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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

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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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".
  - throw-the-towel 10mo ago
    A subway is very different from an intercity railway network. For one, there's probably fewer different routes on the subway so trains conflict with each other less. Also, a subway doesn't have to accomodate freight traffic as well.
    - thaumasiotes 10mo ago
      > there's probably fewer different routes on the subway so trains conflict with each other less This isn't obvious to me. Here's Deutsche Bahn's map of the system: https://cms.static-bahn.de/wmedia/redaktion/aushaenge/streckenkarte/Liniennetz-ICE-IC.pdf https://cms.static-bahn.de/wmedia/redaktion/aushaenge/streck... Here's a map of Shanghai's subway system: https://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/shanghai/subway-map.jpg https://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/shanghai/subway-... The German intercity rail network certainly identifies more lines, around 57 to Shanghai's 18, but this isn't directly related to the complexity of the topology. For example, line 14 appears to begin in Aachen and dead-end into Berlin, at which point line 95 begins in Berlin and runs out to Poland. As far as the routing is concerned, those could be the same line. But they're given different numbers. When the same thing happens (at a smaller scale) in Shanghai at the west end of line 9, the tail bit of the line going to Songjiang is still called "line 9". Note that if you want to ride out to Songjiang, at some point you're going to have to get off your "line 9" train and walk over to another station where a different "line 9" train will take you the rest of the way. Discounting that, the two layouts appear to be roughly similar on the fundamentals, if differently scaled. The most obvious difference is that the routes between major German cities are served by several lines. This is clearly meaningful in some cases; line 29 from Munich to Nuremberg continues north to Hamburg via Berlin while line 41 from Munich to Nuremberg continues northwest to Dortmund via Frankfurt and Cologne. On the other hand, line 8 from Munich to Nuremberg parallels line 29 for the entire length of line 8 (line 8 stops in Berlin, but line 29 doesn't). My first guess would be that conflicts arise from the fact that the German trains are on the ground, and when their tracks cross, conflict can occur. This isn't true of a subway system; when subway tracks cross, they do it at different altitudes, allowing both tracks to be in use simultaneously.
jonnybgood 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    - eunos 10mo ago
      But it means if a route has an issue it will cascade to another routes that share same platforms.
- abc05xx 10mo ago
  Japan has mostly purpose built tracks which makes it a lot easier. Still impressive though
kzrdude 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo ago
        Naive question, why are Canadians more poorly connected by rail than they were at the beginning of the 20th century?
logifail 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo ago
    Sounds like an update to this old chestnut is needed: https://youtu.be/XM2JpZ8Hu3E https://youtu.be/XM2JpZ8Hu3E
LargoLasskhyfv 10mo 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.

mr_mitm 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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".
- throw-the-towel 10mo ago
  A subway is very different from an intercity railway network. For one, there's probably fewer different routes on the subway so trains conflict with each other less. Also, a subway doesn't have to accomodate freight traffic as well.
  - thaumasiotes 10mo ago
    > there's probably fewer different routes on the subway so trains conflict with each other less This isn't obvious to me. Here's Deutsche Bahn's map of the system: https://cms.static-bahn.de/wmedia/redaktion/aushaenge/streckenkarte/Liniennetz-ICE-IC.pdf https://cms.static-bahn.de/wmedia/redaktion/aushaenge/streck... Here's a map of Shanghai's subway system: https://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/shanghai/subway-map.jpg https://www.travelchinaguide.com/images/map/shanghai/subway-... The German intercity rail network certainly identifies more lines, around 57 to Shanghai's 18, but this isn't directly related to the complexity of the topology. For example, line 14 appears to begin in Aachen and dead-end into Berlin, at which point line 95 begins in Berlin and runs out to Poland. As far as the routing is concerned, those could be the same line. But they're given different numbers. When the same thing happens (at a smaller scale) in Shanghai at the west end of line 9, the tail bit of the line going to Songjiang is still called "line 9". Note that if you want to ride out to Songjiang, at some point you're going to have to get off your "line 9" train and walk over to another station where a different "line 9" train will take you the rest of the way. Discounting that, the two layouts appear to be roughly similar on the fundamentals, if differently scaled. The most obvious difference is that the routes between major German cities are served by several lines. This is clearly meaningful in some cases; line 29 from Munich to Nuremberg continues north to Hamburg via Berlin while line 41 from Munich to Nuremberg continues northwest to Dortmund via Frankfurt and Cologne. On the other hand, line 8 from Munich to Nuremberg parallels line 29 for the entire length of line 8 (line 8 stops in Berlin, but line 29 doesn't). My first guess would be that conflicts arise from the fact that the German trains are on the ground, and when their tracks cross, conflict can occur. This isn't true of a subway system; when subway tracks cross, they do it at different altitudes, allowing both tracks to be in use simultaneously.

jonnybgood 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - eunos 10mo ago
    But it means if a route has an issue it will cascade to another routes that share same platforms.
abc05xx 10mo ago
Japan has mostly purpose built tracks which makes it a lot easier. Still impressive though

kzrdude 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo ago
      Naive question, why are Canadians more poorly connected by rail than they were at the beginning of the 20th century?

logifail 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo 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 10mo ago
  Sounds like an update to this old chestnut is needed: https://youtu.be/XM2JpZ8Hu3E https://youtu.be/XM2JpZ8Hu3E

LargoLasskhyfv 10mo 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.