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There are many international routes where the same train continues from Germany into Switzerland, and then possibly into other countries. Germany has gotten so
by 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 agoThe Swiss trip planner now completely ignores DB trains for trips within Switzerland. They don't want to disappoint their customers.
- nic547 3y agoDoesn'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 agoYou'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 agoI 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.
- lnsru 3y agoThey are not building more autobahn!!! Autobahn is not green enough. The infrastructure is falling apart. A tunnel in Munich takes from idea to building at least 40 years. 8 miles of regional train extension takes 3 decades (building start date not known yet). Funny thing is that most of the track is already available. That’s the new real Germany. Not the one we knew from the movies.
- daveliepmann 3y ago>They are not building more autobahn!!! Doch, Alter. The German federal government and at least 3 top parties are completely captured by the auto industry, so we're tearing down neighborhoods to extend urban freeways in Berlin: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesautobahn_100 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesautobahn_100 And the FDP scored the transport ministry in the traffic-light coalition, so of course there announced a plan to extend a bunch of highways: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/plans-fast-track-expansion-germanys-highway-network-spark-resistance https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/plans-fast-track-expans...
- tetris11 3y agoThey're getting there, they're building a more direct route between Karlsruhe and Basel. At the moment though, these ICE and cargo trains are passing through some tiny villages with barely more than two tracks. I really wish cargo trains could just pass underground via tunnelling tech. They are obscenely loud, and given the mountain-valley nature of the villages in the Rheinland, their sound travels very far in the night, and often echoes around.
- canadianfella 3y agoICE?
- sschueller 3y agoThey should be embarrassed because Switzerland assumed the Italian part would be the one not finished on time and even helped a bit financially on that side to make sure it gets done. No one ever thought the Germans were incapable of getting it done. They are still buying land! Meanwhile Switzerland dug the longest train tunnel in the world. Italy is completely done as well and cargo imports are now shifting to the south instead of through the north.
- throwaway5959 3y agoThat sounds great for Italy.
- johnfabian 3y agoIn general Italy builds transit infrastructure cheaply by European standards (which means massively cheaper than North American standards). Despite real concerns about corruption or ineffective bureaucracy they've managed to improve their rail infrastructure a lot these past few decades. Germany and the UK look very bad compared to them in this respect
- zabzonk 3y ago> In general Italy builds transit infrastructure cheaply by European standards And then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi
- mc32 3y agoGiven that bridge was in its 5th decade, I don't see how that applies to what the Italians have done in the last couple of decades, unless you're arguing what they are building today will be tomorrows Morandi Bridges?
- zabzonk 3y agoi have no idea what the italians have been doing. i would observe that in the uk most bridge failures were in the 19th century, when the properties of materials such as cast iron were not too well understood - same lack of understanding that the morandi bridge seems to have had much more recently.
- layer8 3y agoThis is actually an intrinsic difficulty of the German rail network, due its highly interconnected structure, and the fact that it connects to other countries in all directions. The schedules are much more complex to handle than, say, in France where you mostly have a spokes-and-hub topology centered on Paris.
- Beldin 3y agoThe Netherlands does cargo on rail just fine and has the busiest network in EU.
- lispm 3y agoNetherlands has just two neighbour countries and 1/10 of the network. Most of its rail cargo goes into and through Germany.
- layer8 3y agoThis is the Dutch rail network: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Railway_Map_The_Netherlands.svg/508px-Railway_Map_The_Netherlands.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Ra... And this is the German rail network: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Bahnstrecken_Deutschland_Karte.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Bahnstre... Germany has almost 14 times as many rail stations as the Netherlands, and over ten times as many rail kilometres.
- Moldoteck 3y agoSo why not just copy NL infra 14 times across Germany? If every subpart of Germany has same quality as NL, general quality will still improve
- layer8 3y agoBecause those 14 parts would be highly interconnected with each other. You couldn’t actually treat them as 14 separate parts. They aren’t compartmentalized like different countries’ networks are. This is a bit similar to how a 14-core processor doesn’t give you 14 times the performance of a single core if the cores have to communicate and coordinate with each other.
- rdonahue2021 3y ago[flagged]
- Beldin 3y ago> German trains stop at the first Swiss station, when they finally arrive, and people gave to switch trains. It's not just German trains. The Swiss are rather strict about train punctuality (more than 2 min is not accepted if memory serves), and if an international train would cause delays, the Swiss put on their own train on regular schedule and halt the tardy train at the border.
- Monory 3y agoYou are almost correct, according to SBB [0], train is considered to be on-time if the delay is less than 3 minutes. [0]: https://company.sbb.ch/en/the-company/responsibility-society-environment/customers/punctuality.html https://company.sbb.ch/en/the-company/responsibility-society...
- stratom 3y ago> Switzerland built a rail tunnel especially for trans-European traffic, but Germany is apparently incapable of getting cargo onto trains. And the same is happening with the Brennerbasistunnel in Austria again. Italy and Austria are about to start constructing the last remaining sections, which are going to be finished in around 2034. While Germany has not built anything, and is still discussing where they are going to build the tracks. They expect the construction to start 2030, not to be finished before 2040 Likely even later as that are wild guesses and the construction phases are not yet planned. Edit: more detailed dates