Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland

bluewin.ch

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 309 posts

Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland

#31

Post by misja111 »

unglaublich wrote: post #11

The long-distance network in Germany has routes that take more than 8 hours. Delays of 15 minutes are because of network complexity not uncommon. SBB - Swiss rail - doesn't want its schedule to be affected by the long-distance DB - German - services. So it doesn't allow the DB service to enter the country after a given cut-off delay. This means that travellers need to transfer to an SBB service for the final 1-2 hour…

> Delays of 15 minutes are because of network complexity not uncommon.

If the delay is that likely, due to the long distance of the route, isn't the obvious step to take then to adjust the schedule? So that at some stations along the route trains have a buffer.

Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland

#32

Post by notTooFarGone »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #12
notTooFarGone wrote: post #6

Hard but entirely relatable. Deutsche bahn is horrible, privatizing it in the 90s was one of many failures of that movement and was leading to crumbling infrastructure, an insurmountable hardware and technical debt and now to the most complex train system probably in the world. Hopefully some people learn from it - privatizing critical infrastructure like this is doomed to fail. You get the bad from a public company…

> privatizing critical infrastructure like this is doomed to fail It worked great for rail in Japan, so I’m not sure that’s the obvious lesson to learn.

Japan did it differently than the EU counterparts:

>The most basic, fundamental difference between the British and Japanese railways is how they were privatised. In Britain, the tracks were split from the trains.

from a ft article I apparently can't link

The split of infrastructure and the invisible hand of the train operator market seems to be a correlation.

Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland

#33

Post by Rinzler89 »

blueflow wrote: post #13

DB has the worst company culture that I'm aware of. Everything has to go by plan, and when it doesn't, someone has to be responsible. So everyone is just ass-covering all them time and not taking any risks. This has removed the potential for improvisation in dispatching (no one wants to be responsible for delaying that other train), making the train network unable to give any trains room to make up their delays. Ther…

>So everyone is just ass-covering all them time and not taking any risks.

Heaving lived and worked in Germany for a few years, I realized that's the reason behind all the excessive bureaucracy and processes for everything: extensive ass covering. If something goes to shit under your watch then it's not your fault because you did everything by the book and you have the extensive paper trail to prove it.

And nobody wants to go around the processes or change them, even if they know they're broken because then they would be the ones liable for the outcomes, so the entire society revolves around preserving the status quo even if the ship is heading towards the iceberg.

Change to processes is usually exclusively top-down where a boomer detached from the work in the trenches but with connections, a laundry list of a academic credentials and a pompous CV of management positions at large consultancies/companies, makes the decisions and those below execute without question while mumbling at the canteen lunch how stupid and out of touch the decisions are.

That's just my opinion as an outsider, it's not a fact I can provide citations for in case anyone asks, so it can be incorrect as all opinions go, feel free to disagree or correct me.

Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland

#34

Post by a_bonobo »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #12
notTooFarGone wrote: post #6

Hard but entirely relatable. Deutsche bahn is horrible, privatizing it in the 90s was one of many failures of that movement and was leading to crumbling infrastructure, an insurmountable hardware and technical debt and now to the most complex train system probably in the world. Hopefully some people learn from it - privatizing critical infrastructure like this is doomed to fail. You get the bad from a public company…

> privatizing critical infrastructure like this is doomed to fail It worked great for rail in Japan, so I’m not sure that’s the obvious lesson to learn.

It's actually a different system - Japan's network was privatised and split into competing companies with all shares publicly traded (bar some exceptions), the Deutsche Bahn was privatised into a single, state-owned company. As such it is beholden to slow, non-deciding German governments, including investments into the network.

Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland

#35

Post by codegeek »

As a foreigner, I am currently travelling for work in Europe and had a DB train from Munich all the way to Ljubljana (Slovenia) through multiple connections. Interestingly, the trains were on time until we were in Germany but when I reached the last connection in Villach (Austria), suddenly they cancelled the train from Villach->Ljubljuana without any notice at last minute. As a foreigner without any understanding, I had to scramble through and find a Flixbus which thankfully I was able to buy tickets online.

Look for using Bus like Flixbus as an alternative if possible. They are not perfect but more reliable than the DB train for sure.

Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland

#36

Post by _the_inflator »

quitit wrote: post #9

For context German trains over the last few years have become increasingly delayed. To the point that it is now the norm. Official Deutsche Bahn figures are likely underreporting the extent of the problem as the reported times and actual timetables are -aggressively- out of sync (to the frustration of many riders). It's hard to dissect the true source of the problem as there are various factors at play. However the c…

Climate goal and public transport is also more of a joke than scientifically sound.

For example, the gear for the participating teams at the latest EM in Germany was transported in parallel by the empty buses the teams usually use.

The whole VIP travel caused a lot of additional cars on the street.

Don’t confuse means for an end. There is a lot of marketing and money involved - especially in green energy.

Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland

#37

Post by brainwad »

notTooFarGone wrote: post #6

Hard but entirely relatable. Deutsche bahn is horrible, privatizing it in the 90s was one of many failures of that movement and was leading to crumbling infrastructure, an insurmountable hardware and technical debt and now to the most complex train system probably in the world. Hopefully some people learn from it - privatizing critical infrastructure like this is doomed to fail. You get the bad from a public company…

Deutsche Bahn is wholly owned by the federal government (https://www.deutschebahn.com/en/group/ataglance/aufsichtsrat...). This is exactly the same relationship as SBB has to the Swiss government. I don't think the corporatisation (not privatisation) is the problem in this case.

Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland

#38

Post by kaashif »

a_bonobo wrote: post #34
AmericanChopper wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> privatizing critical infrastructure like this is doomed to fail It worked great for rail in Japan, so I’m not sure that’s the obvious lesson to learn.

It's actually a different system - Japan's network was privatised and split into competing companies with all shares publicly traded (bar some exceptions), the Deutsche Bahn was privatised into a single, state-owned company. As such it is beholden to slow, non-deciding German governments, including investments into the network.

But if it's state owned, surely it's not privatised? In what what is the ownership private if it's 100% public?

Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland

#39

Post by quitit »

logicchains wrote: post #25
quitit wrote: post #9

For context German trains over the last few years have become increasingly delayed. To the point that it is now the norm. Official Deutsche Bahn figures are likely underreporting the extent of the problem as the reported times and actual timetables are -aggressively- out of sync (to the frustration of many riders). It's hard to dissect the true source of the problem as there are various factors at play. However the c…

Does Germany spend less on its trains than Switzerland?

To quote the article I linked:

"The network is simply overloaded," said Böttger. In contrast to Luxembourg and Switzerland, which invested around €575 (about $625) per capita and €450 per capita in rail infrastructure respectively, the figure in Germany is just €114.

Post reply on HN