Deutsche Bahn’s once-admired service has descended into chaos. Whether decades of poor investment or the company’s unusual structure is to blame, it’s a huge headache for a coalition trying to meet climate goals
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.
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?
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.
i donno, amtrak is pretty great on the east coast. there’s absolutely nothing from the mississippi to the west coast so if you’re going that way youre going to have a bad time.
15 years ago I thought the Germans were the smartest people in the world because they understood the importance of investing in public services and had a central european style of capitalism that focused on fundamentals over financialization. since then they've slowly been adopting more neoliberal policies and making really stupid foreign policy decisions. I've lost a lot of respect for them as a world leader.
The DB was supposed to be privatized in 1994, that failed. So now we have a stock based company (AG), lead like a profit oriented company, but owned 100% by the state.
Since 1994, the entire company was (due to incompentence and wrong incentives) driven on attrition. The best example: if a bridge needs repair, that's DB's expense, but if the bridge has to be rebuilt, the state pays. So what would any smart CEO do? Stop maintenance, wait for the bridge to fail and then have it repaired on the state's bill.
I'm German and have been in France quite often in recent years. It's fascinating to hear their opinions on Germany. Outside our country is still imaged as having great engineering, efficiency - that Trains run on time. It's quite puzzling to me.
I came to the conclusion that the only real innovation in the last 30 years has been accounting. largely driven by neoliberalism. So every neo liberal country has kind of become more similar. Germany is not special, but has the advantage of having a lot of old successful companies that only slowly get sold of to international conglomerates. (Like Kuka etc). We behave as shitty as the rest, but our downward trajectory started higher up.
Modern computers and software made it possible to account for basically every item in a company with little cost. Before you'd have needed so many people and hours of work to judge profitability of small things that it wouldn't have been sensible to do so. CAD-Software also enables a special kind of accounting - simulating hardware components enables engineers to judge which parts are necessary and how much thickness is really needed. This is a huge and complicated process of optimization.
Accounting made it possible to turn a mostly opaque company structure that ran inefficient (but mostly on par with the competition) and judge every employee, every item. That's why supermarkets have outsourced the job of restuffing the shelves to a different company (that has to somehow make it work with the shitty pay that get).
But it's also the reason why appliances seem to hold just slightly over the warranty period. CAD-simulations made it possible for the accountants to change the products (make them shittier) so that people would need to buy new ones often.
The Deutsche Bahn is the same. Has made it possible to invest the smallest amount possible, because they realized they can just work with the deterioration infrastructure as well - most people don't have a choice and have to take the late train anyways.
It's the same with telecommunications here btw. With only few companys owning most Internet services they realized they don't have to invest a lot into fiber. People need Internet and will have to pay anyways. It's more profit to just raise prices.
Optimization feels a lot less optimal when it leads to enshittification. I have worked on the tech side of accounting systems in the US for the last 10 years and can say that American companies have largely embraced this category of innovation as well.
No, the postal service costs money. It's a service. It doesn't aim to make a profit. It costs money, and we are in turn rendered a service that is useful.
You want to put pressure on these things to make them more cost effecient. You're in a capitalist system which does that job very well. But since this is not really a replaceable company, the government has to own these companies until they go public.
Or the one from Sydney that charges you 20 dollars on top of the normal fare just because. I'm on the outskirts of Sydney and I've given up on the train system, they're either delayed, cancelled or running whenever they feel like it unscheduled now
Thank the christian democrats and Angela Merkel. I'll have you know that people haven't learned and that christian democrats are leading the polls once again.
Slowly and with lots of unplanned breaks in between.
I've never understood why people think that anyways - if you've ever had the pleasure of interacting with German bureaucracy, you would have lost that view instantly.
Oh, it‘s no better over the ocean. A German colleague of mine just settled in the US and civil servants attitude and bureaucracy is the same shit. Bureaucracy seems to be an international culture.
Yes. But travel to other countries and hear their thoughts about Germany and you'll discover this image is very much alive still.
It's important to spread the word outside of Germany, too.
The Wirtschaftswunder also had a lot to do with the Social Market Economy which, along with our train network, has been crippled by decades of neoliberal reforms.
Lol! Come to hungary! Here the 30 min or even more delay is usual. While branchlines are closed due to the state railways dont have enough working diesels, as most of them are 40+ years old (or just soviet quality), and no money for new, as the EU stopped sending support, due to the corruption of the stateparty-government.
I've only been to Budapest and never used any intercity trains but the tram/streetcars have been way better, more on time and generally more available then anything in any German city
yes, IF you're in the inner city. Else, if you live the outer parts of the city, or if you have to go there, you're mostly doomed to ride on 30+ years old junk (or even see tram line 2 next to the parlaiment with those 60 years old not nice trams), with many transfers and long walks.
But the transport in budapest handled by the (oppositional) city, not by the stateparty. However the stateparty takes as many money as they can from the city, just because the people in the city not voted them, so it's hard to improve the city transfport without money.
“The situation has severely deteriorated in recent years,” said Detlef Neuss, chair of the passenger lobby group Pro Bahn, standing outside Cologne’s main station, in the shadow of the city’s gothic cathedral with its distinctive twin spires.
Earlier this month, after weeks of speculation over the future of Britain’s planned HS2 high-speed rail link from Birmingham to Manchester, the prime minister finally announced that the northern leg was to be scrapped.
In an excoriating special report published earlier this year, the public audit body did not mince its words as it sounded the alarm, warning that the company responsible for running the national rail network, its stations and signals, along with many long-distance and local trains, risked becoming a “bottomless pit” for taxpayer money.
Despite paying some €4,400 for an annual season ticket, in recent months Winter has had to put up with a weeks-long closure of the track between Wolfsburg and Berlin for upgrades, coupled with delays, cancelled trains and lack of staff.
The company, formed from the existing West and East German railways, was freed from previous debts with the idea that it would be able, in time, to become profitable, with the goal of boosting Germany’s GDP and floating on the stock market.
The governing agreement struck by the Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals in late 2021 committed them to doubling the capacity of passenger services by 2030, while setting a target for 25% of freight to be carried by rail by that date, and electrifying more railway lines amid attempts to meet climate goals.
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In my experience and that of most of my friends both French and German, that is wrong. The French rail system may have its flaws (it does), but the German one is so much worse
I'm German and travel regularily in France as well. Travelling in France by train is a JOY compared to Germany. Please ask around as many French living in Germany as you can find. Hear their opinions.