News and information from Europe 🇪🇺
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Anyone who might be surprised that Germany is so low here, Germans are always surprised people think it would be very high.
There is a simple reason, too: Auto-Lobby. Our car manufacturers are very powerful in politics and public infrastructure is heavily underfunded.
Funnily enough, highways and other roads are also crumbling, so good luck to the car makers when there is less and less road to drive those precious machines on.
I would say the root cause of the DB issues is rather the failed attempt to privatise it, which caused ~~years~~ decades of infrastructure underinvestment to cook the books to make it look more attractive to private investors.
But of course the strong car lobby also played a role in that.
This is the main reason. While the car lobby is no doubt dangerously powerful they are also heavily dependant on the cargo department of DB. A massive amount of industrial commodities is moved by the railway network and not the ubiquitous trucks. If they worked to defund the railway infrastructure they would eventually hurt their own supply lines.
Additionally, the number presented is most likely too high, since it's more important to tune the numbers than to provide good service.
Example: a late train can be taken out of service and replaced, or even not. Voila! Not late anymore.
I wish this wasn't the reality.
The American auto industry effectively killed trains here. I’d love to have often-late high speed trains instead of “you want to go from Texas to Chicago? Fly, drive, or go fuck yourself.”
Fun fact: German ICEs (high-speed trains) are not allowed to enter Switzerland if they are delayed too much so they don't disrupt the Swiss schedule. This year more than 10% were not allowed to continue.
It’s super funny because at swiss train station they always say
“Train X is delayed by Y minutes, this is due to delays in France/Germany and not the Swiss railways” on the megaphone LOL
Yeah, but the integrated timetable for Germany is just around the corner. 2070 😭
I went to switzerland two times via train the last few years (usually I go with my dad by car), and both times this happened. Once we had to sleep there overnight, because after we got in with another train, there were no more trains through the mountains.
German long distance trains are 64% on time because up to 5 minutes delay are not counted for the statistics and guess what? Trains that never arrive (due to being way too late to continue their journey or because of technical problems on the trains or track system) are not included in the statistics either!
The infamous Scheuer-Wende.
For the non germans: say a train is supposed to go from Munich over Hamburg to Kiel, and then return back to Munich. If that train accumulates so much delay that it could not even start the return trip on time, it might just stop in Hamburg, dump all the passengers, and turn around heading to Munich.
Now the skipped stops don't count as delayed, since the train never stopped there, the train is on time again for the return trip, and hundreds of passengers are pissed off and stranded somewhere they never wanted to be.
Ah yes, the 12 countries of Europe.
Yeah Is Slovenia the worst in europe or 12th best? Most probably it's just random which countries are in the graph.
In Belgium trains are considered on time when up to a 6 minute delay, but what really schews the statistics is that cancelled trains are not counted. Even so, the number in this overview is completely incorrect. It was 87,5% on time in 2023.
I'm pretty sure Germany uses the exact same logic.
trains that are "cancelled" are not counted in germany, at least by train companies and politics, everyone else counts them as betrayals. sometimes trains are cancelled officially, just to arrive later with the same engine, wagons, staff and guests but under another train number just to not show up as that bad delayed any more, because its officially (renamed to) another train then!! that seems to happen on very few routes only, however, trains that are late would regulary never arrive at their final destination but be told to turn around and skip some stops to catch up with their time schedule at those stops the train is counted as cancelled => which is not counted then. bonus: the company knows the delay sometimes hours before that turn around to skip some stops, while people at those stops are left olone thinking that train will arrive until shortly before it should arrive only to be told that it will never arrive. sometimes trains show up as arriving in 2 minutes, then 1 ... then now ... and its gone! ... without any train passing by (mainly at remote locations with only 2 platforms or trams do that regulary too) guess those ghost trains are good for statistics, counts as in time, but does not use any space nor repairs, neither energy, and cannot be delayed by broken tracks or engine failures, also company does not have to pay for the driver of ghost trains. sometimes when the arrival platforms are changed for a train, someone through the speaker says, the train will arrive on platform 7, while the displays show it to have been changed to platform 2, and you have 1,5 minutes to get it after the first note from the company (bonus: sometimes both platforms told to you are wrong, then the train arrives (maybe) on the original platform that is empty bcs all ran to either 2 or 7)
when visiting other countries in europe, nearly everywhere i love how good public transport works (maybe in spain not that much) but in gemany its way too many lies delays, absurd rules a.s.o.
TIL Train punctuality is the art of lying with statistics
In Germany's defense, if you miss a train connection due to delays, you just board the next connection without needing to have your ticket re-issued for another connection, which is cool.
But the joke is real, I was coming back from Spain to Poland by train recently and everything was fine, until my VERY FIRST STATION IN GERMANY where I got my first delay.
I just read that every 10th train voming from Germany into Switzerland is late, and they don't wait anymore, because they mess up the rest of the route.
Yes, there is a standby train in Basel, for when the ones coming from Frankfurt are delayed again.
Switzerland has an integrated cyclic schedue, and relatively tightly planned line utilization so delays can cascade pretty strongly.
Its better for the system at whole to send the standby within the scheduled slot of the German train, have that train return from Basel to Frankfurt directly (making up time in the process so the way back is regular), and people who wanted to go to Zürich have to get off and use the next train to Zürich half an hour after the standby, in the next regular slot.
The downside is cost of the standby train and situations like this: Last time I had to change in Basel myself, and had to guide an older lady and carry her suitcase, because she was quite confused by the sudden unplanned change of trains. Then she talked my ear off on the way from Basel to Zürich :-)
The punctuality of trains in CENTRAL Europe.
Zugfinder doesn't cover it all.
What's funny to me is that the Dutch people I know complain about their trains as much as the Germans I know.
People really underappreciate trains in the Netherlands. Not only are they relatively punctual (even in a worldwide ranking), but having that in addition to having a dense schedule is really pretty impressive. In that sense, only Japan truly has us beat, I think.
From my experience, their problems are just of a different nature. Dutch trains are punctual, but the carriages are often in a filthy state.
I already commented here, but I think this deserves its own comment. I'd like to see how this stacks up against Japan and China. I can already tell you how the US stacks up. On top of fifty-to-seventy years of rail underinvestment, the freight rail companies have been deliberately fucking with Amtrak for years now by making their trains too long to fulfill their legal obligation to pull off onto side tracks and yield to passenger traffic. And yes, you read that right, the vast majority of Amtrak's alignments are shared with freight rail.
I am suspecting that the major reason why trains are so often so late in germany is because the car industry saw itself threatened by effective public transport.
I have absolutely no proof to back up this claim. I'm not even sure that it is that way, but it's the only explanation i can offer for why the germans can't have a working railway system.
This stat is kind of weird. Punctuality is defined differently in every country.
In Switzerland 3+ minutes delay is counted as unpunctual, while france needs a 15+ min delay. I think in Austria it is 5+ min but unsure. So these numbers aren’t really comparable because they aren’t defining delay the same.
Zugfinder seems to use a consistent definition of anything below 5 minutes being punctual. So those are in fact comparable values.
oh nice! I assumed it was taking from national statistics.
Having lived in both Austria and France, I would definitely have guess Austria be more punctual than france.
In Belgium it's 6 minutes and only the arrival at the final destination is checked. Cancelled trains are also not included in the statistics, which has lead to trains being cancelled to increase punctuality: instead of starting it's journey 10 minutes late, the train starts "on time" 1 hour later. Travellers missing connections is also not included in the statistics.
So put these 3 together and the actual delays of travellers are much larger than the statistics would like us to believe.
And to add insult to injury, to increase their "punctuality", the train operator seems to increase journey times with every schedule revision. So not only are trains less punctual than they were a few decades ago, journey times are also often significantly longer.
So according to the statistics, Belgian trains are doing fine, but the actual travellers disagree.
So you say Slovenia’s trains are slovenly?
Can we please stop excluding the UK from these charts? Its still geographically European and acting like it isn't just feeds the brexiters... also because it'd be funny to have a country with -37 as its punctuality value on here.
Where's Japan?
Edit: yeah, I'm dumb. Wasn't paying attention.
Last time I was in geography class, it was located in Asia, not Europe. Things have changed in the world since then, but I do not think this has. Hope that helps.
Japan is just east of China, across the Sea of Japan and a hair north of the East China Sea. You can't miss it.
happy swiss noises