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this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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As an American who used DB for the first time, their shitty transit blows the best travel experiences here out of the water. I'd rather use German trains than fly first class in the US. Not even close TBH.
I kept reading the article trying to find the reason why DB is so crappy now, only to realize that a 10 minute delay is catastrophic by German standards. I'd love to just have any kind of public transit near me.
It is if it makes you miss a connecting train.
Also, those delays aren't the biggest problem, there's areas of the network which are completely messed up with hour-long delays and trains being skipped. That's a thing that's tolerable to commuters if it happens once a year, but not three days a week.
Not enough tracks, not enough cars, not enough reserve capacity, not enough fallbacks, and not even close to enough political will to fix the situation. Oh, yes, politicians agreed to introduce a swiss-style synchronised timetable by 2030, and that's definitely doable... but it has been postponed to 2070, or, in other words, never.
And then you hear bullshit like "we can't burden the coming generations with debt to build infrastructure" -- motherfucker how about not burdening future generations by having them drive horse buggies over gravel roads?
Swiss synchronized timetable!?
This article explains the concept succinctly.
Connecting trains are the big problem. I had a three and a half hour direct train from Frankfurt to Brussels end up taking 8 hours. The one direct train turned into four legs with 3 cancelations. Otherwise waiting for an additional 10 minutes is not a problem, yes.
DB has a link where you can ask for refunds, which is nice. It doesn't offer refunds for time lost though.
Here in the US, in one of the areas with “good” train service:
-- my commuter train was standing room only, every day
-- longer trips, like 2+ hours, ar reservation only, so o would have had to book it well ahead of time, or not get on
That sounds kind of a you problem. No really, your service being laughable doesn't excuse Germany's service being bad. 10 minutes of delay is unreliable when people use it as their main way of transport, the US is car centric so these delays don't impose the same kind of problems on the general populace.
In Spain our train performance varies wildly through regions, and in some people just don't use trains because they don't work, where in others 5 minute delay is unacceptable. Trains, Buses, Metro, if Google maps makes a mixed plan and it doesn't work because of an unnanaunced delay, I will be rightfully pissed.