5 ms·

Cancelling trains to preserve on-time statistics is the kind of perverse activity you get when metrics aren’t correctly setup. A cancelled train should be coun

by bombcar 11mo ago

Cancelling trains to preserve on-time statistics is the kind of perverse activity you get when metrics aren’t correctly setup. A cancelled train should be counted as delayed until the next train (close to the worst-case scenario) so as to discourage it. But the real problem with deteriorating service is that people will put up with it for a long time - as long as they get to where they’re going eventually. But they’ll stop choosing the train, and over 20 years you’ll find that everyone has moved to private vehicles or alternate transportation methods. And then you have no riders and trying to get back on track will take 20 years or more.

eigenspace 11mo ago
People claim that they cancel trains to try and preserve the statistics, but there's not really any evidence of it. The actual reason is that if a train is too late, it will conflict too much with the other scheduled trains and there's simply no room for it. Keeping the delayed train will just cause more delays for other trains on the same route, because German trains are scheduled with very high frequency. E.g. where I live in Cologne, there's typically a high speed train every 20 to 30 minutes to Frankfurt. If one train is delayed by 30 minutes, then suddenly you have two (ore more) trains right on top of eachother heading to the same destination, both on very very congested lines that theyre simultaneously trying to do repairs and expansions to. Those are the sorts of situations where it makes sense to just cancel the train, not because of metrics but because of actual track constraints. The main thing people dont understand about Germany's train system is the scale of it. The network is physically very large, but also very densely packed, and has very frequent trains. For instance, here is the map just of the regional (non-high-speed) trains between cities in my state of Nordrhein-Westfalen: https://karteplan.com/deutschland/land/nordrhein-westfalen/schienennetz-karte-von-nordrhein-westfalen.html https://karteplan.com/deutschland/land/nordrhein-westfalen/s... It looks more like a circuit board than a traditional transit map. That's why this problem is so hard to solve and will take a long time and a lot of investment before it improves.
- mr_mitm 11mo ago
  What they should be tracking is average delayed journeys. A train may be late by 15 minutes, but if that means I'll miss a connecting train, that might delay my journey by an hour or more. That would also take care of the issue you're describing.
  - eigenspace 11mo ago
    Indeed, that'd be a more useful metric. Very hard to measure well though and probably actually leaves open more room for them to game the metrics than the current system does. Keep in mind that for the majority of trains in Germany, nobody bought a specific ticket for that journey. We just use the DeutschlandTicket which is a flat subscription of 58€/month, which gives unlimited access to busses, trams, and regional trains (basically everything but high speed trains). With the deutschalnd ticket, you typically just walk onto a train of your choice and go wherever you want. They dont actually know where all the travellers are going or even how many people there are
    - mr_mitm 11mo ago
      Yeah I know you cannot track all journeys. Deutschlandticket, BahnCard 100, and similar things will be invisible. You can track the ones booked through the app though, and with a high enough sample rate you should get sufficiently close to the truth, unless there is a bias I haven't thought of yet. You could also select random virtual journeys, I suppose. In arbitrary units you should at least be able to measure whether DB is improving or not. You could even delegate this to an independent organization. Actually, now that I think of it, isn't the API public? I'm reminded of the talk by D. Kriesel about DB data mining.
  - IshKebab 11mo ago
    I agree. Funnily enough I had a journey sped up due to a delay recently. I had a change, and the train I was changing to was delayed so that I could make the earlier one which I should have missed had it been on time.
  - thaumasiotes 11mo ago
    >> The main thing people dont understand about Germany's train system is the scale of it. The network is physically very large, but also very densely packed, and has very frequent trains. > A train may be late by 15 minutes, but if that means I'll miss a connecting train, that might delay my journey by an hour or more. Speaking from experience taking the subway in Shanghai, if a train is 15 minutes late, and it still manages to arrive before the train that was scheduled to follow it, it cannot be true that the network is "very densely packed" or that it has "very frequent trains".
- jonnybgood 11mo ago
  I’m curious how Japan’s train network deals with these issues. That map looks like the train network in Tokyo alone. Japan’s network is also quite large, densely packed, and with very frequent trains. Despite Japan being well known for timeliness of its trains, it does have its occasional delays, but not often enough to think about.
  - eunos 11mo ago
    Major Japanese train stations have so many platforms (Tokyo have 22), 1 platform for each route or destination. In Germany train station a platform can host multiple route.
    - pmontra 11mo ago
      That's always the case for through stations, I believe. However even terminus stations don't have their platforms locked to a fixed destination. Milan Central station has 24 platforms and each of them hosts multiple routes. Rome Termini has 32 platforms, same thing. You can monitor departures at this link, if you are very patient to keep track of them https://iechub.rfi.it/ArriviPartenze/en/ArrivalsDepartures/Monitor?placeId=2416&arrivals=False https://iechub.rfi.it/ArriviPartenze/en/ArrivalsDepartures/M... Of course usually the same train departs every time from the same platform. I think that it helps everybody.
      - deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
      - eunos 11mo ago
        But it means if a route has an issue it will cascade to another routes that share same platforms.
  - abc05xx 11mo ago
    Japan has mostly purpose built tracks which makes it a lot easier. Still impressive though
- kzrdude 11mo ago
  > The main thing people dont understand about Germany's train system is the scale of it. The network is physically very large, but also very densely packed, and has very frequent trains. And that's a wonderful thing, you can reach "everywhere" with a train in Germany. That's something I wanted to say that we need to keep in mind when we see a headline like this. It's a sense in which Germany's train service is one of the best in the world.
  - eigenspace 11mo ago
    Yeah. While I understand why Germans are so frustrated by BD these days, as a Canadian living , the train network here blows my mind constantly. It has problems, but it's still incredible.
    - systemtest 11mo ago
      Population density of 4 versus 240 people per square kilometer. NRW has 528 ppsk. Ontario has 15 ppsk. Not surprising that Germany has a better train network.
      - eigenspace 11mo ago
        Those numbers are pretty much irrelevant. Canadians arent evenly distributed throughout the country (nor throughout Ontario. That province is empty other than a tiny corner of it), the overwhelming majority of them live in a few areas that are quite population dense (i.e. metro-Vancouver area, Edmonton/Calgary axis, and the corridor from Toronto to Montreal. Besides, Canada used to have a much more extensive train network back in early 1900s when the population was a tenth of what it is now. Canada could have functioning train networks if we wanted them.
        spooky_action 11mo ago
        Naive question, why are Canadians more poorly connected by rail than they were at the beginning of the 20th century?
- logifail 11mo ago
  > where I live in Cologne, there's typically a high speed train every 20 to 30 minutes to Frankfurt. If one train is delayed by 30 minutes, then suddenly you have two (ore more) trains right on top of eachother heading to the same destination, both on very very congested lines that theyre simultaneously trying to do repairs and expansions to. Those are the sorts of situations where it makes sense to just cancel the train, not because of metrics but because of actual track constraints. Never mind congested lines, remember the trains are full of paying passengers! (Let's assume both trains were more than half-full of passengers, which is fairly typical), what would you plan to do with the passengers on the cancelled train who can't get on the other train because there is literally no room for them? I recently travelled on a badly-delayed ICE train (to Frankfurt Airport, as it happens) and it was running so late I ended up rebooking my flight from the stationary ICE because I lost confidence we would get to the airport in time for my flight.
- spflueger 11mo ago
  Quite some years ago there was some data backed evidence of this I would say. https://www.dkriesel.com/blog/2019/1229_video_und_folien_meines_36c3-vortrags_bahnmining https://www.dkriesel.com/blog/2019/1229_video_und_folien_mei... Here is the link to his talk directly https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=7EImZU9x4zFb6LSf https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=7EImZU9x4zFb6LSf Its true that the network is quite dense and used by also cargo trains, but there is no denying that things got worse and worse. I constantly experience delay to do some stuff not working. I forgot even the minute threshold when a train is still punctual according to DB. I believe it's 10min by now, which can be deadly if you need to switch trains :)
- bombcar 11mo ago
  Do they run maximum-length consists? In the US I've been on a intercity Amtrak that was so late they combined it with the train ahead of it and had a massively long train (it had to stop twice at one or two shorter stations).
  - systemtest 11mo ago
    If you do this too many times, you end up with a train that never stops and rides along the world until the world is habitable again.
    - bombcar 11mo ago
      Sounds like an update to this old chestnut is needed: https://youtu.be/XM2JpZ8Hu3E https://youtu.be/XM2JpZ8Hu3E
- LargoLasskhyfv 11mo ago
  Let them ride "buffer to buffer" in a convoy instead of this miles long "reserved block" thing from the last century ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrdienstvorschrift https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrdienstvorschrift / https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalbuch_(Eisenbahn https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalbuch_(Eisenbahn / https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betriebsverfahren https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betriebsverfahren ). Maybe with 100 to 200 meters distance between them, to compensate for any latencies the electronics, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETCS_Level_3 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETCS_Level_3 , whatever may have. As capabilities(top-speed/acceleration/lenght/breaking distances( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremszettel https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremszettel ) permit. Transmit these capabilities autmagically between the trains and the control centers (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befehl_(Eisenbahn) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befehl_(Eisenbahn). OFC it makes no sense to have an ICE running behind the S-Bahn, but they mostly have their own tracks anyway. Re-reading up on ETCS-Level3, that would enable all of this. We're just fucking slow to implement it, while having let our infrastructure decay, and intentionally built back. Like switches to change tracks, for overtaking slower trains, if the other side is free, too expensive to maintain, da da da ah jetzt ja! Dumm gelaufen... Selbst Schuld Ihr Arschkrampen! ALAAF! And finally fence all that shit in, and let the rats and crows have their fun with all the suicidals. No need to close the track. Light a candle, if you must, just another one bites the dust. Yawn.
delichon 11mo ago
> But they’ll stop choosing the train, and over 20 years you’ll find that everyone has moved to private vehicles or alternate transportation methods. This is a country with a $2.68 per gallon gas tax, compared to $0.51 on average in the US (€0.60 v. €0.11 per liter). This is partly justified as nudging people to use less carbon intensive transport. That nudge works a lot less well when the lower carbon alternative is painfully worse than your car. https://brilliantmaps.com/gas-petrol-taxes-us-ca-eu/ https://brilliantmaps.com/gas-petrol-taxes-us-ca-eu/
- leviliebvin 11mo ago
  Car ownership is pretty expensive. But holistically speaking it's not more expensive than the Deutschland Ticket, because it gives you access to cheaper housing options that you wouldn't be able to live in if you depended solely on public transport.
  - delichon 11mo ago
    Can confirm for the US too. I live in a rural county with zero public transport, but when I tell city friends what the lot cost and the property tax on it, they have to hold back tears.
    - bombcar 11mo ago
      There's a way to combine those, and some countries have it done well (I believe this includes Germany) - you have a rail network that is good enough that you have small stops on feeder lines in rural areas; if you want to be rural you can be a mile from a train that gets you to a moderate-sized city where you can get the fast train.
    - seba_dos1 11mo ago
      You should rather compare with rural friends with access to public transport.
- jack_tripper 11mo ago
  >This is a country with a $2.68 per gallon gas tax, compared to $0.51 in the US. Irrelevant comparison since US is a widely different animal to most European countries. It might be expensive compared to the US, but Germany is still one of the countries with the most affordable income-to-cost ratios for car ownership in the Eurozone, so car commuting is incredibly common, especially for those not living in densely populated metro areas.
thelastgallon 11mo ago
> when metrics aren’t correctly setup. All management is about massaging metrics, things are getting 'better', here, see this chart. It is going up/down. Executive (VP+): I like to see a burndown chart (or some other format). I want a dog in a cat form factor. Next meeting: Burndown chart

by bombcar 11mo ago

eigenspace 11mo ago

People claim that they cancel trains to try and preserve the statistics, but there's not really any evidence of it. The actual reason is that if a train is too late, it will conflict too much with the other scheduled trains and there's simply no room for it. Keeping the delayed train will just cause more delays for other trains on the same route, because German trains are scheduled with very high frequency. E.g. where I live in Cologne, there's typically a high speed train every 20 to 30 minutes to Frankfurt. If one train is delayed by 30 minutes, then suddenly you have two (ore more) trains right on top of eachother heading to the same destination, both on very very congested lines that theyre simultaneously trying to do repairs and expansions to. Those are the sorts of situations where it makes sense to just cancel the train, not because of metrics but because of actual track constraints. The main thing people dont understand about Germany's train system is the scale of it. The network is physically very large, but also very densely packed, and has very frequent trains. For instance, here is the map just of the regional (non-high-speed) trains between cities in my state of Nordrhein-Westfalen: https://karteplan.com/deutschland/land/nordrhein-westfalen/schienennetz-karte-von-nordrhein-westfalen.html https://karteplan.com/deutschland/land/nordrhein-westfalen/s... It looks more like a circuit board than a traditional transit map. That's why this problem is so hard to solve and will take a long time and a lot of investment before it improves.

mr_mitm 11mo ago
What they should be tracking is average delayed journeys. A train may be late by 15 minutes, but if that means I'll miss a connecting train, that might delay my journey by an hour or more. That would also take care of the issue you're describing.
- eigenspace 11mo ago
  Indeed, that'd be a more useful metric. Very hard to measure well though and probably actually leaves open more room for them to game the metrics than the current system does. Keep in mind that for the majority of trains in Germany, nobody bought a specific ticket for that journey. We just use the DeutschlandTicket which is a flat subscription of 58€/month, which gives unlimited access to busses, trams, and regional trains (basically everything but high speed trains). With the deutschalnd ticket, you typically just walk onto a train of your choice and go wherever you want. They dont actually know where all the travellers are going or even how many people there are
  - mr_mitm 11mo ago
    Yeah I know you cannot track all journeys. Deutschlandticket, BahnCard 100, and similar things will be invisible. You can track the ones booked through the app though, and with a high enough sample rate you should get sufficiently close to the truth, unless there is a bias I haven't thought of yet. You could also select random virtual journeys, I suppose. In arbitrary units you should at least be able to measure whether DB is improving or not. You could even delegate this to an independent organization. Actually, now that I think of it, isn't the API public? I'm reminded of the talk by D. Kriesel about DB data mining.
- IshKebab 11mo ago
  I agree. Funnily enough I had a journey sped up due to a delay recently. I had a change, and the train I was changing to was delayed so that I could make the earlier one which I should have missed had it been on time.
- thaumasiotes 11mo ago
  >> The main thing people dont understand about Germany's train system is the scale of it. The network is physically very large, but also very densely packed, and has very frequent trains. > A train may be late by 15 minutes, but if that means I'll miss a connecting train, that might delay my journey by an hour or more. Speaking from experience taking the subway in Shanghai, if a train is 15 minutes late, and it still manages to arrive before the train that was scheduled to follow it, it cannot be true that the network is "very densely packed" or that it has "very frequent trains".
jonnybgood 11mo ago
I’m curious how Japan’s train network deals with these issues. That map looks like the train network in Tokyo alone. Japan’s network is also quite large, densely packed, and with very frequent trains. Despite Japan being well known for timeliness of its trains, it does have its occasional delays, but not often enough to think about.
- eunos 11mo ago
  Major Japanese train stations have so many platforms (Tokyo have 22), 1 platform for each route or destination. In Germany train station a platform can host multiple route.
  - pmontra 11mo ago
    That's always the case for through stations, I believe. However even terminus stations don't have their platforms locked to a fixed destination. Milan Central station has 24 platforms and each of them hosts multiple routes. Rome Termini has 32 platforms, same thing. You can monitor departures at this link, if you are very patient to keep track of them https://iechub.rfi.it/ArriviPartenze/en/ArrivalsDepartures/Monitor?placeId=2416&arrivals=False https://iechub.rfi.it/ArriviPartenze/en/ArrivalsDepartures/M... Of course usually the same train departs every time from the same platform. I think that it helps everybody.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    - eunos 11mo ago
      But it means if a route has an issue it will cascade to another routes that share same platforms.
- abc05xx 11mo ago
  Japan has mostly purpose built tracks which makes it a lot easier. Still impressive though
kzrdude 11mo ago
> The main thing people dont understand about Germany's train system is the scale of it. The network is physically very large, but also very densely packed, and has very frequent trains. And that's a wonderful thing, you can reach "everywhere" with a train in Germany. That's something I wanted to say that we need to keep in mind when we see a headline like this. It's a sense in which Germany's train service is one of the best in the world.
- eigenspace 11mo ago
  Yeah. While I understand why Germans are so frustrated by BD these days, as a Canadian living , the train network here blows my mind constantly. It has problems, but it's still incredible.
  - systemtest 11mo ago
    Population density of 4 versus 240 people per square kilometer. NRW has 528 ppsk. Ontario has 15 ppsk. Not surprising that Germany has a better train network.
    - eigenspace 11mo ago
      Those numbers are pretty much irrelevant. Canadians arent evenly distributed throughout the country (nor throughout Ontario. That province is empty other than a tiny corner of it), the overwhelming majority of them live in a few areas that are quite population dense (i.e. metro-Vancouver area, Edmonton/Calgary axis, and the corridor from Toronto to Montreal. Besides, Canada used to have a much more extensive train network back in early 1900s when the population was a tenth of what it is now. Canada could have functioning train networks if we wanted them.
      - spooky_action 11mo ago
        Naive question, why are Canadians more poorly connected by rail than they were at the beginning of the 20th century?
logifail 11mo ago
> where I live in Cologne, there's typically a high speed train every 20 to 30 minutes to Frankfurt. If one train is delayed by 30 minutes, then suddenly you have two (ore more) trains right on top of eachother heading to the same destination, both on very very congested lines that theyre simultaneously trying to do repairs and expansions to. Those are the sorts of situations where it makes sense to just cancel the train, not because of metrics but because of actual track constraints. Never mind congested lines, remember the trains are full of paying passengers! (Let's assume both trains were more than half-full of passengers, which is fairly typical), what would you plan to do with the passengers on the cancelled train who can't get on the other train because there is literally no room for them? I recently travelled on a badly-delayed ICE train (to Frankfurt Airport, as it happens) and it was running so late I ended up rebooking my flight from the stationary ICE because I lost confidence we would get to the airport in time for my flight.
spflueger 11mo ago
Quite some years ago there was some data backed evidence of this I would say. https://www.dkriesel.com/blog/2019/1229_video_und_folien_meines_36c3-vortrags_bahnmining https://www.dkriesel.com/blog/2019/1229_video_und_folien_mei... Here is the link to his talk directly https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=7EImZU9x4zFb6LSf https://youtu.be/0rb9CfOvojk?si=7EImZU9x4zFb6LSf Its true that the network is quite dense and used by also cargo trains, but there is no denying that things got worse and worse. I constantly experience delay to do some stuff not working. I forgot even the minute threshold when a train is still punctual according to DB. I believe it's 10min by now, which can be deadly if you need to switch trains :)
bombcar 11mo ago
Do they run maximum-length consists? In the US I've been on a intercity Amtrak that was so late they combined it with the train ahead of it and had a massively long train (it had to stop twice at one or two shorter stations).
- systemtest 11mo ago
  If you do this too many times, you end up with a train that never stops and rides along the world until the world is habitable again.
  - bombcar 11mo ago
    Sounds like an update to this old chestnut is needed: https://youtu.be/XM2JpZ8Hu3E https://youtu.be/XM2JpZ8Hu3E
LargoLasskhyfv 11mo ago
Let them ride "buffer to buffer" in a convoy instead of this miles long "reserved block" thing from the last century ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrdienstvorschrift https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrdienstvorschrift / https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalbuch_(Eisenbahn https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalbuch_(Eisenbahn / https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betriebsverfahren https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betriebsverfahren ). Maybe with 100 to 200 meters distance between them, to compensate for any latencies the electronics, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETCS_Level_3 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETCS_Level_3 , whatever may have. As capabilities(top-speed/acceleration/lenght/breaking distances( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremszettel https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremszettel ) permit. Transmit these capabilities autmagically between the trains and the control centers (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befehl_(Eisenbahn) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Befehl_(Eisenbahn). OFC it makes no sense to have an ICE running behind the S-Bahn, but they mostly have their own tracks anyway. Re-reading up on ETCS-Level3, that would enable all of this. We're just fucking slow to implement it, while having let our infrastructure decay, and intentionally built back. Like switches to change tracks, for overtaking slower trains, if the other side is free, too expensive to maintain, da da da ah jetzt ja! Dumm gelaufen... Selbst Schuld Ihr Arschkrampen! ALAAF! And finally fence all that shit in, and let the rats and crows have their fun with all the suicidals. No need to close the track. Light a candle, if you must, just another one bites the dust. Yawn.

delichon 11mo ago

> But they’ll stop choosing the train, and over 20 years you’ll find that everyone has moved to private vehicles or alternate transportation methods. This is a country with a $2.68 per gallon gas tax, compared to $0.51 on average in the US (€0.60 v. €0.11 per liter). This is partly justified as nudging people to use less carbon intensive transport. That nudge works a lot less well when the lower carbon alternative is painfully worse than your car. https://brilliantmaps.com/gas-petrol-taxes-us-ca-eu/ https://brilliantmaps.com/gas-petrol-taxes-us-ca-eu/

leviliebvin 11mo ago
Car ownership is pretty expensive. But holistically speaking it's not more expensive than the Deutschland Ticket, because it gives you access to cheaper housing options that you wouldn't be able to live in if you depended solely on public transport.
- delichon 11mo ago
  Can confirm for the US too. I live in a rural county with zero public transport, but when I tell city friends what the lot cost and the property tax on it, they have to hold back tears.
  - bombcar 11mo ago
    There's a way to combine those, and some countries have it done well (I believe this includes Germany) - you have a rail network that is good enough that you have small stops on feeder lines in rural areas; if you want to be rural you can be a mile from a train that gets you to a moderate-sized city where you can get the fast train.
  - seba_dos1 11mo ago
    You should rather compare with rural friends with access to public transport.
jack_tripper 11mo ago
>This is a country with a $2.68 per gallon gas tax, compared to $0.51 in the US. Irrelevant comparison since US is a widely different animal to most European countries. It might be expensive compared to the US, but Germany is still one of the countries with the most affordable income-to-cost ratios for car ownership in the Eurozone, so car commuting is incredibly common, especially for those not living in densely populated metro areas.

thelastgallon 11mo ago

> when metrics aren’t correctly setup. All management is about massaging metrics, things are getting 'better', here, see this chart. It is going up/down. Executive (VP+): I like to see a burndown chart (or some other format). I want a dog in a cat form factor. Next meeting: Burndown chart