwoe 3y ago
On my connection from bumfuckville in south-east Germany to Berlin, all involved trains run on a 1 hour schedule, but they are not perfectly connected to each other (for instance in Leipzig I miss the ICE to Berlin by just ten minutes). Sometimes when the previous train is delayed I'm lucky and catch that. Paradoxically saving me time despite a train being delayed ;) All in all I can't complain, last 6 months were bad because of an unbelievable amount of construction work so some flexibility was required (eg going over different cities or taking an "express bus" between two cities, but now the connection is working normally again. With at most one hour until the next train, I guess it's mostly ok if one plans ahead with some wiggle room. People are really getting riled about the tiniest things these days. PS: the most likely delay on that connection is the ICE between Munich and Hamburg via Leipzig and Berlin, the regional trains are pretty much always on time (except when there are construction sites of course).
MandieD 3y ago
My perspective: grew up in Texas where I was not able to leave my little housing development (void of anything but houses) independently until I got a driver's license and car at 16, then went to university in Baltimore with its sketchy buses, subway that appears to have been built to bring housecleaners from the inner city to the wealthy suburbs, and commuter trains that were mostly good for getting to the stadium downtown from various suburban Maryland parking lots. Germany's rail system, despite irritating delays, is a wonder to this Texas gal, and changed my relationship with driving. Intercity rail is about as irritating as flying, delay wise. Getting good with the schedule app adds a lot of agency - I've made lots of spur of the moment connection change decisions (having the 50% off flexible fares card also helps). The rail system has been a bit of a victim of the Deutschlandticket's success. When everyone who kind of takes the subway or train sometimes and can commit to 49 EUR/mo now has unlimited rides on everything but the high speed trains, they use it. And Germany had a really nice summer that extended well past the usual summer time, resulting in packed trains to anywhere vaguely scenic up to this weekend.
- fidotron 3y ago
  > subway that appears to have been built to bring housecleaners from the inner city to the wealthy suburbs Yep. This right here is why North America, with tiny exceptions, has terrible public transit; it is built under the assumption only the poorest will use it and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
ghaff 3y ago
People who commute regularly remember the days when there was some problem--not all the days when things worked pretty much as expected. I will say that I went in maybe 50% of the time into my city office at one point and it was about 90 minutes each way. It got old. Get up at 6am, drive to train station, take train, 10 minute walk to office. It's just a big chunk out of your day and the train could get very crowded. Almost never go into another office these days and that's about 2 hours each way.
- AnotherGoodName 3y ago
  The difference for me was that my home was a 2 minute walk to the train station and work 5minutes. Without changeovers it was essentially 3 hours of "Do what you want to do online guilt free without distraction" sitting in a seat on the train. I'd hate to do any form of intermodal commute but zoning out on a single train? Easy! In fact kind of a nice forced escape.
vlz 3y ago
Here is a quote from a different article with numbers (apparently self reported by Deutsche Bahn) for January 2023 for one station: > Less construction work in cold weather normally means fewer delays. But only 71,8 percent of Deutsche Bahn trains that ran between January 1 and February 9 managed to pull into the station on time, or with a delay of no more than five minutes and 59 seconds. https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/2023-deutsche-bahn-delays-already-worse-expected https://www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/german-expat-news/2023-de... Notice that trains which are about five minutes late are not reported as such. These included, the ratio of delayed trains might well be more than half. (Canceled trains are also sometimes not included as delayed, it is unclear if that is the case here.)
fsh 3y ago
The reliability of German long-distance trains is objectively bad (and getting worse). Here are the official statistics: https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen_fakten/puenktlichkeitswerte-6878476 https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen... The middle tab ("DB Fernverkehr") shows the percentage of trains arriving less than 16 minutes late (black) and less than 6 minutes late (red). In September 2023, 23% of trains were more than 15 minutes late! Compare this to Switzerland's SBB: https://reporting.sbb.ch/punctuality?highlighted=e68508fb2043b7a18b16ea59ebcdd868 https://reporting.sbb.ch/punctuality?highlighted=e68508fb204... The SBB already considers a train late when it arrives more than 2 minutes after the scheduled time. Yet, they routinely achieve more than 90% punctuality rates.
- josefx 3y ago
  > Here are the official statistics: https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen... A few years ago David Kriesel did some independent data mining on the reported delays. One point that came up is that official statistics do not even cover train stops that where cancelled and I think it was also mentioned that cancelling stops was one of the ways used to make up for lost time if needed to avoid knock-on effects. German presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rb9CfOvojk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rb9CfOvojk
  - mro_name 3y ago
    popcorn!
  - majewsky 3y ago
    The same presentation without Google tracking: https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10652-bahnmining_-_punktlichkeit_ist_eine_zier https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10652-bahnmining_-_punktlichkeit...
- JW_00000 3y ago
  Interesting. As a point of comparison, here are the official statistics of the Belgian railways: https://punctuality.belgiantrain.be/nl/dashboard https://punctuality.belgiantrain.be/nl/dashboard Last year, 10% of trains were delayed by > 6 minutes; this year 12%. Note, some common complaints about these statistics are: 1. They measure delay at arrival at the end station. However, many trains have some margins built in during their ride, so they may be delayed en-route but "catch up" by the time they reach their end destination; resulting in more favorable numbers. 2. Cancelled trains are not counted in the statistics. So ironically, to improve punctuality statistics, it is "better" to cancel a train than having it run with a delay. 3. Trains are more delayed during peak hours than off-peak or during the weekend, but all trains count equally in these numbers. 4. If a (e.g. 5 minute) delay causes you to miss your transfer, you arrive much later at your final destination (e.g. 30 or 60 minutes). 5. If you inflate travel times (adding some extra "margin"), you can avoid bad statistics but passengers still don't get at their destination faster. This has happened in the past. A fairer way to calculate delays would be to take a sample of all passengers and measure how delayed they arrive at their (final) destination. An organization that advocates for public transport users (TreinTramBus) has done this in the past, I thought, but I can't find it back.
exitheone 3y ago
Having commuted 55 minutes each way into Munich for more than a year, I'd say my average daily delay is about 15 minutes with >30 minutes delay happening at least once a week. That's a level of regular delay that makes early morning meetings impractical because I'll be late more likely than not.
- musha68k 3y ago
  Are there any investigations into what changed? I remember DB had always been looked up to by Austrians but now OEBB seems to run a better service?
  - marsa 3y ago
    anecdotal, but my experience a year ago when i travelled international was: 2/2 delays by OEBB that made me miss connections (and absolutely rude and inconsiderate customer service reps in Vienna HBF on top of that), 1/1 on time trains by DB ICE
    - deleted 3y ago
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aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> Anyway i would complain when it was 5minutes late. "This is ridiculous!! How can the trains be so bad here!!!". > Now having lived in the USA for almost a decade i will never again complain like this. The German way is rather to compare the punctuality of the German trains to Swiss or Japanese ones: these are a lot more punctual, so this problem is mostly solvable. Thus German citizens legitimately ask why are the Swiss and Japanese able to solve this problem, and we can't? In particular in consideration that this is considered to be an engineering problem where many German citizens consider Germany to be better in than Switzerland or Japan (legitimately or not shall remain undecided).
- lispm 3y ago
  Japan has dedicated lines for high-speed trains and a mostly north-south corridor. Germany has mixed-use lines in a meshed network directly connected to neighbour countries. > where many German citizens consider Germany to be better in than Switzerland or Japan (legitimately or not shall remain undecided). I think you made that up. Germans complain a lot about their infrastructure and you can read&see a lot of reports&comparisons with other countries train infrastructure.
solarkraft 3y ago
I don't really mind a few minutes here and there. I mind random cancellations, platform changes (announced at the last second of course), mind-bogglingly unreliable (late, overcrowded, unable to carry bikes) replacement buses and incorrect (and sometimes conflicting - this has gotten worse!) information about all of it on the apps. Never take the last long-distance route of the day.

Beijinger 3y ago

Most of the time, Germans complain about the wrong things (e.g. their postal system, which is outstanding). The trains suck a little bit. But this is mainly caused by two reasons: 1. Years of under-investment 2. No separation between bullet trains and freight trains (compare to China!) 1 can be solved over time. Point 2 is trickier. In general there is some but not enough fantasy. I would suggest: a) more investments b) several bullet trains connecting Europe. c) more sleeper trains d) self coupling trains. Yes, you can go from Frankfurt to Paris in the same train. But why not from Warsaw to Madrid? With self coupling cars this might be feasible. OT: This is interesting for freight. https://www.cargobeamer.com/ https://www.cargobeamer.com/

Akashic101 3y ago

> When he began his daily commute in January 2016, he had few problems with the hour-long journey on a high-speed intercity train, bookended by cycle rides. The trip would have taken three times as long by car This part confuses me a bit. Deutsche Bahn was bad 7 years ago and it has only gotten worse, but travelling more than 230km a day while depending on DB seems like a bet that can only go wrong, no matter when this started

bradley13 3y ago

There are many international routes where the same train continues from Germany into Switzerland, and then possibly into other countries. Germany has gotten so unreliable that Switzerland is stopping this practice on some routes, because late German trains have a knock-on effect throughout the system. So now, the German trains stop at the first Swiss station, when they finally arrive, and people gave to switch trains. Germany is also years behind on their commitment to getting cargo on trains. Switzerland built a rail tunnel especially for trans-European traffic, but Germany is apparently incapable of getting cargo onto trains. It ought to be mortally embarrassing for the supposed industrial powerhouse of Europe. But that's OK, they are building more autobahn.

fsh 3y ago
The Swiss trip planner now completely ignores DB trains for trips within Switzerland. They don't want to disappoint their customers.
- nic547 3y ago
  Doesn't seem so, just checked Chur -> Zürich HB, for Sunday "SBB Mobile" offers a ICE starting from Chur at 12:35. Basel SBB -> Zürich also offers ICE connections. AFAIK there are less ICE trains running in Switzerland due to the issues, but the remaing ones still seem to appear in the trip planner.
  - fsh 3y ago
    You're right, it seems like this is exclusive to the EuroCity between Munich and Zürich which is a cooperation of DB, SBB, and ÖBB.
    - idiliv 3y ago
      I happen to take this train on a regular basis, and it is reliably delayed :-). Conveniently, my connecting train is also usually sufficiently delayed so that I do not miss it.
3y ago

tannhaeuser 3y ago

With the UK having their share of railway reform (and love/hate relationship), I'm wondering if there's an objective assessment of the two countries' systems according to being on-time, being broadly available wrt place/time, pricing, and general customer satisfaction. The article mentions people blaming service deterioration on Deutsche Bahn being state-owned and without competition. UK should be quite different after Thatcher's privatization campaign starting in late 80s (been there in early 90s on a London station heading to the east, totally confused which train to board while being yelled at ^H informed over the speaker about the service provider/operator but not much else).

fredley 3y ago
At times it can feel like being trapped in a nation of self-saboteurs.

notrlyskeptik 3y ago

Look at the management boards of German transport and telco companies in the past twenty+ years. Scrape it together. Check previous positions and countries and so on. That's enough for a fun start. Build your knowledge graph from there. Or rather let an AI have the fun and you just watch the pathetic mess unfold.

CommieBobDole 3y ago
I don't think anybody is going to do this (I wouldn't even know where to start, not being in Germany), and you've clearly done so and discovered something that's not clear from context, so could you just tell us what you've found out?

bjourne 3y ago

The same situation in Sweden. My assumption is that German train operators maximize profit. So they calculate. Either run trains on time, have redundant train sets in nearby depots, have locomotive drivers on standby in case one gets sick (not an uncommon reason for delays). Or don't have any redundancy at all and hand out refunds and gift vouchers to the passengers affected by delays. Also make the claims system as Byzantine as possible to make it difficult for passengers to make claims. Think it's an easy choice for most operators.

bluerooibos 3y ago

The UK: "Hold my beer." At least Germany has high speed rail. The fact that the Beeching cuts of the 60's happened should be a point of national embarrassment - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts - the country is still suffering the consequences of this "strategy".

kmlx 3y ago
i don’t think you realise just how worse train travel is in germany compared to the UK
laurencerowe 3y ago
Despite the Beeching cuts the UK still has a pretty dense rail system. I think the bigger problem has been the lack of S-bahn like development in the major cities outside of London.

thesaintlives 3y ago

Amusing article. Yes German trains are often late. One of the main reasons was suicides. Previously all trains in that area would be stopped until all body parts were found and collected. This practice is no more. Trains have to go slower in the clean up area but not stop. Comparing Deutsche Bahn and the UK train service is like comparing night and day. With DB you get value for money and comfort. With UK trains you get something else entirely, must not forget to mention most of them don't pay tax and are run as offshore entities..

fbdab103 3y ago
According to random search result[0], there are ~800 annual suicides by train per year in Germany. For the number of lines in the country, that does not seem like a sufficient number to explain away train delays. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/rail-suicide-a-train-driver-struggles-with-lives-taken-a-1191500.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/rail-suicide-...
- lispm 3y ago
  If you have two of those each day, you'll get lots of network effects. Imagine a train track from Hamburg (where a lot of ICE trains are starting) to the south being delayed for two hours in the morning. That means a lot of effects since the train lines and train stations are often operating at the higher end of the capacity. For example recently two girls im my hometown were doing Tiktok videos for a challenge on a high-speed train track. One got killed and one barely survived. The whole track between Hamburg and Berlin was closed for hours. Whenever there are reports of people on the tracks, they need to be checked and trains are stopped.
- permo-w 3y ago
  I mean that is on average >2 lines per day, which doesn't sound like much, but how many people use a line per day? and I'm guessing suicides occur more often on busy lines, so it's significant still
permo-w 3y ago
UK trains are very expensive but it's a myth that the service is poor. when I was last in Germany, I took 3 trains. 2/3 were more than 15 minutes delayed and the third was 5 minutes late. obviously 3 is a small sample size, but I've taken tens of trains in a row in the UK without a delay of even 5 minutes. the trains also appeared to be a lot older and in worse condition than the average British train I've been on

lispm 3y ago

> Earlier this month, after weeks of speculation over the future of Britain’s planned HS2 high-speed rail link from Birmingham to Manchester, the prime minister finally announced that the northern leg was to be scrapped. Actually Germany has and is building&upgrading new train lines and is buying new trains. It's also building/upgrading new train stations in major cities. There is an extensive public transport system with regional trains and also long distance trains. Core technical infrastructure in many places for them is old. Especially computer controlled train operations have to be introduced in many places. Upgrading this takes a decade or more and this process is very expensive and will cause even more delays during the update phase. It will partly get worse, before it gets better. For example the high-speed connection between Hamburg and Berlin (roughly every 30 minutes ICE trains travel in both directions) will be upgraded during the next two years and there will be longer travel times for several months. Upgrading the major train stations is also very difficult, since most of them are in the center of already dense cities. Here in Hamburg one of the important ICE train stations (Altona, where several ICE trains are starting) will be moved to a new place in the city (a few km apart). The train station then will no longer be a terminus (trains now enter/leave only in one direction), which will improve travel times. Cost will be more than 0.5 billion Euros. One factor which also makes upgrading the infrastructure difficult is the very low unemployment rate, which makes it difficult to find trained workers...

layer8 3y ago
[flagged]
lotsofpulp 3y ago
> One factor which also makes upgrading the infrastructure difficult is the very low unemployment rate, which makes it difficult to find trained workers... Does the German government have a history of offering competitive pay to train system workers, sufficiently high to make it a more attractive option than a Mon to Fri 8AM to 4PM desk job?
- lispm 3y ago
  Try to find skilled workers now. There are many industries/professions in competition. It's also not the "german government", which employs train system workers.

progx 3y ago

Not only our trains!

Waterluvian 3y ago

You know that experience where as a company ages and grows, as a product evolves, it becomes harder and harder to do anything? Sure, if you do a great job planning and designing your runway is longer, but the music always slows. This also seems to happen with cities. The bigger and more established, the harder it is, for obvious reasons, to retrofit mass transit and whatnot. Downtowns of large cities always feel kinda hacked together. Does the same happen with a country? The longer a country’s current established governmental system exists, the more it inevitably bogs down?

usrnm 3y ago
> The longer a country’s current established governmental system exists, the more it inevitably bogs down? Doesn't really apply to Germany all that well.
thatfrenchguy 3y ago
Have you seen the subway extensions in Paris?

InTheArena 3y ago

Jetlag's current season involved a lot of german trains. It didn't go well.

Febra33 3y ago

> The delay is now such a common occurrence that the train manager does not even both to mention it to disembarking passengers. Do these corporations even have proofreaders?

kingofpandora 3y ago
> Do these corporations even have proofreaders? It's called The Grauniad for a reason!

deleted 3y ago

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SeanLuke 3y ago

This Adam Something video was really enlightening as to just how bad Europe's international train situation really is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxz4oY0T85Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxz4oY0T85Y

xenospn 3y ago

I was just in Germany and my train to the airport arrived over an hour and a half late. I was shocked.

flarg 3y ago
Don't be. It is such a nightmare esp around places like Frankfurt.

whoisstan 3y ago

may I add to the list: - Covid Vaccination Rollout - Government plane routinely breaking - Berlin Airport Construction - Military Weapon Procurement - last but not least, German National team

kaffeeringe 3y ago

Today I tried to travel 80km. By car it's about 1 hour. By train it's almost 2 hours. 10 minutes in the ride, the train stopped because a tree was about to fall into the rails. 20 minutes later we continued and I missed my connecting train by 10 minutes. Next train in 2 hours. I tried to find another route but the trains were cancelled. So I abandoned my plan an decided to go back home. That train was delayed 5, then 10, then 15 minutes. It stopped right outside my home station and waited 5 minutes. Almost 2 hours on the Deutsche Bahn and I was back again, where I started.

f_allwein 3y ago

This is partly by political choice. The Germna traffic department has been held by the conservatives (CSU) for years, and ministers like Peter Ramsauer, Alexander Dobrindt, and Andreas Scheuer were more concerned with investing in roads (particularly in Bavaria, their home state) than in rails. Now the ministry is with the liberals (FDP, Volker Wissing), who also seem to be more concerned with defending drivers’ freedom.

mro_name 3y ago

German railway is managed by former car managers for decades. Doesn't work out. Surprising?

Moldoteck 3y ago

Germany is rulled by car makers lobby, it's obvious train infra is let to rot and underfunded

mro_name 3y ago

oh, the railways recently became measurably more on schedule. Simply by raising the threshold value for 'belatedness' for the statistics. Magical.

consp 3y ago

Fyi N=1. I remember a train from Stuttgart to Amsterdam, even quite a few years go, the end result was we would be quite close to missing the last trains to final destination in Amsterdam due to mishaps at Frankfurt. We (the Dutchies) got better support from the NS (Dutch railways) than the Germans at all places. We could call a number to get alternative routes, get advice on where to go, what to ask and got notice on what to do when. Eventually we were told to board a train by taking a local train to Frankfurt Flugplatz but first get our tickets transfered so we would get prefered seats. Afterwards we even got all tickets back, including transfers, due to delays and even the transfer tickets back with a few online clicks while the Germans had to fill in all kinds of forms. On the final train the Germans were surprised when the Dutch officers were asking everyone their end destination (stil in Germany) to know if they could delay the transfer trains in the Netherlands so everyone could get home. If you could not a cab would be free of charge. For me that was the day I realised the Dutch trains weren't as bad as I thought. edit: I did have a first class ticket but the end line -make sure every one got home- was in general no questions asked.

secretsatan 3y ago

Seems and odd focus for a british paper, a nation that pretty much invented railways, to look outward and criticize another country like this.

resolutebat 3y ago

> Germany may be the home of an ever-powerful carmaking lobby and an autobahn which includes some sections free of speed limits I recently spent a week driving around southern Germany. The freeways around Munich seemed to be in permanent Stau (jam) mode, even off peak on weekdays. Outside cities, on the notionally-unlimited stretches, I could rarely even drive at 130 (the advisory limit) because there was simply so much traffic.

orwin 3y ago

I want to give props to Italy and Spain. Highly efficient trains, the rail building is as fast as Switzerland and France, and cost way less (Italy used to have cost issues but it seems fixed now). I think they will have the 2nd and 3rd best railroad network in a decade if they keep up (behind Switzerland, and maybe ahead if Lausanne hub keep getting slowed down) (i'm forgetting about Benelux, let's say the 3rd and 4th, and let's not count countries like Luxembourg or smaller).

HayBale 3y ago

I emigrated to Germany 4 years ago when I still belived in the myth of German efficiency but at this point I am completely disillusioned. It's a myth that is problematic because even Germans started to belive in and it's holding it back. German rail is in horrible state, internet speed is a joke, banking system is ancient and you still have problems with paying with cards. Also dealing with even simple stuff require a crazy amount of documentation and personal visit for no good reason. And the worst part is that due the German mentality and their feel that their are the greatest nothing will be improved and any insight from abroad used. Their approach is always just "Well what can we or oh it's definitely the best system". Germany is the best in marketing and eating the benefits of the previous generations.

lycopodiopsida 3y ago

I recently traveled from my small town to Cologne - it is such a shit show, I cannot imagine how people cope with it for years. I took more or less a direct connection, but trains would be late (30 min or even 2h late), skipped parts of the route, 1st class is a joke (it is like in a tram, people with flat-rate tickets can run there without a reservation and occupy free places) - it is certainly a very bad deal if you already own a car, since even not considering that every journey with DB is an adventure, is pretty expensive, even with discounted tickets. If you travel with a family, it is a terrible and very expensive choice overall. In my bubble even people who where holding out for decades are giving up and getting a car. DB is falling apart and needs to scale down the number of trains until the network can manage it, from this point on it is about investments. I am not even that bullish on rail network, since I mostly drive from one small town to another one and public transport does nothing for me. But at least big town to big town connection should work like a clock.

kakaz 3y ago

First where idea that Germany is build for efficiency came from? Is it Germany government paid material?

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