More and more German trains are not allowed to enter Switzerland • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by vel0city » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:13 PM UTC

meroes wrote: post #166

dgfitz wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to whom? You?

Videos I've watched of people's experiences. Things like having a driver be at their max hours, maybe due to unforceen traffic and delays, and Greyhound having no replacement driver ready, causing them to be late. Not hit pieces, just travel vlogs. Everyone has to get off the bus, sit in a sometimes crappy terminal at 2 am, often with no amenities while it's sorted out. I'm a bus advocate, you can see it from another…

Are watching videos of people's negative experiences really an unbiased way to understand the actual statistics on how often busses are on-time? People probably post videos when things go wrong, do you think a similar rate of videos get uploaded when nothing notable happens?

I see videos of fights breaking out on airplanes, hear about horror stories of being stuck on a plane and not allowed getting off. I take it that's what happens in the majority of flights then?

I mostly only see videos of car accidents. I guess most people get into car accidents every day. Or maybe people don't bother uploading the hundreds of hours of non-interesting dashcam clips.

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

#182

Post by captainpiggies » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:17 PM UTC

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…

As someone who used to travel regularly between Zurich and Frankfurt (Zurich - Hamburg line ICE) I can 100% tell you that distance is *NOT* the root cause of DB's reliability problems. Infrastructure decline is. From lack of electrification, badly maintained rolling stock, insufficient tracks you find everything. Swiss railways deal with problems like lack of capacity and geography. Deutsche Bahn deals with a lack of maintenance and investment.

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

#183

Post by 9dev » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:17 PM UTC

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…

I’ve read an interesting analysis of that situation, or rather the ass-covering culture in government adjacent power structures in Germany: The authors concluded that government agencies and offices are often led by lawyers, and therefore fostered a lawyer-inspired culture—which pretty much follows Conway‘s law. Over time, this has led to a management style overwhelmingly concerned with a fear of liability, and ass-covering instead of innovation.

That rings very true with me as a German.

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

#184

Post by LorenPechtel » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:18 PM UTC

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"

The issue is that trains need tracks. Tracks are very expensive and a limited resource. The stricter you are about time the more trains you can pack into a given amount of trackage.

A bus uses a road and doesn't have a problem like that because there is far more road than the buses need.

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

#185

Post by hombre_fatal » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:20 PM UTC

systemtest wrote: post #135

_zoltan_ wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Across the whole country it's absolutely true. There are car only distances for a lot of stuff.

Does the US not have an extensive network of Greyhound busses, similar to our FlixBus system? Or is that just something I saw in the movies? (I'm not American)

They are quite shit and you still need to get dropped off and picked up from them.

Anybody who mentions it online is only trying to win an argument and literally never uses it because it’s shit. You only use it if you don't have a car.

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

#186

Post by dobin » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:21 PM UTC

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…

Maybe you are not aware, but swiss trains dont go back to sleep after they arrive at a destination. They stop for 3-5 minutes, and then continue to their next destination. All day long, from morning till evening. Geneve to St. Gallen with like a dozen stops is pretty long way. Especially when you drive it 6 times a day.

Also generally the length of the tracks dont magically change. It is possible to create a timetable: which train should be where when, and then stick to it.

Note that before the DB, SBB were anoyed with some models of french or italien trains, which broke down regularly, putting too much pressure on the integrated timetable.

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

#187

Post by myth2018 » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:22 PM UTC

I visit Germany more or less regularly. The deterioration in the overall experience with DB is very noticeable. Last time I was unfortunate enough to take an ICE, they started an informal poll with the passengers to decide whether to cancel a stop in Frankfurt. I was astonished. They eventually decided not to cancel it, seemingly after a lot of time deliberating or waiting for something, but most of us lost our connections thanks to the resulting delay. It was 4am +/-.

I wonder what's going on over there. I understand that there are complex organizational issues involved, but, besides this long-term rotting, there seems to be some more recent, abrupt diseases affecting them too.

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

#188

Post by robertlagrant » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:23 PM UTC

samirillian wrote: post #180

robertlagrant wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like in hell you get your food cooked by Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver, with dessert by Mary Berry. Could be worse.

Have you actually tasted their food or just looked at pictures of it on the internet.

I haven't done either. Which do you do?

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

#189

Post by sandworm101 » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:24 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #178

mauvehaus wrote: post #112

In heaven the cooks are Italian, the lovers are French, the mechanics are German, the police are British, and it's all organized by the Swiss. (In hell the cooks are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, the police are German, and it's all organized by the Italians.)

Sounds like in hell you get your food cooked by Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver, with dessert by Mary Berry. Could be worse.

James May bettered Gordon Ramsay in a practical cooking competition. The gearhead from TopGear baked the better fish pie. And on Ramsay's own cooking show no less.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwPmLwW1-PA

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

#190

Post by VBprogrammer » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:27 PM UTC

samirillian wrote: post #180

robertlagrant wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like in hell you get your food cooked by Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver, with dessert by Mary Berry. Could be worse.

Have you actually tasted their food or just looked at pictures of it on the internet.

The best part of British food is that we're incredibly good at adopting all of the worlds cuisines' as our own. I remember being at the Belgian GP and literally you could have chips with various shaped sausage and one pizza place hiding at the back. At the British GP you could eat some variant (admittedly, probably not the best variant) of pretty much every cuisine you could imagine.

Even in our supermarkets if you want to make a Paella or Peri Peri chicken you'll find all of the ingredients you need. If you go to a Spain it's really hard to find Peri Peri and if you go to France you'll struggle to find ingredients for a Paella.