5 ms·

> If Europe could get on Japan's level, that would be a dream. To be fair Germany could at least reach France's or Italy's level first.

chimeracoder 3y ago
> To be fair Germany could at least reach France's or Italy's level first. I'm not sure Germany should be looking to Italy for advice on getting the trains to run on time.
- mcv 3y ago
  Is Italy worse than Germany? That's hard to believe.
  - ithkuil 3y ago
    The service level in Italy was unbelievably bad for a time, then got much better, with occasional dramatic drops in quality. The problem is that (like in many areas) our collective subjective memory of things lags behind reality, sometimes by decades. Things get enshrined deep in culture (not only films, but day to day jokes and mechanical repetition of cultural self-flagellation). I'm living in Italy for almost 20y now, coming from Switzerland. I came here in part because I wanted the experience of a more chaotic place, coming from the extreme order in Switzerland I found confining and suffocating. Central Italy in the 2000s was a good mixture of chaos and infrastructure that worked ok in order to have a civilized life. Roads had potholes but they did exist, it's wasn't Madagascar level bad. Yet italians complained and complained and kept saying that they were backward country and looked up at Germany or the Netherlands or whatnot. Over the years everything got incrementally improved. Roundabouts got built, green grass inside roundabouts got actually cut, parking spaces started to be delimited and you no longer had to park your car in the mud alongside a road (but now you had to pay for parking in more places) ... And also trains got better! Objectively better. And more expensive. They were incredibly dirt cheap 20 years ago, now they are not too expensive but it's an entirely different ballpark. 20 years ago my average experience from Pisa to Florence was to suffocate for 50 minutes because somebody let a puddle of vomit uncleaned in the train and there was no physical space to go to escape that because the train was so packed. Now trains are much cleaner, more frequent, bigger, faster, ... Occasionally you get stuck in a tunnel for a couple of hours because something breaks but hey it only happen to me once in the last 10 years and it happened 10 times the decade before, so improvement!! Yet, locals still think nothing improved. Yesterday I had a conversation with Italians who thought they were the country with the worst infrastructure. The thing is, most people here live in an imaginary world. Even when they do travel abroad, they don't update their beliefs about that stuff. It's a bit like identity politics. They watch TV journalism shows that show how well executed (cherry picked) public systems in other countries work, and bask in self-flagellation. While the other identity group declares how Italians are the best in the world and that nothing approaches their virtues etc. these two camps (I struggle identifying them as left and right anymore) affect each other and make their position even stronger.
rubymamis 3y ago
Trains in Italy and Spain were so much better than trains in Germany (I was a nomad in Europe for 1.5 years).
- nilsherzig 3y ago
  In what way?
  - mcv 3y ago
    I have no experience with trains in Spain or Italy, but trains in Germany are notoriously unreliable. I don't think I've had a single train trip through Germany in the past year without some kind of delay and extra hassle. For our summer vacation, we travelled from Amsterdam to Switzerland. We had first class seats with one layover in Frankfurt. Frankfurt was a mess, the train was sent to a different station, our connecting train was cancelled, we had 5 layovers instead of 1, and had to stand. When we finally got to sit, we had no reserved seats and were split up. On the return trip, similar problem, though with less extra layovers. A few months later, I went to Essen by train. The ICE stopped at Düsseldorf and the connection to Essen was delayed or I missed it because the UCE was delayed. Still best train experience in Germany that year. The return from Essen, the train from Essen back to Düsseldorf was cancelled, and the connecting bus would guarantee I'd miss my last ICE and I'd have to spend the night at Düsseldorf. Instead, I paid a lot of money for a taxi to race me there. Got there in time, and at the last minute they sent the ICE to a different platform without clear notification, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people still missed that train. I fortunately noticed some people leaving the platform and informed some others who hadn't noticed. Trains in Netherland and Switzerland are absolutely perfect, but to get from one to the other you have to go through Germany, and that's a problem.
  - pvaldes 3y ago
    Spain and Portugal adopted initially a system of rails that are focused on security (both for customers and national security). Spain railways were built wider than the European standard; while other countries ignored the advice to focus in economy. Iberian gauge allows trains to run faster without losing stability. The more narrow the railway, the cheaper to build, but the less stable for trains crossing hairpin bends for example at a decent velocity. The climate is also very different, so is not really fair to compare both, but Europe saved a lot of money when building their first railways (and have more problems with ice and snow now for this reason)

chimeracoder 3y ago

> To be fair Germany could at least reach France's or Italy's level first. I'm not sure Germany should be looking to Italy for advice on getting the trains to run on time.

mcv 3y ago
Is Italy worse than Germany? That's hard to believe.
- ithkuil 3y ago
  The service level in Italy was unbelievably bad for a time, then got much better, with occasional dramatic drops in quality. The problem is that (like in many areas) our collective subjective memory of things lags behind reality, sometimes by decades. Things get enshrined deep in culture (not only films, but day to day jokes and mechanical repetition of cultural self-flagellation). I'm living in Italy for almost 20y now, coming from Switzerland. I came here in part because I wanted the experience of a more chaotic place, coming from the extreme order in Switzerland I found confining and suffocating. Central Italy in the 2000s was a good mixture of chaos and infrastructure that worked ok in order to have a civilized life. Roads had potholes but they did exist, it's wasn't Madagascar level bad. Yet italians complained and complained and kept saying that they were backward country and looked up at Germany or the Netherlands or whatnot. Over the years everything got incrementally improved. Roundabouts got built, green grass inside roundabouts got actually cut, parking spaces started to be delimited and you no longer had to park your car in the mud alongside a road (but now you had to pay for parking in more places) ... And also trains got better! Objectively better. And more expensive. They were incredibly dirt cheap 20 years ago, now they are not too expensive but it's an entirely different ballpark. 20 years ago my average experience from Pisa to Florence was to suffocate for 50 minutes because somebody let a puddle of vomit uncleaned in the train and there was no physical space to go to escape that because the train was so packed. Now trains are much cleaner, more frequent, bigger, faster, ... Occasionally you get stuck in a tunnel for a couple of hours because something breaks but hey it only happen to me once in the last 10 years and it happened 10 times the decade before, so improvement!! Yet, locals still think nothing improved. Yesterday I had a conversation with Italians who thought they were the country with the worst infrastructure. The thing is, most people here live in an imaginary world. Even when they do travel abroad, they don't update their beliefs about that stuff. It's a bit like identity politics. They watch TV journalism shows that show how well executed (cherry picked) public systems in other countries work, and bask in self-flagellation. While the other identity group declares how Italians are the best in the world and that nothing approaches their virtues etc. these two camps (I struggle identifying them as left and right anymore) affect each other and make their position even stronger.

rubymamis 3y ago

Trains in Italy and Spain were so much better than trains in Germany (I was a nomad in Europe for 1.5 years).

nilsherzig 3y ago
In what way?
- mcv 3y ago
  I have no experience with trains in Spain or Italy, but trains in Germany are notoriously unreliable. I don't think I've had a single train trip through Germany in the past year without some kind of delay and extra hassle. For our summer vacation, we travelled from Amsterdam to Switzerland. We had first class seats with one layover in Frankfurt. Frankfurt was a mess, the train was sent to a different station, our connecting train was cancelled, we had 5 layovers instead of 1, and had to stand. When we finally got to sit, we had no reserved seats and were split up. On the return trip, similar problem, though with less extra layovers. A few months later, I went to Essen by train. The ICE stopped at Düsseldorf and the connection to Essen was delayed or I missed it because the UCE was delayed. Still best train experience in Germany that year. The return from Essen, the train from Essen back to Düsseldorf was cancelled, and the connecting bus would guarantee I'd miss my last ICE and I'd have to spend the night at Düsseldorf. Instead, I paid a lot of money for a taxi to race me there. Got there in time, and at the last minute they sent the ICE to a different platform without clear notification, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people still missed that train. I fortunately noticed some people leaving the platform and informed some others who hadn't noticed. Trains in Netherland and Switzerland are absolutely perfect, but to get from one to the other you have to go through Germany, and that's a problem.
- pvaldes 3y ago
  Spain and Portugal adopted initially a system of rails that are focused on security (both for customers and national security). Spain railways were built wider than the European standard; while other countries ignored the advice to focus in economy. Iberian gauge allows trains to run faster without losing stability. The more narrow the railway, the cheaper to build, but the less stable for trains crossing hairpin bends for example at a decent velocity. The climate is also very different, so is not really fair to compare both, but Europe saved a lot of money when building their first railways (and have more problems with ice and snow now for this reason)