this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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It‘s unfortunately not as great as it sounds… in 2022 about 40% of trains were delayed (with some cities probably well above that). In my hometown I would have delays almost every day, costing me about 10-30 minutes more time. Once every 2 months I would also be on a train coming to a full stop with no alternatives. Most the people I know from south Germany don’t trust trains to ever arrive on time and rather commute by car, because going by train you have to assume you’ll be late to whatever appointment you have. It is good to finally have affordable tickets, but there’s a lot to be done and invested to the infrastructure before I would consider it a worthy substitute for a car / bike.
Also: apparently the providers of public transportation are losing money on the discounted tickets - which could lead to fewer connections and more delays in the future…
If it's always delayed, why not just plan to take an earlier route?
If you leave work at 6pm and want to take the train at 6:15 to get home at 7, including one change of trains, and your train has 15 minutes delay, you miss the connection. Then you have to wait for the next train, which might be an hour wait. Then that train is delayed by 20 minutes and you get home at 8:30. That's the real problem of the delays.
Right, so my point is that it's actually a 6:30 train now.
That doesn't help because the connections are planned to be meeting this train at the planned time. They plan the trains so that you can move from one to the next to reach your destination. And they know who is on which train and sometimes they'll delay a connected train to get everyone aboard. But that's rare and you can't plan for shit like that. And if your plan is to count it as a 6:30 train, your 45 minute commute turns into a 2h+ commute. At that point, I'd buy a car.