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More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland

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

#101

Post by sureIy »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #58
gniv wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on kdrama, this seems common in Korea. You're 10 seconds late, you can't enter the school grounds.

Why?! How does this help? That sounds insane and pointless to the education process. Unless the point was to educate your kids to be obedient slaves with childhood trauma for their corporate overlords. We used to have something similar during communist rule in my European country, to teach kids who's boss and to respect authority.

> the point was to educate your kids to be obedient slaves with childhood trauma for their corporate overlords.

You haven’t heard of Samsung or the life of the average South Korean student. They invest the first 20 something years of their lives to get a corporate job as soon as possible, to not be left behind. Samsungs owns like half the country.

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

#102

Post by probably_wrong »

weissbier wrote: post #83
rob74 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Privatizing" is not the correct word for it - DB was reformed and is now a company instead of a government agency, but it's still 100% owned by the state. Which however didn't stop it from acting like a profit-oriented private company, favoring short term savings over long term sustainability, which led to the sorry state in which German rail infrastructure is today. IMHO the major issue with the reform is that the…

I think it's worth adding the fact, that not only the Deutsche Bahn has been privatized, but also the Deutsche Bundespost (mail service/telecommunication) has been privatized and split into Deutsche Post and Deutsche Telekom coming from the same policy. As far as I know this all boils down to the fact, that the European Union (or better it's predecessor) wanted to get rid of state monopolies. It did work out for the…

> very good for "Deutsche Telekom"

It didn't work very well for Telekom's competitors, though.

I've switched apartments about once every two years in average and every.single.time I've had to wait more than a month without internet (after already waiting a month for the scheduled appointment) because Telekom is the owner of the DSL lines and they connect their competitors' customers only when they feel like it.

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

#103

Post by JumpCrisscross »

JohnMakin wrote: post #97

This is so foreign to my American perspective - our public transport is more like, "maybe it'll be on time, probably not, you'll have no way of knowing, also screw you"

> so foreign to my American perspective - our public transport is more like, "maybe it'll be on time, probably not, you'll have no way of knowing, also screw you"

New York’s Metro-North and LIRR have 95%+ on-time rates [1]. (EDIT: On time is defined as less than 6 minutes late [2].)

[1] https://www.metro-magazine.com/10217862/metro-north-lirr-exp...

[2] https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/pdf/report-9-2025.pdf

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

#104

Post by maweki »

fmobus wrote: post #76
remolueoend wrote: post #10

> Another figure illustrates why the practice is necessary from a Swiss perspective: in 2023, 92.5 percent of all trains in Switzerland reached their destination on time, compared to only 64 percent for long-distance trains in Germany. To add a bit more detail: SBB (Swiss federal railways) consider a train on time if it reaches its destination with less than three minutes’ delay [1]. DB (Deutsche Bahn) puts the thres…

And its doubtful any statistics from the German side can be trusted. In more than one occasion, I've personally experienced delayed and cancelled trains that were shown as running on time in every information system. DB either doesn't know where their trains are, or is continuously fudging the numbers.

I don't really understand the downvote, as cancelled trains do indeed not count towards the delay.

So often trains are cut short and do not reach their final destination, which is arguably even more inconvenient for the customers.

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

#105

Post by SllX »

Not that I can blame the Swiss for wanting to make the trains run on time, but I laughed at this part:

> SBB introduced the regulation back in July 2022 in consultation with Deutsche Bahn. Introduced as a "temporary measure" at the time, it is now permanent.

Just a reminder to folks that there is nothing so permanent as a “temporary” government program.

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

#106

Post by Gud »

lqet wrote: post #47
remolueoend wrote: post #10

> Another figure illustrates why the practice is necessary from a Swiss perspective: in 2023, 92.5 percent of all trains in Switzerland reached their destination on time, compared to only 64 percent for long-distance trains in Germany. To add a bit more detail: SBB (Swiss federal railways) consider a train on time if it reaches its destination with less than three minutes’ delay [1]. DB (Deutsche Bahn) puts the thres…

To put this a bit into perspective: long-distance trains in Germany typically travel for at least half a day. "Long-distance" trains in Switzerland can be compared to regional lines in Germany (the country simply isn't that large, and the majority of rail travel in Switzerland happens between Zurich/Olten/Berne/Basel, which are all within 100 km of each other). The likelihood of anything going wrong during a 1:30h tr…

And how many passengers are on those 10h+ train rides that you compare to?

Because your entire point is that most passengers in Switzerland travels on those short distances. How are the riders distributed in Germany?

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

#107

Post by misja111 »

tkubacki wrote: post #40

Apart from the root issue here someone need to remind that Switzerland is the parasite of EU. Basically they have all EU rights and no obligations. EU should tax them heavily so that they contribute to solve e.g. EU transportation issues.

Why in Heaven's name should Switzerland be (heavily!?) taxed to solve EU transportation issues? Should Switzerland then tax the EU as well to pay for its own transportation?

Until today I believed that the world had solved these problems by charging transportation fees but you seem to have very different ideas.

> Basically they have all EU rights and no obligations.

Switzerland certainly doesn't have all EU rights. For instance, they are not applicable for any EU subsidies. They do not have any voting rights. They are exluded from certain scientific cooperation programs (e.g. the ESFRI). And the list goes on.

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

#108

Post by isk517 »

anal_reactor wrote: post #85
Rinzler89 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 wan…

How is that different from US corporations

Well for one US corporations are not a monolith (or at least not yet) but yes some US corporations are like the same is this example, some German ones too, also Chinese, British, etc., and in all of these case this type of work culture is terrible and unproductive. But in this case we are very specifically discussing the German train company Deutsche Bahn so what other corporations are or aren't doing is complete irrelevant to the conversation, if you would like to discuss what other corporations with this same business culture I would suggest starting a new discussion thread. I hope this helps clear up any confusion you may have.

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

#110

Post by virtualritz »

Zak wrote: post #84
Rinzler89 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 wan…

It seems to me the underlying issue is that mistakes are punished and taking initiative to solve problems is not rewarded.

> It seems to me the underlying issue is that mistakes are punished and taking initiative to solve problems is not rewarded

This.

Context: born and grew up in Germany. Worked abroad for many years. Now living in Berlin, would still never work for an established German company for that reason.

Startups are usually better; until they're not startups any more.

Asking first "wer ist schuld?" ("whose fault was this?") is deeply rooted in German culture somehow though and sooner or later takes hold again.

It's the best way to ensure processes do not get improved but the paper trail attached to them grows steadily.

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