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"
“Missed your connection? Sounds like a you problem.”
"Skill issue"
More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland
121–130 of 309 posts
Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland
#122This 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"
This is by no means true across the country but I’m sure it plays well to the “American public transport sucks” sentiment some folks like to cling to.
Across the whole country it's absolutely true. There are car only distances for a lot of stuff.
Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
DB is in major crisis with the workforce with tens of thousands of boomers retiring soon. They don’t have enough people for any redundancy.
is this specific to DB only? I feel like Germany needs a lot of workforce at German quality but no way they can fill that with any type of foreign immigration. They lowered a lot of immigration requirements to entry because of this. But still it will be not enough. It's a cultural thing and low wages in Germany can't fix it.
Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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
That seems... poor? A one in twenty trains late stat will basically mean every person will have to deal with a late train roughly every week? I bet, however, it's not uniformly distributed and some lines are late more than others. Hopefully that 95% is them being honest about the current state, while they push higher.
If true it would beat the 92.5% statistic for Swiss trains that was mentioned in the article.
Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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. I've heard it said that the idea that Germans are efficient is a myth. (The new Berlin…
>Germans are, rather, rule followers . Which is very good when the rules are sane and up to date, and very bad when otherwise.
not arguing but .. in systems theory, "good" and "bad" are too simple to be useful. Systems with many parts, have balance, efficiency, productivity .. and also the opposite of those.. in large amounts across many interactions.. from a physics point of view "stability" is also very real. Changes in system characteristics come from the actions and interactions of many individual parts, each one can change, or each class can change.
All of this is important in describing and understanding complex systems. The "rule following" is not simply "good" or "bad" using this analysis framework.
Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland
#126This 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"
It's absolutely crazy to me! I can see my uber driver on my phone stopping to pick up a pretzel from the convenience store, but I can't see where the bus is or get any kind of estimate of when it's going to arrive at the busstop. On vacation this summer in europe, all tram stops had estimated arrival times. Ridiculous, 5-10 minutes out at worst, they wouldn't even need the electronic signs, just a placard that says "…
You are describing a well-off high density city in Western Europe.
I unfortunately live in "we used to have trams, most of them were scrapped in favour of bus lines, then the bus lines were scrapped because they were not profitable enough, go buy a car" Europe.
Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland
#127Hard 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…
> now to the most complex train system probably in the world. Having seen the US attempt and lived with the UK railway, the German one is definitely a huge improvement. Yes, it does go wrong sometimes, but my experience at university in the UK was the end of term had two carriages with twice as many passengers as seats, that regularly terminated 20 minutes before the official destination, and my experience visiting t…
And we're talking about high speed rail here (ICE trains). The UK has exactly one line that qualifies - from the channel tunnel to London St Pancras, and I don't think the US has any.
Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's absolutely crazy to me! I can see my uber driver on my phone stopping to pick up a pretzel from the convenience store, but I can't see where the bus is or get any kind of estimate of when it's going to arrive at the busstop. On vacation this summer in europe, all tram stops had estimated arrival times. Ridiculous, 5-10 minutes out at worst, they wouldn't even need the electronic signs, just a placard that says "…
You are describing a well-off high density city in Western Europe. I unfortunately live in "we used to have trams, most of them were scrapped in favour of bus lines, then the bus lines were scrapped because they were not profitable enough, go buy a car" Europe.
> You are describing a well-off high density city in Western Europe.
Yeah..
Grass is greener I admit.
Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland
#129I wouldn't mind the delays that much if we had more direct connections between cities. But the reality is that you book a connection to another city, and that connection was never possible in the first place because of some construction work or bad rails or something else. They know they can't make that connection but they never update their schedule to reflect that. And then you are on the first leg of the journey a…
> And the worst is that you have no recourse. You get 25% of your ticket after ONE HOUR! It makes me so angry.
Unfortunately, it's not as if airlines were any better. Less than 3h of delay and you get nothing.
At least, with DB you can get the money for your reservation back if they cancelled your original connection. Still sucks to be in an overcrowded train without a reservation, though.
Direct connections are definitely better, as you say.
Re: More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Esspecially pro enviroment prefer such rides (but air lines are much cheaper, I only took a train from Munich to Hamburg)