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After 30 years or privatization, Deutsche Bahn might be broken beyond repair. > "Deutsche Bahn is unable to cope with the simplest tasks of daily rail operatio

by lqet 3y ago

After 30 years or privatization, Deutsche Bahn might be broken beyond repair. > "Deutsche Bahn is unable to cope with the simplest tasks of daily rail operations,” says a senior European railway official [0] In this case, however, I think they are doing the right thing in keeping software that has been working reliably for over 30 years. [0] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/deutsche-bahn-streckensanierungen-bringen-nicht-den-erwuenschten-erfolg-a-a3a8f5f5-6bde-4ad1-b712-f666197c4b72 https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/deutsche-bahn-str...

consp 3y ago
> After 30 years or privatization, Deutsche Bahn might be broken beyond repair. Well, it's cheaper than state run. And that comes at a cost.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- zilti 3y ago
  It's still state-run, and 90% of the reason why Deutsche Bahn AG is in such a sorry state is the German government. Want to see privatization done right? Look no further than Germany's southern neighbour.
  - lobochrome 3y ago
    SBB isn't privatized. It's 100% state owned.
    - zilti 3y ago
      ...just like Deutsche Bahn.
  - jamil7 3y ago
    It's state-owned (the federal government is the majority shareholder) but it's not really state-run as far as I understand. It has a lot of autonomy and is responsible for its own failures in my opinion.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    In Czechia, the track (much like the highways) is managed by a state corporation, while the trains themselves are partly state-owned, partly private. From my 25 years of commuting experience, the results are decidedly mixed: * the track-managing state corporation, Správa železnic, is a shitshow that causes a lot of unnecessary delays by just ignoring needs of passengers and cargo companies alike; true bureaucrats, * the highway-managing state corporation, Ředitelství silnic a dálnic, is very well managed by the latest director (Mátl) and really kicked off many projects in last years, which is notable in a very NIMBY-friendly country like Czechia, * the state-owned railway company, České dráhy, used to be terrible, but competition forced it into providing quite decent services within last 10 years or so. * the two main private competitors, Leo Express and Regiojet, are now visibly cash-strapped (esp. Regiojet), so the overall level of service has stagnated for several years. High costs of traction electricity don't help either. As of today, there isn't really a qualitative difference between boarding state-owned or privately-owned trains.
  - flgstnd 3y ago
    given the power of the car lobby in germany, if i were a conspiracy theorist, id say its deliberate mismanagement to nudge people into using cars.
  - morsch 3y ago
    As you allude to, whether it's a public service or a publicly owned corporation is probably less important. Switzerland just pays four times as much per capita for railway infrastructure. And of course, it's small: a bit more than a tenth of the area, a tenth of the total operated railway length, a tenth of the population. There are economies of scale, but also system complexity that scales super linearly. Afaict, a train that takes four hours from start to finish is on the long side in Switzerland, not so much in Germany. But I'm not saying that financing and management aren't the main problems. The current CEO of SBB has a background in computer science and railway transport. Many of the DB CEOs in the past 25 years had an MBA and a career in air travel.
- redeeman 3y ago
  and that cost is cheaper. Both provides crappy services, one just does it cheaper.
wslh 3y ago
It is a good recommendation to follow the "if it works don't touch it" motto, but it is also true that they have time and resources (you don't need that much!) to port this to a modern platform and perform all the QA activities that you need to be 99% sure everything works as expected. Through one of my companies we were/are involved in many of these efforts (e.g. application virtualization) and the use of legacy software [1]. Win 3.11 is a relatively easy target. Much much easier than other projects we dealt with. [1] https://blog.nektra.com/2014/02/12/nektra-escalation-support-for-symantec-workspace-virtualization-swv/ https://blog.nektra.com/2014/02/12/nektra-escalation-support...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- incrudible 3y ago
  The problem with modern platforms is that they remove many constraints that kept complexity at bay. Combined with a large bureaucratic organization that is state owned and financed, Parkinson's law is going to hit very hard.
miyuru 3y ago
Are there any trains that runs on k8s?
- zyx321 3y ago
  Nope, they're all running on Rails.
  - kitd 3y ago
    Don't tell us, you're here all week?
    - zyx321 3y ago
      What can I say, they walked right into that one...
- Traubenfuchs 3y ago
  Hi, I was deeply involved in DBs Vendo project which completely replaced/renewed most of it's sales / customer-facing related backends and we were using Open Shift. 5/6 years ago... Everything could have changed again by now.

by lqet 3y ago

consp 3y ago

> After 30 years or privatization, Deutsche Bahn might be broken beyond repair. Well, it's cheaper than state run. And that comes at a cost.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zilti 3y ago
It's still state-run, and 90% of the reason why Deutsche Bahn AG is in such a sorry state is the German government. Want to see privatization done right? Look no further than Germany's southern neighbour.
- lobochrome 3y ago
  SBB isn't privatized. It's 100% state owned.
  - zilti 3y ago
    ...just like Deutsche Bahn.
- jamil7 3y ago
  It's state-owned (the federal government is the majority shareholder) but it's not really state-run as far as I understand. It has a lot of autonomy and is responsible for its own failures in my opinion.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  In Czechia, the track (much like the highways) is managed by a state corporation, while the trains themselves are partly state-owned, partly private. From my 25 years of commuting experience, the results are decidedly mixed: * the track-managing state corporation, Správa železnic, is a shitshow that causes a lot of unnecessary delays by just ignoring needs of passengers and cargo companies alike; true bureaucrats, * the highway-managing state corporation, Ředitelství silnic a dálnic, is very well managed by the latest director (Mátl) and really kicked off many projects in last years, which is notable in a very NIMBY-friendly country like Czechia, * the state-owned railway company, České dráhy, used to be terrible, but competition forced it into providing quite decent services within last 10 years or so. * the two main private competitors, Leo Express and Regiojet, are now visibly cash-strapped (esp. Regiojet), so the overall level of service has stagnated for several years. High costs of traction electricity don't help either. As of today, there isn't really a qualitative difference between boarding state-owned or privately-owned trains.
- flgstnd 3y ago
  given the power of the car lobby in germany, if i were a conspiracy theorist, id say its deliberate mismanagement to nudge people into using cars.
- morsch 3y ago
  As you allude to, whether it's a public service or a publicly owned corporation is probably less important. Switzerland just pays four times as much per capita for railway infrastructure. And of course, it's small: a bit more than a tenth of the area, a tenth of the total operated railway length, a tenth of the population. There are economies of scale, but also system complexity that scales super linearly. Afaict, a train that takes four hours from start to finish is on the long side in Switzerland, not so much in Germany. But I'm not saying that financing and management aren't the main problems. The current CEO of SBB has a background in computer science and railway transport. Many of the DB CEOs in the past 25 years had an MBA and a career in air travel.
redeeman 3y ago
and that cost is cheaper. Both provides crappy services, one just does it cheaper.

wslh 3y ago

It is a good recommendation to follow the "if it works don't touch it" motto, but it is also true that they have time and resources (you don't need that much!) to port this to a modern platform and perform all the QA activities that you need to be 99% sure everything works as expected. Through one of my companies we were/are involved in many of these efforts (e.g. application virtualization) and the use of legacy software [1]. Win 3.11 is a relatively easy target. Much much easier than other projects we dealt with. [1] https://blog.nektra.com/2014/02/12/nektra-escalation-support-for-symantec-workspace-virtualization-swv/ https://blog.nektra.com/2014/02/12/nektra-escalation-support...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
incrudible 3y ago
The problem with modern platforms is that they remove many constraints that kept complexity at bay. Combined with a large bureaucratic organization that is state owned and financed, Parkinson's law is going to hit very hard.

miyuru 3y ago

Are there any trains that runs on k8s?

zyx321 3y ago
Nope, they're all running on Rails.
- kitd 3y ago
  Don't tell us, you're here all week?
  - zyx321 3y ago
    What can I say, they walked right into that one...
Traubenfuchs 3y ago
Hi, I was deeply involved in DBs Vendo project which completely replaced/renewed most of it's sales / customer-facing related backends and we were using Open Shift. 5/6 years ago... Everything could have changed again by now.