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The Guardian writes about this [1]: "Eurostar disputed the findings. Deutsche Bahn declined to comment." I have to give kudos to Eurostar for standing up again

The Guardian writes about this [1]: "Eurostar disputed the findings. Deutsche Bahn declined to comment." I have to give kudos to Eurostar for standing up against their classification. Eurostar is definitely expensive, probably too expensive for the quality they provide. They also have special challenges with serving the Channel Tunnel and border checks and there is certainly room for improvement but I think the ranking doesn't treat Eurostar fairly. Deutsche Bahn on the other hand, proven as guilty, I'd say. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/09/eurostar-the-worst-performing-rail-service-in-europe-campaigners-find https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/09/eurostar-the-w...

jillesvangurp 2y ago
When taking a plane is cheaper and faster, something is wrong. I had the choice between a two times 5 hour train journey a few months ago or taking the plane for a journey from Berlin to Düsseldorf. We took the plane. It was cheaper than the train and it saved us spending money on a hotel. I didn't feel good about it. But the alternative was spending (at least) ten hours in a train. There are two problems here. 1) why does it five hours with a "high speed" ICE train (avg. speed ~100km/hours, pathetic). 2) why is this so expensive that taking a plane is actually cheaper? Deutsche Bahn is a good example of everything that is wrong in Germany. Inefficient, overstaffed, under performing, customer hostile, bad infrastructure, overpriced, too slow, and often failing to do its job entirely because of mechanical failures, poorly managed cascading failures resulting from other delays (trains waiting for each other and them piling up and causing more delays), or its staff going on strike every month or so. It's not that they are lazy but they have a lot of people doing very unimportant things very poorly and not enough people doing the important things well. There's a lot of very comfy management that can't seem to manage anything. A bloated IT department responsible for making mediocre apps/websites (their payment system is absolute shit and UX disaster zone), and layers and layers of bureaucracy doing god knows what. I've had some professional dealings with them as a startup without much success. Nobody you talk to can decide anything, they have a hopeless not invented here syndrome (they want to do everything in house and they just can't), and you are competing with professional grafters and consulting companies milking them for many millions for silly shit. It's easy to see how they are bleeding cash.
- PoignardAzur 2y ago
  > There are two problems here. 1) why does it five hours with a "high speed" ICE train (avg. speed ~100km/hours, pathetic). 2) why is this so expensive that taking a plane is actually cheaper? Subsidies aside, an airport network is much easier to fund than a train network. Each new airport you open brings you network effect benefits, whereas opening a new train station is worthless if you don't also build new train lines, with all the associated infrastructure costs and eminent domain issues.
  - eesmith 2y ago
    I may have this wrong, but I don't think there are many new airports being built in Europe or the US. Upgrades, certainly, but even a new airport like in Berlin replaced an old airport which was shut down, right? I'm pretty sure in the US there were a lot more airports back in the 1950s when war surplus prop planes were cheap, jet service wasn't available, lots of vets had flight experience, and back before the interstate system was built. Some became general aviation fields, with no commercial flights these days. Basically, the network effect wasn't enough to keep up with the cost savings of using bigger planes and bigger hubs, given that people could more easily drive to the airport (on roads 'with all the associated infrastructure costs and eminent domain issues'). Don't know about Europe though.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      We have many military airports that nowadays also take civilian traffic, that is how they are "opening" in Europe. Mostly based on the after effects of cold war wanning, and EU. As things are, maybe they will invert trend and focus on military only again.
      - eesmith 2y ago
        Could you give me a few examples? A DDG search is proving hopelessly inadequate. It only finds information about new/remodeled terminals, and the proposed Central Communication Port in Poland, which is greenfield (literally) but hasn't started yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Germany helpfully lists airfields in Germany which don't have regularly scheduled commercial passenger service. The first I picked was Kiel Airport, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiel_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiel_Airport , which fits my description of how airports don't benefit from a simple network effect. It had "27 national and international destinations" back around 1930, then was mixed military and civilian. The first terminal was built in 1965. In 1987, "Lufthansa began offering scheduled flights to Frankfurt, and later to Cologne/Bonn, Munich, Copenhagen, Kaliningrad and Riga." The last commercial scheduled passenger flight was in 2006. I'm curious if any of the military airports you mention once had passenger service, reflecting how airports used to be more common as technical limitations prevented them from carrying many passengers or going all that far.
ageitgey 2y ago
Eurostar is definitely a different type of service than the others, but I think we can all agree that Eurostar is still highly priced for what it provides. Fares from London to Paris are almost always higher on Eurostar vs flying. And this is even when you compare traditional airline "Economy Plus" service with convenient flight times operating from Heathrow, not no-name budget airlines operating at far-flung budget airports with no baggage allowances. Obviously it's working for them though because the Eurostar trains always seems packed and Eurostar posted 2B revenue this year with near 25% profit margins.
theshrike79 2y ago
It says something about Deutsche Bahn, that Duolingo German has specific lessons on "the train has had a delay" (verspätung) and "the train is late" (spät) :D

jillesvangurp 2y ago

When taking a plane is cheaper and faster, something is wrong. I had the choice between a two times 5 hour train journey a few months ago or taking the plane for a journey from Berlin to Düsseldorf. We took the plane. It was cheaper than the train and it saved us spending money on a hotel. I didn't feel good about it. But the alternative was spending (at least) ten hours in a train. There are two problems here. 1) why does it five hours with a "high speed" ICE train (avg. speed ~100km/hours, pathetic). 2) why is this so expensive that taking a plane is actually cheaper? Deutsche Bahn is a good example of everything that is wrong in Germany. Inefficient, overstaffed, under performing, customer hostile, bad infrastructure, overpriced, too slow, and often failing to do its job entirely because of mechanical failures, poorly managed cascading failures resulting from other delays (trains waiting for each other and them piling up and causing more delays), or its staff going on strike every month or so. It's not that they are lazy but they have a lot of people doing very unimportant things very poorly and not enough people doing the important things well. There's a lot of very comfy management that can't seem to manage anything. A bloated IT department responsible for making mediocre apps/websites (their payment system is absolute shit and UX disaster zone), and layers and layers of bureaucracy doing god knows what. I've had some professional dealings with them as a startup without much success. Nobody you talk to can decide anything, they have a hopeless not invented here syndrome (they want to do everything in house and they just can't), and you are competing with professional grafters and consulting companies milking them for many millions for silly shit. It's easy to see how they are bleeding cash.

PoignardAzur 2y ago
> There are two problems here. 1) why does it five hours with a "high speed" ICE train (avg. speed ~100km/hours, pathetic). 2) why is this so expensive that taking a plane is actually cheaper? Subsidies aside, an airport network is much easier to fund than a train network. Each new airport you open brings you network effect benefits, whereas opening a new train station is worthless if you don't also build new train lines, with all the associated infrastructure costs and eminent domain issues.
- eesmith 2y ago
  I may have this wrong, but I don't think there are many new airports being built in Europe or the US. Upgrades, certainly, but even a new airport like in Berlin replaced an old airport which was shut down, right? I'm pretty sure in the US there were a lot more airports back in the 1950s when war surplus prop planes were cheap, jet service wasn't available, lots of vets had flight experience, and back before the interstate system was built. Some became general aviation fields, with no commercial flights these days. Basically, the network effect wasn't enough to keep up with the cost savings of using bigger planes and bigger hubs, given that people could more easily drive to the airport (on roads 'with all the associated infrastructure costs and eminent domain issues'). Don't know about Europe though.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    We have many military airports that nowadays also take civilian traffic, that is how they are "opening" in Europe. Mostly based on the after effects of cold war wanning, and EU. As things are, maybe they will invert trend and focus on military only again.
    - eesmith 2y ago
      Could you give me a few examples? A DDG search is proving hopelessly inadequate. It only finds information about new/remodeled terminals, and the proposed Central Communication Port in Poland, which is greenfield (literally) but hasn't started yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Germany helpfully lists airfields in Germany which don't have regularly scheduled commercial passenger service. The first I picked was Kiel Airport, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiel_Airport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiel_Airport , which fits my description of how airports don't benefit from a simple network effect. It had "27 national and international destinations" back around 1930, then was mixed military and civilian. The first terminal was built in 1965. In 1987, "Lufthansa began offering scheduled flights to Frankfurt, and later to Cologne/Bonn, Munich, Copenhagen, Kaliningrad and Riga." The last commercial scheduled passenger flight was in 2006. I'm curious if any of the military airports you mention once had passenger service, reflecting how airports used to be more common as technical limitations prevented them from carrying many passengers or going all that far.

ageitgey 2y ago

Eurostar is definitely a different type of service than the others, but I think we can all agree that Eurostar is still highly priced for what it provides. Fares from London to Paris are almost always higher on Eurostar vs flying. And this is even when you compare traditional airline "Economy Plus" service with convenient flight times operating from Heathrow, not no-name budget airlines operating at far-flung budget airports with no baggage allowances. Obviously it's working for them though because the Eurostar trains always seems packed and Eurostar posted 2B revenue this year with near 25% profit margins.

theshrike79 2y ago

It says something about Deutsche Bahn, that Duolingo German has specific lessons on "the train has had a delay" (verspätung) and "the train is late" (spät) :D