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Germany's identity crisis: The trains no longer run on time
51–60 of 105 posts
Re: Germany's identity crisis: The trains no longer run on time
#52When I toured Germany in the 1980s with a train pass, there were clocks all over the train stations. If the train was scheduled to start at 11:07, when the big hand clicked to 7, the train started to move. It was wonderful. BTW, the D community is all over the world. We schedule a zoom meeting each month. When we began the meetings, and the meeting started at, say, 8, the meeting organizer would say "we need to wait…
Fun fact, all train clocks in Germany synchronize ever minute. That's why the second hand freezes every minute: its actually set to be a bit too fast, and then gets held at the top until the radio signal comes to let it continue. https://youtu.be/Er5VIgJqvtg
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Re: Germany's identity crisis: The trains no longer run on time
#53No longer? They were bitching and moaning when I visited fifteen years ago in my hostel. They got horrified when I told them they're coddled to be annoyed about 15 minute delays and spoke on how things are in the states... anyways this is troubling I guess... but it's not new . Edit: also, I found the English UI to be the best in the EU (yes, better than UK's) and traveled the continent on DB, so while I sympathize w…
>they're coddled >bitching and moaning Why is this always the American answer when anything good about EU gets brought up that maybe turned worse? Vacation, workdays, sickdays, parental leave, free schooling and healthcare? and public transport as here. It is a question of money, investment and what society you want. You chose the Ford F-150. For me in Sweden, we also have worse rail now, also due to the same issue.…
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Re: Germany's identity crisis: The trains no longer run on time
#54The punctuality of the trains has been more of a joke for quite a bit, I don't think it's a big part of German identity. The part that is really terrible are the long-distance trains. Not that the regional trains are always punctual, their reliability varies a lot per route. But they're not as bad as the long-distance trains. One big recent improvement is the Germany ticket, for 58 EUR per month you can take any regi…
> But they're not as bad as the long-distance trains.
In my recent experience the most punctual trains I’ve taken have been long-distance ones, namely IC (as opposed to ICE). Not sure why, though.
Re: Germany's identity crisis: The trains no longer run on time
#55In the last few weeks I’ve had friends lose/almost lose their flights in Germany because their trains were several hours late.
Re: Germany's identity crisis: The trains no longer run on time
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was the biggest culture shock for me coming from military aviation to software. In the former, a brief starts exactly on time, down to the second. "5-4-3-2-1-hack. Time is 0800." I think I'd get tarred and feathered if I did that at my company.
> I think I'd get tarred and feathered if I did that at my company. The problem with it is the boss. Too many bosses show their dominance by how much they can force underlings to wait for them. The boss is quite capable of starting the meetings on time, and the rest will work out. I do the same thing with chronically late people. I simply don't wait for them. The problem resolves itself.
I've also done this. Back when I used to teach, all I had to do to get students to be on time was to start on time myself, and close the classroom door. (I think they locked automatically, so students had to knock to be let in, but that wasn't the point. I never gave them any grief, just let them in with as small an interruption as I could manage.)
I have never had a more punctual group of people that large. It works.
Re: Germany's identity crisis: The trains no longer run on time
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is why I do not like the American traffic signaling system. When the light turns red cross traffic has a two to three second delay. My feeling is that if people knew the cross traffic would go immediately when the light turned red they would certainly stop. But right now they know there's a buffer so they just run the red light.
Around here the power goes out to the lights now and then. Interestingly, the traffic flows smoother and faster without the lights! Even the arterials! It's amazing! Drivers simply politely cooperate with each other. (The same thing happens when a traffic cop handles the intersection.) I'm always assured that the city traffic light engineers know what they're doing and design the lights for maximum flow. They do no s…
Moving to the US, the traffic light system was a big culture shock for me. No major/minor dendritic road system laid out like a tree like I was used to — more like right angles everywhere and so many delays. Traffic lights on every single intersection. So inefficient.
And when you mention it, a surprising number of people say “that would never work here. People don’t know how to drive”. So little faith!
Re: Germany's identity crisis: The trains no longer run on time
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> high speed trains in Italy run better than Germany Not to excuse the German performance, but part of the reason is that the Italian high-speed railway network is significantly simpler than the German one, also in terms of interconnections with neighbouring countries: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Italy_TAV.png#/media... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICE_Network.png#/med...
Germany is much flatter than Italy - while the the line between Bologna and Florence, Florence and Rome, Rome and Naples, must go through a lot of mountains or steep hills. Also, Italy is a territory with a lot of seismic activity every year, and that's something you can't ignore when you send trains at 300 km/h.
The problem in Germany is that due to the structure of the railway network, there are much more interdependencies between connections, so one disruption tends to be harder to contain. It spreads out and affects many more connections.
Re: Germany's identity crisis: The trains no longer run on time
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is why I do not like the American traffic signaling system. When the light turns red cross traffic has a two to three second delay. My feeling is that if people knew the cross traffic would go immediately when the light turned red they would certainly stop. But right now they know there's a buffer so they just run the red light.
Around here the power goes out to the lights now and then. Interestingly, the traffic flows smoother and faster without the lights! Even the arterials! It's amazing! Drivers simply politely cooperate with each other. (The same thing happens when a traffic cop handles the intersection.) I'm always assured that the city traffic light engineers know what they're doing and design the lights for maximum flow. They do no s…
This has been found over and over, the more traffic control devices the worse the driving.
Re: Germany's identity crisis: The trains no longer run on time
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it's from August 5th. It includes some nice graphs, apparently the punctuality really plummeted around 2020.
I wish the author would dive into that even a little bit. It looks like COVID killed the performance. Why? And what about post COVID?
COVID harmed most industries that rely on manual labor. Suggested reasons vary, one is that people discovered they could do mental-work, and preferred it (and apparently it never occurred to them before). Another reason is many retirements and a gap in knowledge transfer to the next generation. Another is a huge increase in demand for non-physical work during COVID that never went away, leaving other industries short handed (and it's not a pay thing, there's not enough people for all demand in all industries, someone must run short).