We’re just seeing the 2018 ones in US arriving now /s
Here in my country we wish we had trains like Germany’s.
Me, an American: “You guys have public transportation?”
Train is canceled today. Here’s a voucher for a Nazi-owned taxi company that’ll get you halfway home.
Cannot confirm from the DB reports which put it at about 90% punctuality overall.
But this got me to look up the UK statistics - when I was growing up it was always a stereotype that UK trains sucked and German trains were great. Today, the three minute punctuality of UK trains is 85%, and the 15 minute punctuality is 98%. From that we could subtract cancellations, which are at around 3-4%.
DB breaks it out by regional and long-distance trains though (long-distance is much worse, less than 70% on these reports)
https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/performance/passenger-rail-performance/
Their metric for punctuality isn’t realistic. If your train is late by just a couple minutes you could already be missing your connecting trains, or suffer so much stress your day is ruined before it can properly begin.
but it worked on the spreadsheet where the lack of maintenance in the lines doesn’t cause issues, no personnel is ever sick, and people deboard and board the train in a microsecond
- manager at DB
Iirc for the DB a train is considered on time when it’s not later than 7 min on arrival. Which is a joke if you miss your following connection.
A train that doesn’t arrive at all is also not considered late.
they abuse this mechanic to catch up on late trains, by stopping their trains a couple stops before the end stop and turning them around to drive the other direction, now not late anymore.
The Pofalla-turnaround, named after a politician
I have this same argument with my spouse. If fifteen minutes late is “on time”, then change the arrival time and just be on time.
Ah, the Ryanair approach. But unreliable arrival times are annoying for passengers and a drain. Sure, build in a small amount of slack, but a functioning train system should be able to get to 90% punctuality without adding 15 minutes of slack everywhere.
Luckily the next train you have to take is also late, so nothing really changes. A system so broken that it works “perfectly”.
Having been on a delayed German train, my connection actually waited so that everyone on my train connecting to it could catch it…
That obviously can’t be done regularly without impacting the whole system though. Meaning either that’s why they’re always late everywhere, or that doesn’t happen very frequently
The expected delayed effect of austerity politics that were so successfully exported throughout the European Union with great efficiency and cruelty.
3rd biggest country by GDP btw. I guess that’ what you get for voting conservatives for 20+ years.
3rd biggest country by GDP btw
Thought this was japan but looks like they passed them in 2023. Still miles behind in trains though.
Could be worse though, California has a similar size economy to both and has been struggling to build a single HSR line for decades.
20years? Bro it was conservatives since thw founding in '49 with like two or three exceptions
They figured out a loophole to improve the statistics: a train can’t be late if it never arrives.
Check out the french way: trains regularly 5-15 minutes late? Just add 20 minutes to the arrival time.
It does work through 😁
Not so long ago I read an article about how Trenitalia is among the best European rail companies in all the metrics, from price-quality to delays (or lack thereof).
Italians complain about trenitalia as if it were a national sport and they rarely can’t understand that the country has one of the best railway systems of Europe. This kind of news about other European rail companies are always a joy to share with an Italian “tossing down the calendar” (Italian idiom for saying blasphemies) about trenitalia because they simply can’t process it.
It’s a friendly rivalry among many European countries to boast about how shitty their railway companies are.
But but America!
The fuck are you on about?
Sitting in a train right now. It started half an hour late and on top of that we have to drive a detour because of an accident on the tracks. Ah well.
I understand the whole “it has to get worse before it gets better” angle when some railway sections have to be closed for a complete overhaul, but I feel like there’s an infrastructure equivalent to refeeding syndrome.
When your body has to make do with little-to-no food, it restructures its metabolism to deal with that. When you suddenly increase your food intake again, it can’t deal with that and you die. Instead, food intake must be slowly ramped up.
When an infrastructure provider has little money for repairs, they tend to take their most urgent “cannot be postponed” repairs, rank them, and do the absolutely most urgent “cannot be postponed” ones first. When they suddenly receive more money, there is a tendency to abandon this ranking system because all of these repairs are urgent “cannot be postponed” repairs and they no longer need to be ranked… which leads to collapse because of course the primary, the backup and the other backup route are being repaired at the same time, all three are in need of urgent “cannot be postponed” repairs!
I think the management structures of infrastructure providers should take this into account when a budget increase comes their way.
Their strategy so far is to close and overhaul lines completely. I think it is somewhat fair to expect that’s cheaper and faster than overhauling one side at a time. They prioritize by traffic and urgency of overhauls. It is a solid strategy - but it comes with major disruptions of long distance travel
