Why German trains are never on time anymore

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/05/29/why-german-trains-are-never-on-time-anymore_6753927_4.html

by rawgabbit • 2 months ago

31 17 2 months ago

lemonde.fr

amiga386• 2 months ago

https://archive.is/ZVazE

eqvinox2• 2 months 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.]

weezing• 2 months ago

Extremist lol. It lost any meaning because people keep overusing it.

eqvinox2• 2 months ago

I 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• 2 months ago

A 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• 2 months ago

The 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• 2 months ago

The 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.

leonidasrup2• 2 months ago

"The weight and influence of the automobile industry within the German economy and society have also been cited as structural obstacles to the development of rail."

Quite a understatement, because automobile industry is the backbone of German export economy. Anything that seriously competes with automobile industry is a BIG no for many German politicians with connections to automobile industry. Like the short lived public transport 9-Euro-Ticket.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-Euro-Ticket

Arodex• 2 months ago

Italy is another country with an heavyweight auto industry, and yet their trains are so good and efficient they put Alitalia under water and are extending operations in neighboring countries.

leonidasrup2• 2 months ago

Italy is nowhere near the German level of car exports.

Data is for 2024:

Germany: 280,475,009 USD Italy: 47,008,486 USD

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicle_e...

rurban• 2 months ago

Sure, that's why the automobile industry is above the law, they even write their own laws. (telecom or other industries does the same btw).

They don't even care about EU laws like the EU data act, which explicitly forbids what VW is doing, closing their CAN traffic to third party apps.

They wrote the special Diesel laws, which said that diesel engines don't need to be tested for each engine, only the R&D engines once. All in mind to curb the law by telling Bosch to implement the test detection cheating.

Mehdorn is a special case and never had to go to jail over his scandals, spying on employee communications. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/business/global/31bahn.ht...

Reminds everyone how the US of A went into full fascism mode decades ago. Cooperations over people.

ktallett• 2 months ago

Any more? You mean for the past decade or so at least.

niemandhier• 2 months ago

It’s always the same: A system run at the boundary of its maximum throughput is brittle.

Tiny disturbances cascade and you get large fluctuations.

I have the standing hypothesis that there is a second order phase transition between free flowing trains and total collapse where the control parameter is the train density.

I just cannot identify the correct order parameter.

mcv• 2 months ago

The schedule times are more of a guideline: "You know you'll eventually get there, because there are one or two trains per hour in the big cities." If a train is canceled, you simply take the next one – ticket inspectors are used to this because the system adapts too.

That's a fine attitude when your trains run every 10 minutes, like intercities between Amsterdam and Utrecht do, but not when it's only once an hour.

I don't think there's any station in Netherland that doesn't have at least one train per hour.

I've had a train from Essen to Düsseldorf get cancelled at the end of Spiel! In Essen. Thousands of people had to get to Düsseldorf to catch the last ICE there. The replacement bus wasn't going to make it. I ended up paying a fortune for a taxi. And then the ICE arrived at a different platform than announced.

There's nothing about the German train system that's even remotely acceptable. It's not funny enough to call it a joke. It's a tragedy.

laughing_man• 2 months ago

What happened? I visited Germany in 2008, and back then you could set your watch by the trains.

bouke• 2 months ago

Lack of funding, postponement of maintenance, degraded infrastructure. And now too much bureaucracy to get it fixed.

hulitu• 2 months ago

They privatized it. Now all what matters are profits and salaries of the executive board.

Why German trains are never on time anymore

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