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> Resentment toward the government Kinda, yes, but also, no, I expected better journalism from Le Monde? This is a bit heavy on extremist right-wing's talking
by eqvinox 5mo ago
> Resentment toward the government
Kinda, yes, but also, no, I expected better journalism from Le Monde? This is a bit heavy on extremist right-wing's talking points.
DB is a case of "kaputtgespart" (austered into brokenness), and pretty much all people I (German) know consider it either a result of failed privatization, or just privatization in general. They were squeezing it as tight as they could, in the hopes of throwing it public for good money. Except it never got there. And now we're dealing with the results of that.
At minimum the track part (they keep renaming themselves, I think it's DB InfraGO currently?) needs to be 100% renationalized.
[Ed.: honestly the article is not bad, I'm just confused why they had to bring in AfD commentary. They could've asked pretty much anyone and gotten the same.]
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- weezing 5mo agoExtremist lol. It lost any meaning because people keep overusing it.
- eqvinox 5mo agoI may have phrased that weirdly, but AfD is officially by courts considered extremist in Germany; if I remember correctly they sued against being called that and lost.
- rawgabbit 5mo agoA family member is in Germany this summer. He said he took a regional train from Aachen to Dusseldorf to Cologne. He said, at Dusseldorf Hbf, it was wall to wall people jostling each other to get on the train. He said there was a young couple with infant in a pram, who literally had to fight their way on a train because that train was already delayed 1+ hour and who knows when the next one will come. The last time I took an DB ICE train was 20 years ago. It was a much more relaxed and pleasant experience then.
- sixhobbits 5mo agoThe ICEs are still generally ok, as long as you're willing to play roulette with big delays and missed connections (last few I got ran perfectly). Regional trains are part of Germany's new super cheap unlimited travel ticket, which excludes ICE and afaik this is why they are now super crowded but I haven't taken them recently so no first hand experience
- zeeZ 5mo agoThe problem is that until I think 2024, DB paid for maintenance, while the government funded replacements. Of course they let everything deteriorate until it wasn't their problem anymore. The reform and merge into InfraGO with government funding is supposed to help fix that, but there's a massive backlog.