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More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland

154 points by belter 2y ago

lagrange77 2y ago
How humiliating. A teacher did the same thing to me, it worked.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  You weren't allowed to enter Switzerland?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- gniv 2y ago
  Based on kdrama, this seems common in Korea. You're 10 seconds late, you can't enter the school grounds.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    Why?! How does this help? That sounds insane and pointless to the education process. Unless the point was to educate your kids to be obedient slaves with childhood trauma for their corporate overlords. We used to have something similar during communist rule in my European country, to teach kids who's boss and to respect authority.
    - gniv 2y ago
      No idea, but seeing how often they show it, I think they agree it's abusive.
    - sureIy 2y ago
      > the point was to educate your kids to be obedient slaves with childhood trauma for their corporate overlords. You haven’t heard of Samsung or the life of the average South Korean student. They invest the first 20 something years of their lives to get a corporate job as soon as possible, to not be left behind. Samsungs owns like half the country.
  - hifromwork 2y ago
    Interesting culture if that's seen as a punishment. In my school half of the kids would try to be a minute late (so they can't enter the school and 'have to' slack off the whole day).
bombcar 2y ago
What to do with late trains is a very interesting problem from a network stability perspective. It’s somewhat akin to the packet dropping question, though packets don’t complain as loudly as passengers. In a rail network with one train a day it’s not a big issue, but with regular service you can’t let a late train get out of control or it blows the entire network out of sync until you have some dead time - which is one reason some systems have an “hour of the dead” where no trains run - it lets it reset and get back to something sane. Trying to build a system that has 15 minute heads and can handle a train going late or dying on the rails is really, really hard without ridiculously complexity like quad tracks everywhere and spare train sets at every station.
- cmenge 2y ago
  I agree that it's a hard and interesting problem. Yet other countries seem to be managing it better, or there is something structurally different. I read somewhere that one of the key issues in Germany is that freight and passenger trains share the same network. While a delay of 15 minutes can be wildly problematic for a passenger train (missing connections, stranding at some godforsaken train station etc.), it is virtually irrelevant for freight. Then again, that should make it easy enough to always prioritize passengers over freight, but either that isn't being done or it's still insufficient.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    The USA has the freight problem because trains can't pass each other unless there is a siding long enough for the train that is being passed; and the freight trains are too long. Where there's double-track (or more) it's not as big an issue because the train can pass on the other side of the track (tracks are often handled as if they were a road with one lane going in one direction and the other going the other way, but you can swap around with signaling). The other major solution (bandaid) is to add dwell time at stations so that there's room to make up - the timetable says when the train will leave not when it will arrive, and if it normally arrives five minutes early, it just waits; if it lost time and arrives one minute before departure, it will just be there a minute and the lost time is made up. But while that may reduce the "worst case" scenario, it does make the average travel time longer.
notTooFarGone 2y ago
Hard but entirely relatable. Deutsche bahn is horrible, privatizing it in the 90s was one of many failures of that movement and was leading to crumbling infrastructure, an insurmountable hardware and technical debt and now to the most complex train system probably in the world. Hopefully some people learn from it - privatizing critical infrastructure like this is doomed to fail. You get the bad from a public company and the bad from the government bureaucracy.
- AmericanChopper 2y ago
  > privatizing critical infrastructure like this is doomed to fail It worked great for rail in Japan, so I’m not sure that’s the obvious lesson to learn.
  - dash2 2y ago
    It worked OK for the UK. Passenger numbers, which had been steadily falling, started to increase. On the other hand, there are complaints about high fares.
    - pantalaimon 2y ago
      This has been true for Germany too. Passenger numbers are at an all-time high, but that's part of the problem - the infrastructure is at it's limit, but building new infrastructure is met with strong resistance by locals. e.g. the planned relief for the notoriously overcrowded Hamburg - Hannover track got effectively canceled, and this is only about the get worse with increased traffic from the new tunnel to Denmark that is set to open by the end of the decade.
    - daghamm 2y ago
      Are you sure about that? I still remember "traingate", the smear campaign that followed Jeremy Corbyn (1) and how leaked CCTV video proved him right much later (2). (1) https://www.politico.eu/article/jeremy-corbyn-walked-past-empty-seats-to-make-crowded-train-protest-virgin-public-transport-ownership-labour-leadershiop/ https://www.politico.eu/article/jeremy-corbyn-walked-past-em... (2) https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/virgin-release-traingate-footage-proves-corbyn-told-truth-traingate-55552/ https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/virgin-release-traing...
lexlambda 2y ago
Seems fair. You can't make it right for everyone, and at one point they need to draw a boundary, to care for your citizens and keep up the standards. Otherwise everything would fall to the lowest common denominator. I don't think it's fair for the article to say that a "temporary measure" has now become a permanent one, it likely is temporary until the problem is solved. Sometimes I ask myself why the schedule of those always-late trains isn't changed. If it would be planned that it always arrives "15min later", people and other transportation could work with that timing so much better.
awaythrow729462 2y ago
Reading this on a German train that is expected to arrive in Zurich 25 minutes late, hoping that the connection will not be cancelled at the boarder as per usual.
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  outcome?
quitit 2y ago
For context German trains over the last few years have become increasingly delayed. To the point that it is now the norm. Official Deutsche Bahn figures are likely underreporting the extent of the problem as the reported times and actual timetables are -aggressively- out of sync (to the frustration of many riders). It's hard to dissect the true source of the problem as there are various factors at play. However the central cause is starving the system of funds. This presents a strong warning for countries that are trying to encourage the use of public transport in order to meet their climate goals. Some detail is available here: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-whats-wrong-with-the-deutsche-bahn-train-operator/a-68091047 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-whats-wrong-with-the-deutsche-...
- _the_inflator 2y ago
  I agree except for your „central cause“ hypothesis. What happens if you throw tons of money on something as dysfunctional and lacking a business model? You get Die Bahn. Calling for “more money” as a central cause is part of the problem.
  - quitit 2y ago
    "The network is simply overloaded," said Böttger. In contrast to Luxembourg and Switzerland, which invested around €575 (about $625) per capita and €450 per capita in rail infrastructure respectively, the figure in Germany is just €114. Source: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-whats-wrong-with-the-deutsche-bahn-train-operator/a-68091047 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-whats-wrong-with-the-deutsche-...
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  What is the warning? Don’t starve the system of funds?
- logicchains 2y ago
  Does Germany spend less on its trains than Switzerland?
  - 2y ago
remolueoend 2y ago
> Another figure illustrates why the practice is necessary from a Swiss perspective: in 2023, 92.5 percent of all trains in Switzerland reached their destination on time, compared to only 64 percent for long-distance trains in Germany. To add a bit more detail: SBB (Swiss federal railways) consider a train on time if it reaches its destination with less than three minutes’ delay [1]. DB (Deutsche Bahn) puts the threshold at 15 minutes ("Reisendenpünktlichkeit") [2]. [1] https://company.sbb.ch/en/the-company/responsibility-society-environment/customers/punctuality.html https://company.sbb.ch/en/the-company/responsibility-society... [2] https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen_fakten/puenktlichkeitswerte-6878476 https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen...
- macbr 2y ago
  Having read through the links you provided: You are comparing two different things. DB’s Reisendenpünktlichkeit takes in delays caused by missed connections etc. SBB’s 3 minute delay are just the individual train delays. For that DB has a similar measure which defines punctual as below 6 minutes of delay. So the difference is big (3 vs 6 minutes) but not that big (3 vs 15 minutes).
  - remolueoend 2y ago
    You are of course right, "Reisendenpünktlichkeit Fernverkehr" hasn't even been published by DB before January 2024 - my bad.
- lqet 2y ago
  To put this a bit into perspective: long-distance trains in Germany typically travel for at least half a day. "Long-distance" trains in Switzerland can be compared to regional lines in Germany (the country simply isn't that large, and the majority of rail travel in Switzerland happens between Zurich/Olten/Berne/Basel, which are all within 100 km of each other). The likelihood of anything going wrong during a 1:30h train journey from Zurich to Basel is simply much lower than during a 10 hour train journey from Kiel to Freiburg. 3 minutes delay on a 1:30h train journey is a delay of 3.3%, 15 mins delay on a 10 hour train journey is a delay of 2.5%. The reason regional trains are also delayed is that regional lines, local lines, long distance lines and freight trains are typically using the same tracks in Germany, and delayed long distance trains always get higher priority. A typical situation is that your regional train is perfectly on time, but suddenly stops, and waits for 5-10 minutes for a delayed long-distance train to overtake it. Switzerland has a similar mixed system, but as noted above, does not really have long-distance rail lines, apart from the trains that enter from Italy, Austria, France and Germany, which is the main reason why these trains are not allowed to enter if delayed. This is in contrast to the system in France, where TGV lines typically have dedicated high-speed tracks, where all trains on it travel more or less at the same speed. Shouldn't you then add redundancy to the system by having time buffers at large stops every 2-3 hours? Or even let replacement trains start at intermediate stops as soon as the delay of the regular train is greater than X to avoid propagation of the delay into to rest of the network? Absolutely, but most stations and rail lines in Germany are either at their operational limit, or above. Having a train wait for 15 minutes in a large station just in case it is delayed would block that track for 15 minutes in the majority of cases, when the train is punctual. Also, DB simply has not enough rolling material to start replacement trains, and the rail infrastructure to even park such trains has largely been dismantled in the years after the privatization (they are doing it sometimes, but not very often).
unglaublich 2y ago
The long-distance network in Germany has routes that take more than 8 hours. Delays of 15 minutes are because of network complexity not uncommon. SBB - Swiss rail - doesn't want its schedule to be affected by the long-distance DB - German - services. So it doesn't allow the DB service to enter the country after a given cut-off delay. This means that travellers need to transfer to an SBB service for the final 1-2 hours of their trip. This transfer typically takes 15-30 minutes.
- misja111 2y ago
  > Delays of 15 minutes are because of network complexity not uncommon. If the delay is that likely, due to the long distance of the route, isn't the obvious step to take then to adjust the schedule? So that at some stations along the route trains have a buffer.
- cmenge 2y ago
  You can travel across Japan, similar or even larger distances, with practically no delays. As a passenger it's not always about the bare number of minutes, the problem is that I might get stranded somewhere, and train stations in Germany are generally very dirty and somewhat unsafe at odd hours.
- t8sr 2y ago
  I don’t buy the idea that it’s mainly because of network complexity and line length. Local lines, even ones that don’t share tracks with any other trains, are routinely cancelled or delayed, as well. Other large countries manage to run trains on time (Japan, Spain…). DB is uniquely bad and I don’t think we should be making excuses for them.
gniv 2y ago
> On the Freiburg-Basel route, as many as 12.4 percent of trains had to turn back. This is not as dramatic as it sounds, since Basel is at the border. There's probably many trains into town.
macbr 2y ago
Note that trains to Zurich and Basel SBB then end in Basel Bad (or sometimes they let it go to Basel SBB). It’s a separate train station in Basel which is run by Deutsche Bahn so it’s not literally “turning back at the border”. IIRC Swiss passengers waiting in Basel SBB get a replacement train travelling at the original time.
blueflow 2y ago
DB has the worst company culture that I'm aware of. Everything has to go by plan, and when it doesn't, someone has to be responsible. So everyone is just ass-covering all them time and not taking any risks. This has removed the potential for improvisation in dispatching (no one wants to be responsible for delaying that other train), making the train network unable to give any trains room to make up their delays. There is a reason every other dispatcher has problems with alcoholism.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  >So everyone is just ass-covering all them time and not taking any risks. Heaving lived and worked in Germany for a few years, I realized that's the reason behind all the excessive bureaucracy and processes for everything: extensive ass covering. If something goes to shit under your watch then it's not your fault because you did everything by the book and you have the extensive paper trail to prove it. And nobody wants to go around the processes or change them, even if they know they're broken because then they would be the ones liable for the outcomes, so the entire society revolves around preserving the status quo even if the ship is heading towards the iceberg. Change to processes is usually exclusively top-down where a boomer detached from the work in the trenches but with connections, a laundry list of a academic credentials and a pompous CV of management positions at large consultancies/companies, makes the decisions and those below execute without question while mumbling at the canteen lunch how stupid and out of touch the decisions are. That's just my opinion as an outsider, it's not a fact I can provide citations for in case anyone asks, so it can be incorrect as all opinions go, feel free to disagree or correct me.
  - TMWNN 2y ago
    >Heaving lived and worked in Germany for a few years, I realized that's the reason behind all the excessive bureaucracy and processes for everything: extensive ass covering. If something goes to shit under your watch then it's not your fault because you did everything by the book and you have the extensive paper trail to prove it. I've heard it said that the idea that Germans are efficient is a myth. (The new Berlin airport is one example.) Germans are, rather, *rule followers*.
lqet 2y ago
Just compare the colored rings (green = on time, orange = delayed more than 3 minutes, red = delayed more than 9 minutes) between the trains in Germany, Switzerland, and France here to get a general feeling of how bad things have become with Deutsche Bahn: https://travic.app/?z=9&x=890440.8&y=6126327.9&l=osm_standard&ol= https://travic.app/?z=9&x=890440.8&y=6126327.9&l=osm_standar... And today is a good day in southwestern Germany, just look at the current general redness in the Ruhr area and Cologne.
- misja111 2y ago
  Unbelievable, >9 minutes delay seems to have become the norm ..
- TimK65 2y ago
  You can scroll up and look at Sweden as well. Not a pretty picture.
BrandiATMuhkuh 2y ago
The delays in Germany can also be felt here in Linz/Austria. For years the train from Linz to Vienna was always punctual. However, recently (Last ~9 Months or so) all trains are super later. The reason is, all of them go through Germany (Innsbruck (via German) -> Salzburg -> Linz ->Vienna), and given everything is delayed in Germany it also delays Austrian trains.
jds-67 2y ago
The situation with trains in Germany is appalling. Our kids need to go to school by train. Even though it is the only line using that route, there are constant delays and cancellations. DB (Deutsche Bahn) often does not even care to inform the passengers of such events over the loudspeakers or displays. I routinely take at least one train earlier to increase the probability of reaching my destination in time. Working from home has saved me a good amount of stress over the years. This is not motivating anyone to switch from cars to trains.
codegeek 2y ago
As a foreigner, I am currently travelling for work in Europe and had a DB train from Munich all the way to Ljubljana (Slovenia) through multiple connections. Interestingly, the trains were on time until we were in Germany but when I reached the last connection in Villach (Austria), suddenly they cancelled the train from Villach->Ljubljuana without any notice at last minute. As a foreigner without any understanding, I had to scramble through and find a Flixbus which thankfully I was able to buy tickets online. Look for using Bus like Flixbus as an alternative if possible. They are not perfect but more reliable than the DB train for sure.
- Freak_NL 2y ago
  Villach to Ljubljana is a joined ÖBB and SŽ line, not Deutsch Bahn. Your ticket was with DB, but the train getting cancelled had absolutely nothing to do with them. If you had asked at the Reisezentrum at Villach station you would have been presented with options to continue your journey, or get a refund.
  - codegeek 2y ago
    Understood but from my perspective, the cause doesn't matter. I booked through DB and it was not a good experience. Was my very first Time and I had a few minutes to decide what to do as I had people waiting in Ljubljuana. Didnt even have time for a refund for that portion of the journey. I have decided to not take the train next time for sure if I can. Will try bus first.
    - Freak_NL 2y ago
      Regardless, your experience has nothing to do with this topic or DB. And you could have gotten a partial refund quite easily, even after taking alternative transport. Refunds for delays is something DB has worked out pretty reliably. Filling out the online form is trivial, and if you use the DB app most fields are prefilled.
      - codegeek 2y ago
tkubacki 2y ago
Apart from the root issue here someone need to remind that Switzerland is the parasite of EU. Basically they have all EU rights and no obligations. EU should tax them heavily so that they contribute to solve e.g. EU transportation issues.
- mamonster 2y ago
  These aren't EU transportation issues, these are GER transportation issues. The most powerful "parasitism" argument against CH is probably the tax arbitrage you can get from Zug/Lucerne, but a lot of that already happens inside EU itself with Luxembourg/Ireland/etc. But yes, a fight over bigger contributions/more harmonization is inevitable within the next 10 years.
- t8sr 2y ago
  What are you talking about, my marginal tax rate in Switzerland is 50%. When I last went to Prague, I changed trains at a station that prominently said it was financed by “friendship funds” from Switzerland. My taxes already are paying for Germany’s transport infrastructure. Meanwhile, Swiss students couldn’t go on Erasmus for a year, because someone in Brussels threw a hissy fit. I’m a fan of the EU, but let’s not pretend it’s not throwing its weight around, just like any other huge federal government.
- misja111 2y ago
  Why in Heaven's name should Switzerland be (heavily!?) taxed to solve EU transportation issues? Should Switzerland then tax the EU as well to pay for its own transportation? Until today I believed that the world had solved these problems by charging transportation fees but you seem to have very different ideas. > Basically they have all EU rights and no obligations. Switzerland certainly doesn't have all EU rights. For instance, they are not applicable for any EU subsidies. They do not have any voting rights. They are exluded from certain scientific cooperation programs (e.g. the ESFRI). And the list goes on.
  - tkubacki 2y ago
    I do consider Switzerland doings as hostile to EU. 1) Switzerland gain on using EU transportation and free market but does not contribute fair fee to maintain and build it. You can tax EU - we will see who will survive. 2) Switzerland does unfair tax competition 3) Switzerland helped hide EU citizens untaxed money (maybe still does) 4) Switzerland helps Russian oligarchs maintain their wealth and many other criminals all around the world. 5) Last but not least: If Switzerland does not care about Ukraine dying because it is ‘neutral’ and yet still wants safe borders, then I don’t fucking care about Switzerland well being.
Tade0 2y ago
It's a classic case of efficiency vs latency. Swiss railways optimise for punctuality, sacrificing line capacity (compensated for with double-decker cars). Meanwhile every other European rail transport authority seems to be bent on squeezing out the most of the lines it has. I grew up in a city that had two parallel rail lines in the east-west axis - one for long-distance connections, cargo and everything else, the other a refurbished old main line with trains only once per hour. The latter was punctual almost to the minute(even if comparatively slow at an average 30km/h including stops), while the former was a mess and you were often better off driving instead. My friend living in the suburbs close to that refurbished line always boasted how it took him a grand total of 18 minutes to get to the city centre and he could rely on the train to always arrive. That was quicker than I could get there by any means, despite a similar distance.
- vachina 2y ago
  What you said goes against what the other commenter have said, that is Swiss trains cannot inject late trains into the system because the tracks are used at capacity, I.e. there is no buffer for trains to “queue”. Every train is always at the expected place, at the expected time. Hence the system is always at maximum throughput and on-time.
  - Tade0 2y ago
    > SBB grants Eurocity trains on the Munich-Zurich route a buffer of ten minutes before reallocating their train path, and even 15 minutes for ICE trains between Freiburg and Basel. Emphasis mine. This whole system works because they account for delays by having a time buffer in each route that can be consumed by going slower. During my commutes along Lake Zurich I noticed that the trains would rarely arrive earlier than 30s before schedule - even if it meant going below the maximum allowed speed, as evidenced by instances where the train used the same section to restore the buffer by going faster.
bun_terminator 2y ago
There is no saving the Deutsche Bahn. Everyone who knows someone working there knows this. Just ban everyone currently working there from ever working there again and reshuffle the cards.
- carlmr 2y ago
  They're already severely understaffed, I doubt kicking out the current people working there would help. On a top management level, maybe, but I don't think train conductors can do much about a train schedule that is impossibly failure-prone, based on ageing and inadequate infrastructure and trains in disrepair.
  - bun_terminator 2y ago
    I have two train conductors in my extended family. They have an ingrained anti-performance mindset and culture. There is no recovery from that.
phlo 2y ago
There's an amazing talk about DB's punctuality from the 2019 Chaos Communication Congress: BahnMining, David Kriesel. Available in German, and interpreted to English: https://dkriesel.com/blog/2019/1229_video_und_folien_meines_36c3-vortrags_bahnmining https://dkriesel.com/blog/2019/1229_video_und_folien_meines_.... My favorite anecdote from riding a German train in Switzerland was a journey from Interlaken (Switzerland) to Frankfurt in Germany. Now if you're not used to train schedules: Stops are quick, and trains are punctual. It's fairly common for stops to just be 2-3 minutes. Connections between trains are often around 5 minutes, sometimes shorter. So, this Intercity Express departed Interlaken perfectly on schedule, made a bunch of scheduled stops in Spiez, Thun, Bern, and continued on to the border city of Basel. Everything running perfectly on schedule, the train arrived at the Swiss station in Basel, continued (on time) to the German train station that's still in the same city, just a few minutes farther. Having had 3-5 minute stops all the way from early morning to lunchtime, the train then sat in the German station for about 15 minutes, departed with only a minor delay, and just a few yards after exiting the station proceeded to stop, sit on the tracks for half an hour ("to catch up with the prevalent delay conditions on the German rail network"), before starting to move again. Waiting in a comfy seat on a train with working AC isn't the worst of fates, and we made the final destination within half an hour of the scheduled time, so it all went well -- just funny to observe how different parts of this interconnected network had very different ideas of scheduling.
meonkeys 2y ago
Alternative title blue or OP could have used: "More and more German trains are late and not allowed to enter Switzerland" would have been more accurate, less clickbait.
BadBadJellyBean 2y ago
I wouldn't mind the delays that much if we had more direct connections between cities. But the reality is that you book a connection to another city, and that connection was never possible in the first place because of some construction work or bad rails or something else. They know they can't make that connection but they never update their schedule to reflect that. And then you are on the first leg of the journey and everything goes to hell. You have to find a replacement train, your reservations are void, you have to wait hours. And the worst is that you have no recourse. You get 25% of your ticket after ONE HOUR! It makes me so angry.
- Tainnor 2y ago
  > And the worst is that you have no recourse. You get 25% of your ticket after ONE HOUR! It makes me so angry. Unfortunately, it's not as if airlines were any better. Less than 3h of delay and you get nothing. At least, with DB you can get the money for your reservation back if they cancelled your original connection. Still sucks to be in an overcrowded train without a reservation, though. Direct connections are definitely better, as you say.
JohnMakin 2y ago
This is so foreign to my American perspective - our public transport is more like, "maybe it'll be on time, probably not, you'll have no way of knowing, also screw you"
- 650REDHAIR 2y ago
  “Missed your connection? Sounds like a you problem.”
  - davedx 2y ago
    "Skill issue"
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > so foreign to my American perspective - our public transport is more like, "maybe it'll be on time, probably not, you'll have no way of knowing, also screw you" New York’s Metro-North and LIRR have 95%+ on-time rates [1]. (EDIT: On time is defined as less than 6 minutes late [2].) [1] https://www.metro-magazine.com/10217862/metro-north-lirr-experience-record-on-time-performance https://www.metro-magazine.com/10217862/metro-north-lirr-exp... [2] https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/pdf/report-9-2025.pdf https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/pdf/report-9-2025.pdf
  - hungie 2y ago
    That seems... poor? A one in twenty trains late stat will basically mean every person will have to deal with a late train roughly every week? I bet, however, it's not uniformly distributed and some lines are late more than others. Hopefully that 95% is them being honest about the current state, while they push higher.
    - ceroxylon 2y ago
      If true it would beat the 92.5% statistic for Swiss trains that was mentioned in the article.
SllX 2y ago
Not that I can blame the Swiss for wanting to make the trains run on time, but I laughed at this part: > SBB introduced the regulation back in July 2022 in consultation with Deutsche Bahn. Introduced as a "temporary measure" at the time, it is now permanent. Just a reminder to folks that there is nothing so permanent as a “temporary” government program.
Chris2048 2y ago
> are too unpunctual ಠ_ಠ why not "aren't punctual"..
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Because the later a train is, the more likely it is to disrupt other trains. So the amount of unpunctuality matters.
  - Chris2048 2y ago
    In that case, "late" would be quantative.
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      The article does in fact quantify: 15 minutes for certain ICE trains, 10 minutes otherwise.
      - Chris2048 2y ago
        I'm not sure you understand. 15m late is quantative. punctual is binary.
mauvehaus 2y ago
In heaven the cooks are Italian, the lovers are French, the mechanics are German, the police are British, and it's all organized by the Swiss. (In hell the cooks are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, the police are German, and it's all organized by the Italians.)
- UIUC_06 2y ago
  [dead]
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  Sounds like in hell you get your food cooked by Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver, with dessert by Mary Berry. Could be worse.
  - samirillian 2y ago
    Have you actually tasted their food or just looked at pictures of it on the internet.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      I haven't done either. Which do you do?
    - VBprogrammer 2y ago
      The best part of British food is that we're incredibly good at adopting all of the worlds cuisines' as our own. I remember being at the Belgian GP and literally you could have chips with various shaped sausage and one pizza place hiding at the back. At the British GP you could eat some variant (admittedly, probably not the best variant) of pretty much every cuisine you could imagine. Even in our supermarkets if you want to make a Paella or Peri Peri chicken you'll find all of the ingredients you need. If you go to a Spain it's really hard to find Peri Peri and if you go to France you'll struggle to find ingredients for a Paella.
      - 2y ago
bradley13 2y ago
The German train system isn't awful, when talking about long distance trains. It's not good, but it's not awful. Look at the regional feeder lines, though. Unmaintained tracks, ancient trains, diesel instead of electric. Many towns have no connection at all - where I used to work, there was an old train station, but the tracks had been ripped up years earlier. I used to (have to) rely on the German train system. Thankfully, I am now in Switzerland. It is a huge difference.
- iggldiggl 2y ago
  That probably strongly depends on where exactly you're living, though. I can't complain about my local trains, which are nothing like what you describe.
vondur 2y ago
Man, with that late time percentage, the Germans are trying to compete with Amtrak in the US.
pfannkuchen 2y ago
Switzerland seems so practical. If this sort of thing was done in America there would be endless whining and it would be rolled back.
- ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
  This pretty much is the case in the US. People complain all the time about amtrak being delayed by freight, but the law has been that amtrak gets priority for decades. It's just that they only get priority if they're actually on time (the initial booking of the rail essentially). Since they're constantly late they always miss this time and therefore have to wait.
- avidiax 2y ago
  Their train system is one of the best things about living there. The grain of salt is that it's a small country that's basically the size of the Bay Area, and it was never car dependent. https://s3.amazonaws.com/thetruesize.com/mockup.html#?borders=1~!MTMwODU3MTM.MTIwMDkwMTI*NjI3NzUyNg(NTQ5NDc1MA~!CH*OTM3NTMyNw.MTQyNTYxOTI(MjQ5)Mw https://s3.amazonaws.com/thetruesize.com/mockup.html#?border...
myth2018 2y ago
I visit Germany more or less regularly. The deterioration in the overall experience with DB is very noticeable. Last time I was unfortunate enough to take an ICE, they started an informal poll with the passengers to decide whether to cancel a stop in Frankfurt. I was astonished. They eventually decided not to cancel it, seemingly after a lot of time deliberating or waiting for something, but most of us lost our connections thanks to the resulting delay. It was 4am +/-. I wonder what's going on over there. I understand that there are complex organizational issues involved, but, besides this long-term rotting, there seems to be some more recent, abrupt diseases affecting them too.
- 0x000xca0xfe 2y ago
  By the way they decided to fire 30k employees to save costs just a couple days ago. Enjoy it while it lasts... it is going to be much worse very soon. Some renovation plans are completely bonkers, they will close important railways for years without any replacement.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  Well their finances were broken by a series of changes: 1. Lockdowns wrecking everything. Ticket revenue plummeted etc. 2. Soon after, the government there decided to make train travel nearly free. 9 EUR a month to travel as much as you want anywhere in Germany. Justification: climate change. This doubled short-distance usage of the network immediately. Huge increase in usage + hardly any new ticket revenue = network damage. There were subsidies but you can't place that kind of load on a system without everything being stripped to the bone to try and handle it. 3. When that scheme expired they decided to replace it with a new similar ticket at 49 EUR per month, but the rail companies complained they couldn't afford this and the financial risk was huge. https://www.railjournal.com/policy/germany-introduces-e49-ticket-as-9-euro-ticket-successor/ https://www.railjournal.com/policy/germany-introduces-e49-ti... DB losses have exploded and debt grows as a consequence: DB had a net loss for 2023 of some EUR 2.4 billion (compared with a net loss of EUR 227 million in the previous year). One of the negative factors here was the significant increase in interest paid, which was driven in part by higher borrowing for capital expenditures. The DB Group's results were also affected by the additional burdens of inflation-related cost increases, a sharp rise in personnel expenses and multiple strikes. https://www.dbschenker.com/tw-en/insights/news-and-stories/press-releases/deutsche-bahn-publishes-2023-financial-result-1710242 https://www.dbschenker.com/tw-en/insights/news-and-stories/p... So basically you have a socialist government that is giving sops to its base by trying to pump rail usage for climate reasons, but without making people pay for that increased usage, at a time of high inflation. The system creaks and groans under the weight.
samatman 2y ago
There's an old anecdote about this, almost certainly false, but worth sharing, goes something like this: The Swiss trains arrive on time, more often than any other country. Second place is the Germans. What's the difference? The Germans set the timetable, and carefully measure arrivals. Then the famed German engineering kicks in, and they move Heaven and Earth to identify and fix any problems which are keeping the trains off schedule. The Swiss set the timetable, and carefully measure arrivals. They use these measurements to identify when trains aren't arriving on schedule and... adjust the timetable.
scirob 2y ago
A nice data science ccc talk about German trains https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=dZLY7exrC0SiDxje https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=dZLY7exrC0SiDxje
PaulHoule 2y ago
When I was living in Germany circa 1999 I was riding the train from the former East Berlin to Dresden and remember watching the engineer look at his watch and at the clock on the platform, making a point to push the driving lever forward at the exact moment the seconds hand hit zero.
deleted 2y ago
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ornornor 2y ago
I always avoided German trains when riding in Switzerland: they were often late or canceled, dirty, and full. Especially given that I could take a cleaner, punctual SBB train with the same ticket and for the same price.
ashildr 2y ago
That‘s what we got for privatization and many years of „conservative“ ministers of transport and public infrastructure. Just wait for the first bridge to fail with a train or a car on it and the calls for public-private partnerships… (Writing this on a moderately ICE-train)
pif 2y ago
As they run into problems with German punctuality, I wonder what happens with the Italian trains!
Log_out_ 2y ago
https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=2QLVJJM2lizmqKcF https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=2QLVJJM2lizmqKcF DB Data Mining which showed hacks used to gamble metric
kelsiereed90 2y ago
[dead]
tdiff 2y ago
Just to add one more voice to the choir of outraged DB customers: in Russia, for a long-distance train to get cancelled, it takes something like a new World War to begin, I don't remember a single case. And as you may imagine, Russian Railways are not hiring the brightest talent awailable. In Germany they don't even express regret when they do it.

154 points by belter 2y ago

lagrange77 2y ago

How humiliating. A teacher did the same thing to me, it worked.

Rinzler89 2y ago
You weren't allowed to enter Switzerland?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
gniv 2y ago
Based on kdrama, this seems common in Korea. You're 10 seconds late, you can't enter the school grounds.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  Why?! How does this help? That sounds insane and pointless to the education process. Unless the point was to educate your kids to be obedient slaves with childhood trauma for their corporate overlords. We used to have something similar during communist rule in my European country, to teach kids who's boss and to respect authority.
  - gniv 2y ago
    No idea, but seeing how often they show it, I think they agree it's abusive.
  - sureIy 2y ago
    > the point was to educate your kids to be obedient slaves with childhood trauma for their corporate overlords. You haven’t heard of Samsung or the life of the average South Korean student. They invest the first 20 something years of their lives to get a corporate job as soon as possible, to not be left behind. Samsungs owns like half the country.
- hifromwork 2y ago
  Interesting culture if that's seen as a punishment. In my school half of the kids would try to be a minute late (so they can't enter the school and 'have to' slack off the whole day).

bombcar 2y ago

What to do with late trains is a very interesting problem from a network stability perspective. It’s somewhat akin to the packet dropping question, though packets don’t complain as loudly as passengers. In a rail network with one train a day it’s not a big issue, but with regular service you can’t let a late train get out of control or it blows the entire network out of sync until you have some dead time - which is one reason some systems have an “hour of the dead” where no trains run - it lets it reset and get back to something sane. Trying to build a system that has 15 minute heads and can handle a train going late or dying on the rails is really, really hard without ridiculously complexity like quad tracks everywhere and spare train sets at every station.

cmenge 2y ago
I agree that it's a hard and interesting problem. Yet other countries seem to be managing it better, or there is something structurally different. I read somewhere that one of the key issues in Germany is that freight and passenger trains share the same network. While a delay of 15 minutes can be wildly problematic for a passenger train (missing connections, stranding at some godforsaken train station etc.), it is virtually irrelevant for freight. Then again, that should make it easy enough to always prioritize passengers over freight, but either that isn't being done or it's still insufficient.
- bombcar 2y ago
  The USA has the freight problem because trains can't pass each other unless there is a siding long enough for the train that is being passed; and the freight trains are too long. Where there's double-track (or more) it's not as big an issue because the train can pass on the other side of the track (tracks are often handled as if they were a road with one lane going in one direction and the other going the other way, but you can swap around with signaling). The other major solution (bandaid) is to add dwell time at stations so that there's room to make up - the timetable says when the train will leave not when it will arrive, and if it normally arrives five minutes early, it just waits; if it lost time and arrives one minute before departure, it will just be there a minute and the lost time is made up. But while that may reduce the "worst case" scenario, it does make the average travel time longer.

notTooFarGone 2y ago

Hard but entirely relatable. Deutsche bahn is horrible, privatizing it in the 90s was one of many failures of that movement and was leading to crumbling infrastructure, an insurmountable hardware and technical debt and now to the most complex train system probably in the world. Hopefully some people learn from it - privatizing critical infrastructure like this is doomed to fail. You get the bad from a public company and the bad from the government bureaucracy.

AmericanChopper 2y ago
> privatizing critical infrastructure like this is doomed to fail It worked great for rail in Japan, so I’m not sure that’s the obvious lesson to learn.
- dash2 2y ago
  It worked OK for the UK. Passenger numbers, which had been steadily falling, started to increase. On the other hand, there are complaints about high fares.
  - pantalaimon 2y ago
    This has been true for Germany too. Passenger numbers are at an all-time high, but that's part of the problem - the infrastructure is at it's limit, but building new infrastructure is met with strong resistance by locals. e.g. the planned relief for the notoriously overcrowded Hamburg - Hannover track got effectively canceled, and this is only about the get worse with increased traffic from the new tunnel to Denmark that is set to open by the end of the decade.
  - daghamm 2y ago
    Are you sure about that? I still remember "traingate", the smear campaign that followed Jeremy Corbyn (1) and how leaked CCTV video proved him right much later (2). (1) https://www.politico.eu/article/jeremy-corbyn-walked-past-empty-seats-to-make-crowded-train-protest-virgin-public-transport-ownership-labour-leadershiop/ https://www.politico.eu/article/jeremy-corbyn-walked-past-em... (2) https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/virgin-release-traingate-footage-proves-corbyn-told-truth-traingate-55552/ https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/virgin-release-traing...

lexlambda 2y ago

Seems fair. You can't make it right for everyone, and at one point they need to draw a boundary, to care for your citizens and keep up the standards. Otherwise everything would fall to the lowest common denominator. I don't think it's fair for the article to say that a "temporary measure" has now become a permanent one, it likely is temporary until the problem is solved. Sometimes I ask myself why the schedule of those always-late trains isn't changed. If it would be planned that it always arrives "15min later", people and other transportation could work with that timing so much better.

awaythrow729462 2y ago

Reading this on a German train that is expected to arrive in Zurich 25 minutes late, hoping that the connection will not be cancelled at the boarder as per usual.

yieldcrv 2y ago
outcome?

quitit 2y ago

For context German trains over the last few years have become increasingly delayed. To the point that it is now the norm. Official Deutsche Bahn figures are likely underreporting the extent of the problem as the reported times and actual timetables are -aggressively- out of sync (to the frustration of many riders). It's hard to dissect the true source of the problem as there are various factors at play. However the central cause is starving the system of funds. This presents a strong warning for countries that are trying to encourage the use of public transport in order to meet their climate goals. Some detail is available here: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-whats-wrong-with-the-deutsche-bahn-train-operator/a-68091047 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-whats-wrong-with-the-deutsche-...

_the_inflator 2y ago
I agree except for your „central cause“ hypothesis. What happens if you throw tons of money on something as dysfunctional and lacking a business model? You get Die Bahn. Calling for “more money” as a central cause is part of the problem.
- quitit 2y ago
  "The network is simply overloaded," said Böttger. In contrast to Luxembourg and Switzerland, which invested around €575 (about $625) per capita and €450 per capita in rail infrastructure respectively, the figure in Germany is just €114. Source: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-whats-wrong-with-the-deutsche-bahn-train-operator/a-68091047 https://www.dw.com/en/germany-whats-wrong-with-the-deutsche-...
actionfromafar 2y ago
What is the warning? Don’t starve the system of funds?
logicchains 2y ago
Does Germany spend less on its trains than Switzerland?
- 2y ago

remolueoend 2y ago

> Another figure illustrates why the practice is necessary from a Swiss perspective: in 2023, 92.5 percent of all trains in Switzerland reached their destination on time, compared to only 64 percent for long-distance trains in Germany. To add a bit more detail: SBB (Swiss federal railways) consider a train on time if it reaches its destination with less than three minutes’ delay [1]. DB (Deutsche Bahn) puts the threshold at 15 minutes ("Reisendenpünktlichkeit") [2]. [1] https://company.sbb.ch/en/the-company/responsibility-society-environment/customers/punctuality.html https://company.sbb.ch/en/the-company/responsibility-society... [2] https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen_fakten/puenktlichkeitswerte-6878476 https://www.deutschebahn.com/de/konzern/konzernprofil/zahlen...

macbr 2y ago
Having read through the links you provided: You are comparing two different things. DB’s Reisendenpünktlichkeit takes in delays caused by missed connections etc. SBB’s 3 minute delay are just the individual train delays. For that DB has a similar measure which defines punctual as below 6 minutes of delay. So the difference is big (3 vs 6 minutes) but not that big (3 vs 15 minutes).
- remolueoend 2y ago
  You are of course right, "Reisendenpünktlichkeit Fernverkehr" hasn't even been published by DB before January 2024 - my bad.
lqet 2y ago
To put this a bit into perspective: long-distance trains in Germany typically travel for at least half a day. "Long-distance" trains in Switzerland can be compared to regional lines in Germany (the country simply isn't that large, and the majority of rail travel in Switzerland happens between Zurich/Olten/Berne/Basel, which are all within 100 km of each other). The likelihood of anything going wrong during a 1:30h train journey from Zurich to Basel is simply much lower than during a 10 hour train journey from Kiel to Freiburg. 3 minutes delay on a 1:30h train journey is a delay of 3.3%, 15 mins delay on a 10 hour train journey is a delay of 2.5%. The reason regional trains are also delayed is that regional lines, local lines, long distance lines and freight trains are typically using the same tracks in Germany, and delayed long distance trains always get higher priority. A typical situation is that your regional train is perfectly on time, but suddenly stops, and waits for 5-10 minutes for a delayed long-distance train to overtake it. Switzerland has a similar mixed system, but as noted above, does not really have long-distance rail lines, apart from the trains that enter from Italy, Austria, France and Germany, which is the main reason why these trains are not allowed to enter if delayed. This is in contrast to the system in France, where TGV lines typically have dedicated high-speed tracks, where all trains on it travel more or less at the same speed. Shouldn't you then add redundancy to the system by having time buffers at large stops every 2-3 hours? Or even let replacement trains start at intermediate stops as soon as the delay of the regular train is greater than X to avoid propagation of the delay into to rest of the network? Absolutely, but most stations and rail lines in Germany are either at their operational limit, or above. Having a train wait for 15 minutes in a large station just in case it is delayed would block that track for 15 minutes in the majority of cases, when the train is punctual. Also, DB simply has not enough rolling material to start replacement trains, and the rail infrastructure to even park such trains has largely been dismantled in the years after the privatization (they are doing it sometimes, but not very often).

unglaublich 2y ago

The long-distance network in Germany has routes that take more than 8 hours. Delays of 15 minutes are because of network complexity not uncommon. SBB - Swiss rail - doesn't want its schedule to be affected by the long-distance DB - German - services. So it doesn't allow the DB service to enter the country after a given cut-off delay. This means that travellers need to transfer to an SBB service for the final 1-2 hours of their trip. This transfer typically takes 15-30 minutes.

misja111 2y ago
> Delays of 15 minutes are because of network complexity not uncommon. If the delay is that likely, due to the long distance of the route, isn't the obvious step to take then to adjust the schedule? So that at some stations along the route trains have a buffer.
cmenge 2y ago
You can travel across Japan, similar or even larger distances, with practically no delays. As a passenger it's not always about the bare number of minutes, the problem is that I might get stranded somewhere, and train stations in Germany are generally very dirty and somewhat unsafe at odd hours.
t8sr 2y ago
I don’t buy the idea that it’s mainly because of network complexity and line length. Local lines, even ones that don’t share tracks with any other trains, are routinely cancelled or delayed, as well. Other large countries manage to run trains on time (Japan, Spain…). DB is uniquely bad and I don’t think we should be making excuses for them.

gniv 2y ago

> On the Freiburg-Basel route, as many as 12.4 percent of trains had to turn back. This is not as dramatic as it sounds, since Basel is at the border. There's probably many trains into town.

macbr 2y ago

Note that trains to Zurich and Basel SBB then end in Basel Bad (or sometimes they let it go to Basel SBB). It’s a separate train station in Basel which is run by Deutsche Bahn so it’s not literally “turning back at the border”. IIRC Swiss passengers waiting in Basel SBB get a replacement train travelling at the original time.

blueflow 2y ago

DB has the worst company culture that I'm aware of. Everything has to go by plan, and when it doesn't, someone has to be responsible. So everyone is just ass-covering all them time and not taking any risks. This has removed the potential for improvisation in dispatching (no one wants to be responsible for delaying that other train), making the train network unable to give any trains room to make up their delays. There is a reason every other dispatcher has problems with alcoholism.

Rinzler89 2y ago
>So everyone is just ass-covering all them time and not taking any risks. Heaving lived and worked in Germany for a few years, I realized that's the reason behind all the excessive bureaucracy and processes for everything: extensive ass covering. If something goes to shit under your watch then it's not your fault because you did everything by the book and you have the extensive paper trail to prove it. And nobody wants to go around the processes or change them, even if they know they're broken because then they would be the ones liable for the outcomes, so the entire society revolves around preserving the status quo even if the ship is heading towards the iceberg. Change to processes is usually exclusively top-down where a boomer detached from the work in the trenches but with connections, a laundry list of a academic credentials and a pompous CV of management positions at large consultancies/companies, makes the decisions and those below execute without question while mumbling at the canteen lunch how stupid and out of touch the decisions are. That's just my opinion as an outsider, it's not a fact I can provide citations for in case anyone asks, so it can be incorrect as all opinions go, feel free to disagree or correct me.
- TMWNN 2y ago
  >Heaving lived and worked in Germany for a few years, I realized that's the reason behind all the excessive bureaucracy and processes for everything: extensive ass covering. If something goes to shit under your watch then it's not your fault because you did everything by the book and you have the extensive paper trail to prove it. I've heard it said that the idea that Germans are efficient is a myth. (The new Berlin airport is one example.) Germans are, rather, *rule followers*.

lqet 2y ago

Just compare the colored rings (green = on time, orange = delayed more than 3 minutes, red = delayed more than 9 minutes) between the trains in Germany, Switzerland, and France here to get a general feeling of how bad things have become with Deutsche Bahn: https://travic.app/?z=9&x=890440.8&y=6126327.9&l=osm_standard&ol= https://travic.app/?z=9&x=890440.8&y=6126327.9&l=osm_standar... And today is a good day in southwestern Germany, just look at the current general redness in the Ruhr area and Cologne.

misja111 2y ago
Unbelievable, >9 minutes delay seems to have become the norm ..
TimK65 2y ago
You can scroll up and look at Sweden as well. Not a pretty picture.

BrandiATMuhkuh 2y ago

The delays in Germany can also be felt here in Linz/Austria. For years the train from Linz to Vienna was always punctual. However, recently (Last ~9 Months or so) all trains are super later. The reason is, all of them go through Germany (Innsbruck (via German) -> Salzburg -> Linz ->Vienna), and given everything is delayed in Germany it also delays Austrian trains.

jds-67 2y ago

The situation with trains in Germany is appalling. Our kids need to go to school by train. Even though it is the only line using that route, there are constant delays and cancellations. DB (Deutsche Bahn) often does not even care to inform the passengers of such events over the loudspeakers or displays. I routinely take at least one train earlier to increase the probability of reaching my destination in time. Working from home has saved me a good amount of stress over the years. This is not motivating anyone to switch from cars to trains.

codegeek 2y ago

As a foreigner, I am currently travelling for work in Europe and had a DB train from Munich all the way to Ljubljana (Slovenia) through multiple connections. Interestingly, the trains were on time until we were in Germany but when I reached the last connection in Villach (Austria), suddenly they cancelled the train from Villach->Ljubljuana without any notice at last minute. As a foreigner without any understanding, I had to scramble through and find a Flixbus which thankfully I was able to buy tickets online. Look for using Bus like Flixbus as an alternative if possible. They are not perfect but more reliable than the DB train for sure.

Freak_NL 2y ago
Villach to Ljubljana is a joined ÖBB and SŽ line, not Deutsch Bahn. Your ticket was with DB, but the train getting cancelled had absolutely nothing to do with them. If you had asked at the Reisezentrum at Villach station you would have been presented with options to continue your journey, or get a refund.
- codegeek 2y ago
  Understood but from my perspective, the cause doesn't matter. I booked through DB and it was not a good experience. Was my very first Time and I had a few minutes to decide what to do as I had people waiting in Ljubljuana. Didnt even have time for a refund for that portion of the journey. I have decided to not take the train next time for sure if I can. Will try bus first.
  - Freak_NL 2y ago
    Regardless, your experience has nothing to do with this topic or DB. And you could have gotten a partial refund quite easily, even after taking alternative transport. Refunds for delays is something DB has worked out pretty reliably. Filling out the online form is trivial, and if you use the DB app most fields are prefilled.
    - codegeek 2y ago

tkubacki 2y ago

Apart from the root issue here someone need to remind that Switzerland is the parasite of EU. Basically they have all EU rights and no obligations. EU should tax them heavily so that they contribute to solve e.g. EU transportation issues.

mamonster 2y ago
These aren't EU transportation issues, these are GER transportation issues. The most powerful "parasitism" argument against CH is probably the tax arbitrage you can get from Zug/Lucerne, but a lot of that already happens inside EU itself with Luxembourg/Ireland/etc. But yes, a fight over bigger contributions/more harmonization is inevitable within the next 10 years.
t8sr 2y ago
What are you talking about, my marginal tax rate in Switzerland is 50%. When I last went to Prague, I changed trains at a station that prominently said it was financed by “friendship funds” from Switzerland. My taxes already are paying for Germany’s transport infrastructure. Meanwhile, Swiss students couldn’t go on Erasmus for a year, because someone in Brussels threw a hissy fit. I’m a fan of the EU, but let’s not pretend it’s not throwing its weight around, just like any other huge federal government.
misja111 2y ago
Why in Heaven's name should Switzerland be (heavily!?) taxed to solve EU transportation issues? Should Switzerland then tax the EU as well to pay for its own transportation? Until today I believed that the world had solved these problems by charging transportation fees but you seem to have very different ideas. > Basically they have all EU rights and no obligations. Switzerland certainly doesn't have all EU rights. For instance, they are not applicable for any EU subsidies. They do not have any voting rights. They are exluded from certain scientific cooperation programs (e.g. the ESFRI). And the list goes on.
- tkubacki 2y ago
  I do consider Switzerland doings as hostile to EU. 1) Switzerland gain on using EU transportation and free market but does not contribute fair fee to maintain and build it. You can tax EU - we will see who will survive. 2) Switzerland does unfair tax competition 3) Switzerland helped hide EU citizens untaxed money (maybe still does) 4) Switzerland helps Russian oligarchs maintain their wealth and many other criminals all around the world. 5) Last but not least: If Switzerland does not care about Ukraine dying because it is ‘neutral’ and yet still wants safe borders, then I don’t fucking care about Switzerland well being.

Tade0 2y ago

It's a classic case of efficiency vs latency. Swiss railways optimise for punctuality, sacrificing line capacity (compensated for with double-decker cars). Meanwhile every other European rail transport authority seems to be bent on squeezing out the most of the lines it has. I grew up in a city that had two parallel rail lines in the east-west axis - one for long-distance connections, cargo and everything else, the other a refurbished old main line with trains only once per hour. The latter was punctual almost to the minute(even if comparatively slow at an average 30km/h including stops), while the former was a mess and you were often better off driving instead. My friend living in the suburbs close to that refurbished line always boasted how it took him a grand total of 18 minutes to get to the city centre and he could rely on the train to always arrive. That was quicker than I could get there by any means, despite a similar distance.

vachina 2y ago
What you said goes against what the other commenter have said, that is Swiss trains cannot inject late trains into the system because the tracks are used at capacity, I.e. there is no buffer for trains to “queue”. Every train is always at the expected place, at the expected time. Hence the system is always at maximum throughput and on-time.
- Tade0 2y ago
  > SBB grants Eurocity trains on the Munich-Zurich route a buffer of ten minutes before reallocating their train path, and even 15 minutes for ICE trains between Freiburg and Basel. Emphasis mine. This whole system works because they account for delays by having a time buffer in each route that can be consumed by going slower. During my commutes along Lake Zurich I noticed that the trains would rarely arrive earlier than 30s before schedule - even if it meant going below the maximum allowed speed, as evidenced by instances where the train used the same section to restore the buffer by going faster.

bun_terminator 2y ago

There is no saving the Deutsche Bahn. Everyone who knows someone working there knows this. Just ban everyone currently working there from ever working there again and reshuffle the cards.

carlmr 2y ago
They're already severely understaffed, I doubt kicking out the current people working there would help. On a top management level, maybe, but I don't think train conductors can do much about a train schedule that is impossibly failure-prone, based on ageing and inadequate infrastructure and trains in disrepair.
- bun_terminator 2y ago
  I have two train conductors in my extended family. They have an ingrained anti-performance mindset and culture. There is no recovery from that.

phlo 2y ago

There's an amazing talk about DB's punctuality from the 2019 Chaos Communication Congress: BahnMining, David Kriesel. Available in German, and interpreted to English: https://dkriesel.com/blog/2019/1229_video_und_folien_meines_36c3-vortrags_bahnmining https://dkriesel.com/blog/2019/1229_video_und_folien_meines_.... My favorite anecdote from riding a German train in Switzerland was a journey from Interlaken (Switzerland) to Frankfurt in Germany. Now if you're not used to train schedules: Stops are quick, and trains are punctual. It's fairly common for stops to just be 2-3 minutes. Connections between trains are often around 5 minutes, sometimes shorter. So, this Intercity Express departed Interlaken perfectly on schedule, made a bunch of scheduled stops in Spiez, Thun, Bern, and continued on to the border city of Basel. Everything running perfectly on schedule, the train arrived at the Swiss station in Basel, continued (on time) to the German train station that's still in the same city, just a few minutes farther. Having had 3-5 minute stops all the way from early morning to lunchtime, the train then sat in the German station for about 15 minutes, departed with only a minor delay, and just a few yards after exiting the station proceeded to stop, sit on the tracks for half an hour ("to catch up with the prevalent delay conditions on the German rail network"), before starting to move again. Waiting in a comfy seat on a train with working AC isn't the worst of fates, and we made the final destination within half an hour of the scheduled time, so it all went well -- just funny to observe how different parts of this interconnected network had very different ideas of scheduling.

meonkeys 2y ago

Alternative title blue or OP could have used: "More and more German trains are late and not allowed to enter Switzerland" would have been more accurate, less clickbait.

BadBadJellyBean 2y ago

I wouldn't mind the delays that much if we had more direct connections between cities. But the reality is that you book a connection to another city, and that connection was never possible in the first place because of some construction work or bad rails or something else. They know they can't make that connection but they never update their schedule to reflect that. And then you are on the first leg of the journey and everything goes to hell. You have to find a replacement train, your reservations are void, you have to wait hours. And the worst is that you have no recourse. You get 25% of your ticket after ONE HOUR! It makes me so angry.

Tainnor 2y ago
> And the worst is that you have no recourse. You get 25% of your ticket after ONE HOUR! It makes me so angry. Unfortunately, it's not as if airlines were any better. Less than 3h of delay and you get nothing. At least, with DB you can get the money for your reservation back if they cancelled your original connection. Still sucks to be in an overcrowded train without a reservation, though. Direct connections are definitely better, as you say.

JohnMakin 2y ago

This is so foreign to my American perspective - our public transport is more like, "maybe it'll be on time, probably not, you'll have no way of knowing, also screw you"

650REDHAIR 2y ago
“Missed your connection? Sounds like a you problem.”
- davedx 2y ago
  "Skill issue"
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> so foreign to my American perspective - our public transport is more like, "maybe it'll be on time, probably not, you'll have no way of knowing, also screw you" New York’s Metro-North and LIRR have 95%+ on-time rates [1]. (EDIT: On time is defined as less than 6 minutes late [2].) [1] https://www.metro-magazine.com/10217862/metro-north-lirr-experience-record-on-time-performance https://www.metro-magazine.com/10217862/metro-north-lirr-exp... [2] https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/pdf/report-9-2025.pdf https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/pdf/report-9-2025.pdf
- hungie 2y ago
  That seems... poor? A one in twenty trains late stat will basically mean every person will have to deal with a late train roughly every week? I bet, however, it's not uniformly distributed and some lines are late more than others. Hopefully that 95% is them being honest about the current state, while they push higher.
  - ceroxylon 2y ago
    If true it would beat the 92.5% statistic for Swiss trains that was mentioned in the article.

SllX 2y ago

Not that I can blame the Swiss for wanting to make the trains run on time, but I laughed at this part: > SBB introduced the regulation back in July 2022 in consultation with Deutsche Bahn. Introduced as a "temporary measure" at the time, it is now permanent. Just a reminder to folks that there is nothing so permanent as a “temporary” government program.

Chris2048 2y ago

> are too unpunctual ಠ_ಠ why not "aren't punctual"..

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
Because the later a train is, the more likely it is to disrupt other trains. So the amount of unpunctuality matters.
- Chris2048 2y ago
  In that case, "late" would be quantative.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    The article does in fact quantify: 15 minutes for certain ICE trains, 10 minutes otherwise.
    - Chris2048 2y ago
      I'm not sure you understand. 15m late is quantative. punctual is binary.

mauvehaus 2y ago

In heaven the cooks are Italian, the lovers are French, the mechanics are German, the police are British, and it's all organized by the Swiss. (In hell the cooks are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, the police are German, and it's all organized by the Italians.)

UIUC_06 2y ago
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robertlagrant 2y ago
Sounds like in hell you get your food cooked by Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver, with dessert by Mary Berry. Could be worse.
- samirillian 2y ago
  Have you actually tasted their food or just looked at pictures of it on the internet.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    I haven't done either. Which do you do?
  - VBprogrammer 2y ago
    The best part of British food is that we're incredibly good at adopting all of the worlds cuisines' as our own. I remember being at the Belgian GP and literally you could have chips with various shaped sausage and one pizza place hiding at the back. At the British GP you could eat some variant (admittedly, probably not the best variant) of pretty much every cuisine you could imagine. Even in our supermarkets if you want to make a Paella or Peri Peri chicken you'll find all of the ingredients you need. If you go to a Spain it's really hard to find Peri Peri and if you go to France you'll struggle to find ingredients for a Paella.
    - 2y ago

bradley13 2y ago

The German train system isn't awful, when talking about long distance trains. It's not good, but it's not awful. Look at the regional feeder lines, though. Unmaintained tracks, ancient trains, diesel instead of electric. Many towns have no connection at all - where I used to work, there was an old train station, but the tracks had been ripped up years earlier. I used to (have to) rely on the German train system. Thankfully, I am now in Switzerland. It is a huge difference.

iggldiggl 2y ago
That probably strongly depends on where exactly you're living, though. I can't complain about my local trains, which are nothing like what you describe.

vondur 2y ago

Man, with that late time percentage, the Germans are trying to compete with Amtrak in the US.

pfannkuchen 2y ago

Switzerland seems so practical. If this sort of thing was done in America there would be endless whining and it would be rolled back.

ApolloFortyNine 2y ago
This pretty much is the case in the US. People complain all the time about amtrak being delayed by freight, but the law has been that amtrak gets priority for decades. It's just that they only get priority if they're actually on time (the initial booking of the rail essentially). Since they're constantly late they always miss this time and therefore have to wait.
avidiax 2y ago
Their train system is one of the best things about living there. The grain of salt is that it's a small country that's basically the size of the Bay Area, and it was never car dependent. https://s3.amazonaws.com/thetruesize.com/mockup.html#?borders=1~!MTMwODU3MTM.MTIwMDkwMTI*NjI3NzUyNg(NTQ5NDc1MA~!CH*OTM3NTMyNw.MTQyNTYxOTI(MjQ5)Mw https://s3.amazonaws.com/thetruesize.com/mockup.html#?border...

myth2018 2y ago

I visit Germany more or less regularly. The deterioration in the overall experience with DB is very noticeable. Last time I was unfortunate enough to take an ICE, they started an informal poll with the passengers to decide whether to cancel a stop in Frankfurt. I was astonished. They eventually decided not to cancel it, seemingly after a lot of time deliberating or waiting for something, but most of us lost our connections thanks to the resulting delay. It was 4am +/-. I wonder what's going on over there. I understand that there are complex organizational issues involved, but, besides this long-term rotting, there seems to be some more recent, abrupt diseases affecting them too.

0x000xca0xfe 2y ago
By the way they decided to fire 30k employees to save costs just a couple days ago. Enjoy it while it lasts... it is going to be much worse very soon. Some renovation plans are completely bonkers, they will close important railways for years without any replacement.
mike_hearn 2y ago
Well their finances were broken by a series of changes: 1. Lockdowns wrecking everything. Ticket revenue plummeted etc. 2. Soon after, the government there decided to make train travel nearly free. 9 EUR a month to travel as much as you want anywhere in Germany. Justification: climate change. This doubled short-distance usage of the network immediately. Huge increase in usage + hardly any new ticket revenue = network damage. There were subsidies but you can't place that kind of load on a system without everything being stripped to the bone to try and handle it. 3. When that scheme expired they decided to replace it with a new similar ticket at 49 EUR per month, but the rail companies complained they couldn't afford this and the financial risk was huge. https://www.railjournal.com/policy/germany-introduces-e49-ticket-as-9-euro-ticket-successor/ https://www.railjournal.com/policy/germany-introduces-e49-ti... DB losses have exploded and debt grows as a consequence: DB had a net loss for 2023 of some EUR 2.4 billion (compared with a net loss of EUR 227 million in the previous year). One of the negative factors here was the significant increase in interest paid, which was driven in part by higher borrowing for capital expenditures. The DB Group's results were also affected by the additional burdens of inflation-related cost increases, a sharp rise in personnel expenses and multiple strikes. https://www.dbschenker.com/tw-en/insights/news-and-stories/press-releases/deutsche-bahn-publishes-2023-financial-result-1710242 https://www.dbschenker.com/tw-en/insights/news-and-stories/p... So basically you have a socialist government that is giving sops to its base by trying to pump rail usage for climate reasons, but without making people pay for that increased usage, at a time of high inflation. The system creaks and groans under the weight.

samatman 2y ago

There's an old anecdote about this, almost certainly false, but worth sharing, goes something like this: The Swiss trains arrive on time, more often than any other country. Second place is the Germans. What's the difference? The Germans set the timetable, and carefully measure arrivals. Then the famed German engineering kicks in, and they move Heaven and Earth to identify and fix any problems which are keeping the trains off schedule. The Swiss set the timetable, and carefully measure arrivals. They use these measurements to identify when trains aren't arriving on schedule and... adjust the timetable.

scirob 2y ago

A nice data science ccc talk about German trains https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=dZLY7exrC0SiDxje https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=dZLY7exrC0SiDxje

PaulHoule 2y ago

When I was living in Germany circa 1999 I was riding the train from the former East Berlin to Dresden and remember watching the engineer look at his watch and at the clock on the platform, making a point to push the driving lever forward at the exact moment the seconds hand hit zero.

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ornornor 2y ago

I always avoided German trains when riding in Switzerland: they were often late or canceled, dirty, and full. Especially given that I could take a cleaner, punctual SBB train with the same ticket and for the same price.

ashildr 2y ago

That‘s what we got for privatization and many years of „conservative“ ministers of transport and public infrastructure. Just wait for the first bridge to fail with a train or a car on it and the calls for public-private partnerships… (Writing this on a moderately ICE-train)

pif 2y ago

As they run into problems with German punctuality, I wonder what happens with the Italian trains!

Log_out_ 2y ago

https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=2QLVJJM2lizmqKcF https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=2QLVJJM2lizmqKcF DB Data Mining which showed hacks used to gamble metric

kelsiereed90 2y ago

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tdiff 2y ago

Just to add one more voice to the choir of outraged DB customers: in Russia, for a long-distance train to get cancelled, it takes something like a new World War to begin, I don't remember a single case. And as you may imagine, Russian Railways are not hiring the brightest talent awailable. In Germany they don't even express regret when they do it.